For two years, they have gathered in Hostages Square – parents, brothers, sisters, extended family and friends clutching photographs and signs reading “bring them home”.

They have campaigned, protested and prayed for the return of loved ones taken in the 7 October attacks.

But now the mood has shifted.

The chants of frustration have turned into songs of celebration.

The tears that once fell in despair are now tears of relief.

The square, normally a site of weekly demonstrations, has transformed into a sea of flags.

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We watched as tens of thousands packed into this area of Tel Aviv to witness a moment many feared might never come – the homecoming of the remaining hostages.

Every few minutes, the massive video screens behind the stage beamed new images – exhausted but smiling hostages embracing their families.

Each clip is met with a roar of applause – the atmosphere is one of sheer elation, it is electric.

When helicopters pass overhead, ferrying freed captives to nearby hospitals, the crowd erupts again and again, looking upwards to the sky in awe at the impossible that’s now been made possible.

The sense of catharsis here is palpable – at last some closure after a nightmare two years and a chance for the healing process of a nation to begin.

But beneath the jubilation, there’s a deep well of sorrow – and reckoning.

The 7 October massacre was the deadliest single-day attack on Israel since the nation’s founding in 1948 – an event that upended the country’s sense of safety and unity.

More than 1,000 were killed that day, and hundreds were taken into Gaza.

For the families who never stopped fighting for their return, this is both an ending and a beginning.

Now that the living hostages are home, attention turns to those who did not survive.

Officials say the process of identifying and repatriating remains will take time – and for some families, closure still remains heartbreakingly out of reach.

But the questions that linger extend far beyond grief.

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In the days and weeks ahead, the Israeli government faces intense scrutiny.

How could the country’s fabled intelligence and defence apparatus fail so catastrophically?

And what accountability, if any, will fall on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced mounting criticism over both the failures leading up to the attack and the protracted efforts to secure the hostages’ release?

This is a nation rejoicing, but also searching for answers.

For now, though, the families in this square are holding tight to one immutable positive – after more than two long years, the living hostages, at least, are finally home.

Drones have been a common sight in Gaza for a long time, but they have always been military.

The whine of a drone is enough to trigger fear in many within the enclave.

But now, drones are delivering something different – long, lingering footage of the devastation that has been wreaked on Gaza. And the images are quite staggering.

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Whole city blocks reduced to rubble. Streets destroyed. Towns where the landscape has been wholly redesigned.

Decapitated tower blocks and whole areas turned into black and white photographs, where there is no colour but only a palette of greys – from the dark hues of scorched walls to the lightest grey of the dust that floats through the air.

And everywhere, the indistinct dull grey of rubble – the debris of things that are no longer there.

The joy that met the ceasefire has now changed into degrees of anxiety and shock.

Gaza is full of people who are returning to their homes and hoping for good news. For a lucky few, fortune is kind, but for most, the news is bad.

Umm Firas has been displaced from her home in Khan Younis for the past five months. She returned today to the district she knew so well. And what she found was nothing.

“This morning we returned to our land, to see our homes, the neighbourhoods where we once lived,” she says.

“But we found no trace of any houses, no streets, no neighbourhoods, no trees. Even the crops, even the trees – all of them had been bulldozed. The entire area has been destroyed.

“There used to be more than 1,750 houses in the block where we lived, but now not a single one remains standing. Every neighbourhood is destroyed, every home is destroyed, every school is destroyed, every tree is destroyed. The area is unliveable.

“There’s no infrastructure, no place where we can even set up a tent to sit in. Our area, in downtown Khan Younis used to be densely populated. Our homes were built right next to each other. Now there is literally nowhere to go.

“Where can we go? We can’t even find an empty spot to pitch our tent over the ruins of our own homes. So we are going to have to stay homeless and displaced.”

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It is a story that comes up again and again. One man says that he cannot even reach his house because it is still too near the Israeli military officers stationed in the area.

Another, an older man whose bright pink glasses obscure weary eyes, says there is “nothing left” of his home “so we are leaving it to God”.

“I’m glad we survived and are in good health,” he says, “and now we can return there even if it means we need to eat sand!”

The bulldozers have already started work across the strip, trying to clear roads and allow access. Debris is being piled into huge piles, but this is a tiny sticking plaster on a huge wound.

The more you see of Gaza, the more impossible the task seems of rebuilding this place. The devastation is so utterly overwhelming.

Bodies are being found in the rubble while towns are full of buildings that have been so badly damaged they will have to be pulled down.

Humanitarian aid is needed urgently, but, for the moment, the entry points remain closed. Charities are pleading for access.

It is, of course, better for people to live without war than with it. Peace in Gaza gifts the ability to sleep a little better and worry a little less. But when people do wake up, what they see is an apocalyptic landscape of catastrophic destruction.

It has been an extraordinary day of enormous emotion and high drama but, for all that, we have only witnessed the first phase of the Trump peace plan – and in many ways that is the easy bit.

The first phase envisaged a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the release of many more Palestinians held in Israeli jails, a partial Israeli military withdrawal, and aid starting to flood back into Gaza.

Job done, although the aid bit is still a work in progress.

Trump and his team ripped up one of the golden rules of Middle Eastern negotiating to pull this off, no deal until a final deal.

They have turned that on its head, pushing for a breakthrough on what can be agreed on, and then committing to sorting out the rest later.

And it’s worked in the sense that it has delivered a spectacular day of achievements. The catch is it has postponed the harder bits, which now loom into view.

They include what happens to Hamas and whether it should be disarmed, creating a transitional authority to govern Gaza, and sending in a multinational peacekeeping force to provide security. There are plans for a “board of peace” to oversee everything, chaired by Donald Trump.

If there is progress on all of that, the Israeli military withdrawal is committed to withdraw further back to a narrow buffer on the edges of Gaza’s border. And ultimately, the hope is of continued momentum towards talks about Palestinian statehood and a “two-state solution”.

Donald Trump made it abundantly clear he believes this is only the start. This is, he said, “the historic dawn of a new Middle East”. There seem few limits to his peacekeeping ambition.

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But if the diplomacy is going to fulfil on the promise of his rhetoric, there must be progress on at least the security force and the transitional government for Gaza.

Because without that, the vacuum left by the retreating Israeli military could soon be filled by Hamas. It could then, in due course, rally, regroup, and at some point return to the fray.

The president has gathered together an impressive coalition of countries in Sharm, on the face of it, committed to his 20-point plan. He must now harness them to give Gazans an alternative vision they can believe in. Without it, his ambitious rhetoric remains just that.

Negotiators decided to reach a deal on the first phase while leaving the details of the second fuzzy. But the plan was not so easily cleaved in two. Even during the narrow talks of the past few days, the pace and scale of Israel’s future withdrawals became an issue.

In public, some Hamas officials demanded that it pull out entirely once the last hostage was released – a big change to the Trump plan and a non-starter for Israel.