At least eight children who were evacuated from Gaza as premature babies in the early weeks of the war, have returned from Egypt and been reunited with their relatives.

The toddlers were among more than 30 severely ill newborns in incubators, who were evacuated from Gaza's Shifa Hospital in November 2023, during heavy fighting.

The hospital complex had earlier been occupied by Israeli forces, who said it was being used by Hamas.

Sundus al-Kurd, a mother waiting for her daughter's return on Monday, said that she was "torn between fear and joy", as she worried that she would not be accepted as a parent after more than two years apart.

Waiting at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and clutching a pink-embroidered dress for her daughter, Bisan, the mother described to the BBC how she had tried to take her newborn baby out of Shifa hospital after Israeli forces occupied it, but was told that Bisan could not be moved from her incubator.

It was almost a year, Sundus said, before she knew what had happened to her.

"I lived between despair and hope that my daughter might still be alive," she explained. "Months later, we heard in the news that premature infants had died in Shifa. I would look at the photos, trying to feel, as a mother, whether this could be my child or not."

After nearly a year, Sundus was told that her daughter was reported alive and well in an Egyptian field hospital, identified by the pink bracelet she had been given immediately after birth.

Sundus had already lost another child, her parents and her brother by the time Bisan was born, and said that the news her daughter was alive was "like a dream".

The return of these toddlers is a small triumph in the limited stream of benefits brought by the Gaza ceasefire imposed by US President Donald Trump. But six months on from that ceasefire agreement, Gaza's future is uncertain, stuck in a fractured limbo between war and peace.

The territory is still divided, with Israeli forces in temporary control of roughly half of Gaza, and Hamas reportedly deepening its grip – politically and practically – in the remaining area, where the vast majority of Gaza's population still lives amid landscapes of rubble.

Reconstruction and the withdrawal of Israeli forces is linked in the Trump plan to Hamas's disarmament, and there are few signs of progress on this critical stage of the deal.

Nickolay Mladenov, appointed as high representative to liaise with Gaza's administration under the Trump plan, said at the UN last week that the choice was for "renewed war or a new beginning" in Gaza.

But a Palestinian official close to Hamas told the BBC that he expected the group to reject the disarmament proposals it had received.

With Israel now fighting new wars in Lebanon and Iran, attention has drained away from Gaza, but the lessons it holds are more relevant than ever – about the challenges that follow Israel's conflicts, and the difficulties it has had in leveraging military might into sustainable peace.

With the world focused on the Iran war, there is increasing uncertainty about what happens next for Gaza. 

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