US and Egyptian security contractors are screening Palestinian vehicles travelling from southern to northern Gaza under the ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian security official says.
The contractors are tasked with ensuring the vehicles carry no weapons through the checkpoint.
Video footage showed hundreds of cars, vans and donkey carts queuing to go through, as tens of thousands of pedestrians walked up the coastal road to the west without screening.
Displaced Palestinians were due to start returning to the north at the weekend, but Israel delayed this until Hamas agreed to free the Israeli female civilian hostage Arbel Yehud and two others on Thursday.
Mediator Qatar – which brokered the ceasefire deal along with the US and Egypt – announced on Sunday night that Hamas would also hand over three additional hostages on Saturday and provide information on statuses of the remaining hostages scheduled to be released during the six-week first phase.
The Israeli prime minister’s office later confirmed receipt of the list of information from Hamas and said Ms Yehud would be released along with the female Israeli soldier Agam Berger and one other hostage.
Seven hostages have so far been freed in exchange for almost 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails since the ceasefire began on 19 January. A total of 33 hostages should be handed over before the first phase ends on 2 March.
About a million residents of northern Gaza fled to southern areas at the start of the war in October 2023, when the Israeli military issued mass evacuation orders before launching a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.
Many of those displaced were subsequently forced to move multiple times after Israeli forces pushed into southern Gaza that December and ordered further evacuations.
They were also prevented from returning to their homes through the Netzarim corridor, a closed military zone stretching from the Gaza-Israel border to the Mediterranean Sea.
Israeli forces have withdrawn partially from the west of the corridor over the past eight days in line with the ceasefire deal with Hamas, but it was only on Monday that they allowed displaced Palestinians to pass through it.
Pedestrians are being allowed walk along the coastal Rashid Street without inspection. But vehicles must use Salah al-Din Street and undergo screening for weapons where it crosses the corridor.
A Palestinian security official told the BBC that the screening process was going very slowly for the vehicles queuing on Monday morning, many of which were piled high with possessions.
US and Egyptian security contractors were at the inspection area along with teams from the Red Cross, while Israeli forces were monitoring the process from a short distance, they said.
The vehicles were required to wait at a Hamas-run Palestinian police checkpoint about 300m (984ft) away from the area, the official added.
Permission was then granted for 20 vehicles at a time to proceed and pass through the two scanners operated by the contractors – a process that they said should take 40 minutes.
As he and his family queued in their car, Mohammed al-Rifi declared that that he would be able to “get back to life” once he reached Gaza City.
“I feel like I died and now I will get back to life,” he told Reuters news agency. “The feeling is indescribable – to see my family, my people, my neighbourhood.”
“My children did not see their home, did not know their home, did not know anything. They ended up on sand,” he added. “There was no life… I want to sit on the rubble and rest.”
Last week, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steven Witkoff said “outside overseers” would be based in the Netzarim corridor crossing points to “[make] sure people are safe, and people who are entering are not armed, and no-one has bad motivations”.
A source familiar with the planning of the operation told the BBC that a “multinational consortium” had been brought together by the ceasefire mediators to “oversee, manage and secure a critical vehicle checkpoint along Salah al-Din road, facilitating the safe return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza”.
The source said the consortium “aims to ensure orderly vehicle movement while preventing the transport of weapons northward, in line with the ceasefire terms”, and that the checkpoint would be staffed by “neutral parties with regional experience and security expertise”.
“Current participants in the consortium include Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), a strategic planning and logistics company; UG Solutions, a globally trusted provider of integrated security solutions; and an Egyptian security company, reflecting a diverse and international composition,” they added.
Last week, the Washington Post reported that the contractors’ staff would be authorised to confiscate any weapons or military materiel found, but that the vehicles carrying them and their passengers would be allowed to continue their journey.
Palestinians were “going to go through that checkpoint, and we are not going to stop them. They just can’t carry anything deemed unsafe,” an UG Solutions official was quoted as saying.
They also stressed that the staff were “simply there to man the checkpoint” and would have no military mission or ability to detain combatants.
However, they will be armed with assault rifles, sniper rifles and pistols, according to an internal UG Solutions document seen by the newspaper.