Israel and Hamas have reached a deal on the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, in exchange for the bodies of four Israeli hostages who died in Gaza. The swap will take place Thursday, after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinians in a move Hamas officials said was another attempt to sabotage the Gaza ceasefire. This comes as the United Nations is urging Israel to allow mobile homes and shelters into Gaza after six Palestinian infants died from hypothermia due to the freezing cold. Meanwhile, schoolchildren have joyfully returned to classrooms in Gaza for the first time since October 2023. 

Latifa Mahmoud Hasan Abu Sherbin: “After an absence of about a year and a half, we returned to school. The feeling is indescribable. Honestly, it’s a unique and special feeling. However, there is a slight flaw: It’s not really a school. First of all, the walls are destroyed. There are no benches, no blackboards. We even brought our prayer mats with us to sit on, and they were barely enough. There are no teaching materials available to help us study. Despite all of this, we overcame these conditions.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed by Israel.