Some Israeli families are anguished to see Palestinians convicted of killing their loved ones freed.

Hamas released the Gaza hostages on Monday as Mr. Trump arrived in Israel. Hours later, the Israeli authorities said that they had finished freeing all 1,968 Palestinian prisoners and detainees slated for release as part of the exchange.

Mr. Trump told Israeli lawmakers that the exchange marked “the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” and then traveled to Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi greeted him at a Red Sea resort. “From the city of Sharm el Sheikh, the will of the people meets the resolve of world leaders to end the war in Gaza,” Mr. el-Sisi said. “They all carry a single message to mankind: Enough war. Welcome to peace.”

At a summit there, Mr. Trump signed a document, as did the leaders of Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, who joined with the United States in brokering the exchange. But the contents of the document were not immediately clear, and it was not signed by Israel or Hamas, neither of which had representatives at the meeting.

Earlier at the gathering, Mr. Trump shared a long handshake with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, in their first encounter since 2017. The Trump administration denied Mr. Abbas a visa to travel to New York last month for the U.N. General Assembly, leaving him to address the gathering by video link.

But at the summit, Mr. Trump pointed to Mr. Abbas and said, “It’s good to have you.”

The exchanges on Monday had been awaited since Hamas militants attacked Israel in October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250. In response, Israel bombed and invaded Gaza, killing about 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities.

Here’s what else to know:

• Relief and hope: The cease-fire and the exchange encouraged both Israelis and Palestinians. “You are coming home!” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, 25, said on a video call with her son in Gaza, their first conversation since he was abducted two years ago, according to footage broadcast on Israeli television. But for some Gazans, the relief was clouded by grief and despair. “There’s nothing to be happy about,” Saed Abu Aita, 44, said. “My two daughters were killed, my home was destroyed and my health has deteriorated.”

• Trump’s Knesset speech: Mr. Trump, the first U.S. president to address the Israeli Parliament since George W. Bush in 2008, went into lengthy digressions as if delivering a campaign speech, praising Israel and praising his own accomplishments while denigrating his Democratic predecessors Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. He also shattered diplomatic taboos, at one point directly urging Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, to pardon Mr. Netanyahu, who is a defendant in a long-running criminal trial on charges including bribery.

• The logistics: Under the deal reached last week in talks brokered by U.S., Arab and Turkish mediators, Israeli forces withdrew to a new defensive line inside Gaza on Friday, opening a 72-hour window for the hostages to be released. Read more ›

• Hostages: The agreement requires Hamas to turn over the bodies of at least 26 hostages who died in captivity. Hamas’s armed wing said that it would release the bodies of three Israelis and a Nepalese citizen on Monday. Both Israeli and Hamas officials said it would be difficult for Hamas to gather all of the bodies in the three-day window stipulated by the cease-fire agreement. The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, an Israeli advocacy group, accused Hamas of failing to abide by the agreement. Read more on the freed hostages ›

• Aid deliveries: Hours before the first Israeli hostages were released, the United Nations said that “real progress” was being made in delivering aid to Gaza, where a United Nations-backed panel of food experts has said that some areas are officially under famine. Read more ›

Mr. Moses is among hundreds of Israelis who saw the names of Palestinians convicted of killing their relatives on the official list of those to be freed on Monday, in keeping with the agreement to bring home the remaining Israeli hostages.

Of the 1,968 jailed Palestinians Israel said it had released on Monday, some 1,700 had been detained in Gaza over the course of the two-year war there and held without charge or trial, and roughly 250 others had been convicted of violent attacks.

Among the second group was Mohammad Adel Daoud. He had been sentenced to life in prison in 1989 for throwing a fire bomb two years earlier at the car carrying Mr. Moses, his wife, and their three children outside their home in the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe.

Mr. Moses’s wife, Ofra, was killed at the scene. Their 5-year-old son, Tal, died three months later of his injuries. Mr. Moses and his two other children survived, suffering severe burns.

While many across Israel celebrated the news that the 20 living hostages and the remains of at least 26 more would be returned from Gaza, for families like Mr. Moses’s, the news also carried trepidation. Some expressed horror at the prospect of seeing the people convicted of killing their loved ones free again.

After finding out that the man convicted of killing her mother was on the list of those to be released, Renana Meir wrote in an Israeli newspaper on Friday, “When the terrorist is let out of prison in the coming agreement, you will pay the price.”

“Every Israeli in every house in Israel will be less safe,” Ms. Meir wrote.

Israel has exchanged hostages for Palestinian prisoners in the past, often at unfavorable ratios that have fueled fierce debate. Yahya Sinwar, widely seen as the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, was released together with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier in 2011. Several government ministers had objected to the exchange on Monday, saying it was disproportionate and carried too many security risks.

But for Mr. Moses, the release offered the prospect that other families might have what he could not. Hearing the news of the cease-fire deal, he said he and his two surviving children processed it together.

“We cried because the despicable murderer will be released,” he said. But he said he told his children, “Imagine the feeling of families who would embrace their loved ones returning from hell.”

Mr. Moses serves as the chairman of Israel’s National Organization of Victims of Terror, a group that provides support and advocacy for some 40,000 civilian victims of attacks and their family members, including many survivors of the Oct. 7 attack, which set off the war in Gaza.

He acknowledged that his view about the releases was not shared by many of the families that his group represents. He said he was yelled at by some victims’ relatives, who could not understand his stance.

Another group representing some victims’ families appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court on Friday, after the authorities published the list of prisoners set for release. The group asked the court to block the release of those “who will return to murdering,” but the petition was dismissed.

Mr. Moses said he believed the returning hostages would be able to overcome their trauma and flourish, just as he and his children had.

“No matter how they return, we will treat them,” he said. “We will return them to life.”

Rarely has an American president, particularly one as divisive at home as Mr. Trump is, been met with such adulation abroad. In Hostages Square, tens of thousands yelled, “Trump, Trump,” and in the Knesset some members wore red MAGA-style hats.

Mr. Netanyahu, whose name was booed in the same square on Saturday night, declared the president was “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” There was more talk of nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Israel Prize.

Video

Trump Addresses Israel’s Parliament About Cease-Fire in Gaza

President Trump was given a standing ovation before a speech in the Israeli Parliament in which he claimed a cease-fire was “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”CreditCredit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

And Mr. Trump himself surprised Israeli lawmakers when he twice made an offer to Iran — a country that Israel and the United States bombed only four months ago — to enter talks that could end decades of enmity and isolation.

“You know what would be great, if we could make a peace deal with them,” he said. “Would you be happy with that?” He added, “I think they’re tired,” but the offer did not elicit an enthusiastic response.

There was more enthusiastic applause when Mr. Trump described Israel’s assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists during the 12-day bombing of the country, or when he detailed the number of B-2 bombers, re-fuelers and support aircraft that dropped bunker-busters on Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan, the major Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.

And just beneath the surface, there were obvious differences over the future of Gaza, and even over whether the cease-fire that is finally allowing food and medicine to flow into the territory would necessarily leading to a lasting peace. “The war is over,” Mr. Trump told reporters, both on Air Force One and in the hallways of the Knesset.

Mr. Netanyahu was far more cautious, welcoming the release of the hostages, and the fact that no living Israelis were being held in Gaza for the first time in years, while refusing to discuss whether Israel would resume hostilities if Hamas does not disarm or leave the territory. Hamas never agreed to that part of Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, and its militias were already moving into neighborhoods from which Israel had withdrawn in recent days.

And even while Mr. Trump was in Jerusalem, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, declared that Hamas had released the remains of only four out of 28 hostages who had died in captivity. “Each delay or intentional avoidance will be considered a blunt violations of the agreement and will be answered accordingly,’’ he posted on X.

Mr. Trump chose to ignore the possible roadblocks ahead. In his speech, he wandered off text to assess Mr. Netanyahu’s personality: “He’s not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great.” He talked at length about the hours of conversation his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, held earlier this year with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Mr. Witkoff, a real estate investor from New York, was described by Mr. Trump as “Henry Kissinger who doesn’t leak.” Mr. Kissinger, the national security adviser and then secretary of state under Nixon and Ford, was a master of the self-serving Washington leak.

Except for brief references, Mr. Trump did not talk about what it would take to rebuild Gaza, or the future of the Palestinian people, or the trade-offs between creating a Palestinian state and its alternatives.

In fact, there was almost no public discussion of the implementation of his 20-point plan at all, save for the fact that he was meeting wealthy Arab states and European governments that should form an international stabilization force or fund the rebuilding of the devastated territory.

In that regard, elements of Mr. Trump’s speech gave another glimpse of his foreign policy. He praised countries for their military strength, especially Israel, which he said emerged “stronger, more respected” than before.

Two years of conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran certainly did prove that Israel was the strongest power in the region. But Mr. Trump did not discuss its diplomatic isolation, as European powers embraced the idea of a separate Palestinian state partly because of the huge civilian casualties caused by Israeli attacks.

As usual, Mr. Trump argued that countries would make decisions based on their economic interests — that joining the Abraham accords, for example, would enhance trade. But of course the Middle East is filled with nations, religious groups and terror organizations that have gone to war even when it risks all economic progress. Russia did the same in invading Ukraine.

There were departures from the norm. Mr. Trump is not known for nurturing alliances, but he expressed gratitude “for all of the nations of the Arab and Muslim world that came together to press Hamas.”

Yet he said little about how to build on the momentum of that new cooperation.

There were scattered protests in Israel against Mr. Trump’s visit, and two left-wing lawmakers belonging to a joint Palestinian-Israeli political party were escorted out of the Knesset for displaying signs that said “Recognize Palestine!” They were quickly seized, and Mr. Trump pursed his lips before saying: “That was very efficient.”

Ayman Odeh, one of the two lawmakers, wrote on social media that the speeches in the Knesset would not absolve Mr. Netanyahu “of the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.” He later added: “There are two peoples here, and neither one of them is leaving.”

Trump made the argument that if he had not destroyed Iran’s three major nuclear sites, the agreement to get the hostages out of Gaza would not have been possible. Arab states would not have taken the risk of pressuring Hamas, an Iranian proxy.

“We took a big cloud off of the Middle East and off of Israel,” he said, rejecting predictions that Iran would try to restart its nuclear program. “The last thing they want to do is start digging holes again in mountains that just got blown up. They are not doing that. They want to survive.”

On Monday, Mr. Trump praised the accords, saying that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “did something very special” when he helped to broker them. He also hinted at his longstanding wish to expand them, suggesting that Israel could even make a deal with Iran, its archenemy in the region.

Though a comprehensive end to the war between Israel and Hamas has yet to be hammered out, Mr. Trump said the cease-fire meant “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”

What are the Abraham Accords?

Signed in 2020 on the White House lawn, the first of the deals known as the Abraham Accords established diplomatic ties between Israel and two Gulf Arab states, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. A similar agreement with Morocco soon followed.

Until then, the only Arab states that had formally recognized Israel were Egypt and Jordan. Most others had pledged not to do so until the creation of a Palestinian state.

The lack of diplomatic relations meant that citizens of Israel could not travel to those countries, and vice versa. It also forced any trade and security cooperation under the table. Until the Abraham Accords, even direct phone calls to Israel were blocked in several Arab countries, including the Emirates.

President Trump has described the Abraham agreements as the crowning foreign policy achievement of his first term, and they have received bipartisan support from U.S. lawmakers.

At the White House signing ceremony in 2020, Mr. Trump said that they marked “the dawn of a new Middle East,” speaking of a future in which “people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity.”

What impact have the deals had?

The Abraham Accords have created an opportunity for expanded trade, security cooperation and tourism between the countries that signed them.

Israeli tourists and investors have poured into Dubai, the biggest city in the Emirates, and technology and energy companies have signed new deals. In 2024, trade between the two countries exceeded $3 billion, and regular flights continue to ferry travelers between the Emirates and Tel Aviv.

Morocco has also seen an influx of Israeli tourists. And to sweeten its incentives to sign the deal, the United States agreed to recognize the disputed Western Sahara territory as a sovereign part of Morocco.

The impact in Bahrain has been more modest, and protests against the accords have become a regular occurrence in the Gulf nation.

The accords have done nothing to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has deepened, rather than eased, contrary to the hopes of Emirati officials when they signed the deal. The current prospects for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza — a longstanding goal of Arab leaders — appear dim, even though several European countries have recently recognized Palestine.

Is this a peace deal?

Over the five years since the Abraham Accords were signed, Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, along with other American and Israeli officials, have repeatedly referred to the agreements as a “peace deal.”

“The blessings of the peace we make today will be enormous,” Mr. Netanyahu declared from a White House balcony when the accords were announced in 2020. “Ultimately, it can end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all.”

Scholars of the region say that is merely a turn of phrase, belying the fact that there has never been a war between Israel and the U.A.E. or Bahrain. Morocco has also largely stayed out of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, aside from sending a token force to a 1973 war, more than 50 years ago. In effect, the deals bypassed the central conflict, between Israel and the Palestinians, declaring harmony between parties that were not fighting.

Will the Abraham Accords expand?

American and Israeli officials have frequently stated their desires, and expectations, for other countries to sign the accords. So far, that has fallen flat.

The biggest prize for supporters of the accords would be Saudi Arabia, the powerful, oil-rich kingdom that hosts the two holiest sites in Islam. But years of overtures to persuade Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel have so far failed. The Biden administration took up that mantle fervently, pursuing a deal that was predicated on the United States granting major benefits to the kingdom.

Analysts say that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with the immense suffering of Palestinian civilians, has made joining the accords a much harder sell for Arab nations.

Saudi officials have insisted recently that they would be unable to recognize Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel insists that it will never cede East Jerusalem, which it seized in the 1967 war and formally annexed in 1980.

Even if the war in Gaza ends permanently, the views of Saudi citizens toward dealing with Israel are overwhelmingly negative. That limits the space that the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, has to maneuver for a deal.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

“This feeling is indescribable,” said Nasser Shehadeh, who was released after serving three years of a 17-year sentence for a car ramming attack on two soldiers, who survived. He was told he would be freed three days ago, and said the news came as a surprise.

“I haven’t slept since that moment,” he said.

On Monday afternoon, the Israeli prison service said it had freed all of the 1,968 Palestinians slated for release in an exchange for all the remaining hostages in Gaza. They were sent to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Among those freed were 250 Palestinians convicted of terrorism offenses or acts of violence against Israelis and roughly 1,700 more who were detained in Gaza without charge during the war.

The 250 convicts were mostly affiliated with Fatah, a rival Palestinian faction to Hamas, and were serving life sentences for attacks in the 1980s or 1990s.

More than 150 of them were sent into exile. The Gaza residents among them were taken through the Rafah border crossing which links Gaza to Egypt, according to the Hamas Prisoners’ Media Office.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said one prisoner was transferred to Ramallah Hospital from Ofer Prison, while seven others were hospitalized after they were dropped off in Ramallah.

Mr. Shehadeh’s father, Bilal, said he was disturbed by his son’s condition. They had not seen each other since the war began more than two years ago, and in that time, his son had lost roughly 100 pounds.

“They were not just deprived of food. They were not even allowed to clean themselves or to have soap,” the father said. “Our priority now is to make sure Nasser gets the medical attention he needs.”

Halima Abu Shanab, 53, said she was both overjoyed and alarmed by the sight of her brother, Kamal Abu Shanab. The Israeli authorities said he was convicted of murder and membership in a terrorist organization.

“We’re happy, truly happy, that he’s home,” she said. “But his health, it’s really bad. I was not prepared to see him like this.”

Mr. Abu Shanab, 51, had spent 23 years in prison. When he emerged from the bus on Monday, he was covered in bruises, Ms. Abu Shanab said. She added that he had a shoulder injury that had not been treated in eight months. His family took him directly to a hospital.

“He was beaten badly and humiliated,” she said. “And left with wounds on his knees and body.”

The Israel Prison Service said it was not aware of the family’s claims of mistreatment made by the released prisoners and detainees on Monday.

“The Israel Prison Service operates in accordance with the law,” a spokesman for the agency said. “We are not aware of the claims described, and to the best of our knowledge, no such incidents occurred under I.P.S. responsibility.”

This is not the first time Israel has released prisoners or detainees who killed Israeli civilians in exchange for hostages, but it is nevertheless difficult for many in Israel.

In 2011, Israel exchanged more than 1,000 prisoners and detainees for Gilad Shalit, a soldier who had been held captive in Gaza for five years. Several of those released prisoners and detainees — including Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was killed last year — would go on to plan the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.

One of the prisoners and detainees released in 2011 was Murad Abdallah Adais, who was convicted of killing Dafna Meir in 2016. Her daughter, Renana Meir, criticized his release in an anguished essay in an Israeli newspaper.

“When the terrorist is let out of prison in the coming agreement, you will pay the price,” she wrote. “Every Israeli in every house in Israel will be less safe.”

Others had more mixed feelings.

Abraham Moses, 75, the chairman of Israel’s National Organization of Victims of Terror, said he and his children wept when they learned that Muhammad Adel Daoud would be freed. He was convicted in 1989 of killing Mr. Moses’s wife, Ofra, and 5-year-old son, Tal, in 1987.

But then Mr. Moses decided that if seeing Mr. Daoud go free could save the families of hostages from that same pain, then his release might be worth it.

“Imagine the feeling of families who would embrace their loved ones returning from hell,” he said.

Some of the families who were waiting in Ramallah for their imprisoned loved ones left despondent on Monday after learning that their relatives were not among those released.

Nuhad Hammami waited anxiously in Ramallah for her brother, Mohammed, who was convicted of murder, according to the Israeli authorities. She stood on her toes to see over the crowd. Then tears began to stream down her face.

“His name was on the list of prisoners returning home until this morning,” she said. “Then the list changed, and now we don’t know if we’ll ever see him again.”

She was worried that he might have been released and sent to Gaza instead of the West Bank.

“Where would he sleep in the winter?” she said, her voice trembling. “Gaza is destroyed.”

Most of the released prisoners were residents of Gaza who were detained without charge during the war, including women and children. They were brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where such large crowds gathered that the buses could barely move down the street.

The area around the hospital swelled with thousands of people and coursed with waves of joy, grief and disbelief. Armed men, some of them masked, tried in vain to keep order in the crowd, occasionally firing into the air.

Many in the crowd pushed toward the arriving busloads of detainees and shouted the names of their missing loved ones. Others packed the balconies of half destroyed buildings to cheer and wave.

Inside the buses, detainees pressed against the windows or waved back.

Israel has detained several hundred Palestinians during the war on suspicion of direct involvement in the Oct. 7 attacks. It has detained thousands more who are suspected of links to Hamas and other groups but not of involvement in the attack.

Most were designated as “unlawful combatants,” which means they can be held without charge or trial under Israeli law. Some of these detainees were released in earlier prisoner-hostage swaps during the war.

When the Israeli government agreed to the exchange, it stipulated that no detainees suspected of involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks would be released.

Rozan Naif Adwa, 23, came to find her fiancé, Mohammed Khalil, who was detained at a checkpoint in northern Gaza 11 months ago. They had planned to distribute their wedding invitations on Oct. 7, 2023, and had spent the last two years watching the destruction of their homeland.

“He came out of one small prison to a bigger one, a devastated prison,” she said, referring to Gaza. “But he will rebuild his home and his life from the beginning.”

Earlier in the day, Amani Nasir, 30, joined a crowd in southern Gaza to watch Red Cross vehicles take some of the freed hostages back to Israel. She knew their release meant that Palestinian prisoners and detainees would be coming home soon.

“Today feels like the happiest day of our lives,” said Ms. Nasir, who fled her home in northern Gaza during the two-year war. Since then, she said, she had been displaced 19 more times to flee fighting.

“We were happy for our prisoners — and for the Israelis, too,” she said. “We love peace and the truce. Just as Israelis worry about their hostages, we worry about our prisoners.”

Beyond those lofty ambitions, a messier reality lies ahead.

When Mr. Trump jets away from the Middle East on Monday, after lightning stops in Israel and Egypt, regional powers will be left to resolve the thornier details — not least whether Hamas will disarm, and whether Israel will fully withdraw from Gaza.

Settling those issues will be critical to ensuring that Mr. Trump’s initial peace proposal, presented in September, leads to a sustainable end to the war, which has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. The war was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted.

“The world finally got something they have long wanted: U.S. buy-in,” said Aziz Alghashian, a lecturer with Naif Arab University for Security Sciences in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “But how to keep the American weight there, while they try to work out the details, is the harder part. There hasn’t seemed to be any longer-term planning taking place.”

Arab diplomats regard this summit as an opportunity to persuade Mr. Trump to understand the concerns of regional countries, who he will rely on to ensure that the cease-fire deal holds.

Egypt, for instance, is crucial to carrying out Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which envisions the reopening of Gaza’s border with Egypt to allow in crucial aid, and an exit for those who seek it.

But Egypt does not want a huge influx of refugees across its borders. Egyptian officials have long feared such a mass flight of people, for a number of reasons.

For one, they do not want to be accused of helping Israel to displace Palestinians. But domestic security concerns are just as critical. If Hamas militants managed to cross the border with refugees, it could provoke an Israeli attack on Egyptian soil.

“The challenges are not really in the first stage of the agreement,” said Aymen Abdel Wahab, deputy director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a think tank in Cairo. “Egypt will see more challenges in the second stage, as it works on the security sector and maintaining the peace.”

The Gulf countries will also want to be heard, with bilateral meetings expected on the summit’s sidelines.

Those countries are likely to play a leading role in bankrolling the rebuilding of Gaza, but they have been wary of comments made this week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that the military campaign in Gaza was “not over.”

The Gulf countries fear a situation in which they are effectively funding Gaza’s reconstruction even as Israeli operations continue, said Mr. Alghashian.

They have also been focused on getting Mr. Trump to embrace a role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, something that Israel has rejected. The authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and considers itself the rightful government of any future Palestinian state, and Saudi Arabia, in particular, feels it needs an invitation from the authority to support efforts to stabilize or rebuild Gaza.

“This is really necessary to elicit support from Arab and Muslim states,” said Mr. Alghashian. “Otherwise it looks like they are funding a new form of occupation — and that is exactly what they don’t want.”