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鈥淚n a few hours, we will all be reunited,鈥� Israel鈥檚 military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump left later Sunday to visit Israel and Egypt to celebrate the ceasefire announced last week that offered hope for an end to the two-year war.

鈥淲e are expecting all 20 of our living hostages to be released together at one time to the Red Cross and transported among six to eight vehicles,鈥� Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said, noting that Israel did not expect militants to stage the exchanges in the same public manner as previous rounds.

Bedrosian said the hostages will be driven to a military base to reunite with their families or, if needed, immediately to a hospital.

After the hostages are freed, Israel was ready to release about 2,000 Palestinian detainees and receive the 28 hostages believed to be dead. The military planned a ceremony on their behalf in Gaza, Bedrosian said.

An international task force will start working to locate deceased hostages who are not returned within 72 hours, said Gal Hirsch, Israel鈥檚 coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing. Officials have said the search for the bodies of hostages, some of which may be under rubble, could take time.

Timing was not announced for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel who are to be freed. They include 250 people serving life sentences in addition to 1,700 seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge.

Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, head of Gaza鈥檚 Health Ministry, said he hoped the bodies of medical personnel who died in Israeli detention centers will be among those handed over.

The United Nations late Sunday reported 鈥渞eal progress鈥� on humanitarian aid in Gaza, saying it and partners distributed hundreds of thousands of hot meals and bread. Cooking gas entered the territory for the first time since March, during the previous ceasefire. The U.N. said Israel has now approved 190,000 metric tons of aid to enter, up from 170,000.

The Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza said the amount of aid entering was expected to increase to around 600 trucks per day, as stipulated in the agreement.

鈥淢uch of Gaza is a wasteland," U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told The Associated Press. He said the U.N. has a plan for the next two months to also restore basic medical and other services and remove rubble.

Food distribution sites run by the controversial U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are being shut down, an Egyptian official and another official in the region told the AP.

Trump, who pushed to clinch the ceasefire deal, was expected to arrive Monday morning in Israel. He will meet with families of the hostages and speak at the Knesset, Israel鈥檚 parliament, according to a schedule released by the White House.

Trump will continue to Egypt, where the office of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said he will co-chair a 鈥減eace summit鈥� Monday with regional and international leaders.

While both Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the halt to the fighting and plans to release the hostages and prisoners, the longer-term fate of the ceasefire remains murky. Key questions about governance of Gaza and the post-war fate of Hamas, including its proposed disarmament, have yet to be resolved.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X that he instructed the military to prepare to begin destroying the network of tunnels built by Hamas under Gaza 鈥渢hrough the international mechanism that will be established under the leadership and supervision of the U.S.鈥� once the hostages are released.

How that will be achieved with Israeli forces having pulled back within Gaza was not immediately clear.

Palestinians continued to move back to areas vacated by Israeli forces. Many were returning to homes reduced to rubble.

Mohamed Samy said he immediately went back on foot to see if his home in Jabaliya was still standing.

鈥淚t was flattened, just like everything else in Jabaliya,鈥� Samy said. It was an empty plot of land. 鈥淚t was like the building never even existed in that place. I questioned my sanity.鈥�

Satellite photos taken Saturday and analyzed by the AP showed a line of vehicles traveling north to Gaza City along the strip鈥檚 coastline.

Armed police in Gaza City and southern Gaza patrolled the streets and secured aid trucks driving through areas where the Israeli military had withdrawn, residents said. The police force is part of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

The ministry said in a statement Sunday that it would allow members of armed gangs not involved in the killing of Palestinians to turn themselves in as early as Monday, 鈥渞epent and be pardoned.鈥�

The pause in fighting allowed first responders to search previously inaccessible areas for bodies under rubble. Health officials said 233 were recovered and brought to hospitals since Friday, when the truce went into effect. Some were brought in as only bones.

Yasser el-Bureis, at the morgue in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said he and his relatives had finally retrieved the remains of two cousins who were killed as they tried to flee their homes.

鈥淔or five months, we didn鈥檛 manage to recover the bodies,鈥� he said.