Israeli strikes killed at least eight Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a child and five police officers, in the latest in a relentless series of attacks that have shredded what remains of last year’s ceasefire. In western Khan Younis, an airstrike hit a police post in the al-Mawasi area, killing five officers while they were carrying out their regular duties, according to Gaza’s Interior Ministry. The strike landed near schools for children, causing panic among students. In a separate attack in Gaza City, a father and his four year old son were among three Palestinians killed when an Israeli drone targeted a gathering of civilians on al-Thawra Street.
Six others were wounded, including a woman and her child. The Israeli military claimed it had struck “several militants” in Khan Younis but offered no comment on the Gaza City strike. The killings bring the death toll from Israeli violations of the ceasefire since it took effect on October 10, 2025, to at least 1,580 Palestinians, with more than 5,700 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
A Ceasefire That Never Held
The agreement brokered by the United States was supposed to end the worst of the fighting and open the way for reconstruction and a political settlement. It has done neither. From the very beginning, Israeli forces have conducted near daily violations including airstrikes, artillery shelling, live fire on displaced persons’ tents, and the demolition of homes. By February 2026, just four months into the truce, the Hamas-run media office had already documented 1,620 violations resulting in 573 deaths. By April, the figure had climbed to 2,400 violations and 754 deaths. Today, the toll stands at more than 1,500 killed in what is supposed to be a period of peace.
The Israeli military justifies its ongoing strikes by claiming that Hamas has been rearming and launching attacks, allegations Hamas flatly denies. Israel now controls roughly two thirds of Gaza, having ordered residents out of vast areas, while nearly all of the territory’s more than two million people are crammed into the remaining third, living among ruins in makeshift tents and damaged buildings.
The Reconstruction That Never Began
The ceasefire was meant to clear the way for a broader process to rebuild Gaza under the guidance of the US backed Board of Peace. In September, the board unveiled a six month, $2.45 billion blueprint covering 66 projects in infrastructure, education, and health. It acknowledged that full reconstruction would cost roughly $35 billion over the medium term and another $71 billion over the next decade. But nearly a year after the ceasefire took effect, not a single project has begun. The international stabilisation force has not deployed. The new Palestinian technocratic government has not entered Gaza.
Reconstruction materials have not been allowed in at the scale required. The vast majority of Palestinians continue to live in tent camps or the ruins of their former homes, enduring a winter without adequate shelter, food, or medical care. The Board of Peace’s high representative, Nikolay Mladenov, has said progress hinges largely on Hamas disarming, a step the group has refused to take absent a full Israeli withdrawal while also pressing Israel to scale back its military operation. The result is a deadlock in which Israel continues to occupy and bomb, Hamas continues to exist, and the people of Gaza continue to suffer.
The Disarmament Deadlock and the Future of the Truce
The central unresolved dispute is the sequence of steps required to move from ceasefire to a durable peace. Hamas accepted a US backed roadmap in July that would link a phased Israeli withdrawal to the decommissioning of its heavy weapons, the deployment of an international force, and the transfer of governance to a Palestinian national committee. But Israel has insisted that Hamas must be fully disarmed before any withdrawal or reconstruction begins, while Hamas has insisted that Israeli withdrawal must come first. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the roadmap outright, and his government has continued to expand its control of Gaza’s territory while the talks drag on.
Analysts have warned that the prolonged negotiations have allowed Israel to create new realities on the ground, making any eventual agreement more costly and more difficult for the Palestinians to accept. The roadmap’s most sensitive issues; weapons, withdrawal, governance have been postponed to an implementation stage that never arrives. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, and around 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been destroyed.
The trajectory is grim. Israel’s elections are approaching, and Netanyahu has every incentive to maintain a hard line on Gaza, presenting any concession as weakness. The Trump administration, preoccupied with its war against Iran and its own midterm elections, has shown little appetite for pressing Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire it brokered. The Board of Peace continues to issue reconstruction plans that cannot be implemented while the bombs keep falling. And on the ground, Palestinians continue to be killed in their tents, in their homes, and on their streets. The question is no longer whether the ceasefire will hold, since it has already failed.