Nearly a year after the Gaza ceasefire agreement entered into force, there are still no signs that the Israeli government intends to comply fully with its announced terms. For Palestinians in the enclave, daily suffering, bombardment and civilian killings have continued despite the agreement that was supposed to halt the war.
The agreement, signed in Sharm el-Sheikh nearly a year ago, has failed to end the daily danger facing Gaza’s population. Bombardments and deadly attacks have remained part of life under what has become an increasingly fragile ceasefire.
The United Nations documented the killing of 24 Palestinians in just five days between 28 August and 1 September, including four children and one woman, most of them in air strikes.
International reports have also documented continued bombardment and gunfire, the expansion of areas under Israeli control inside Gaza, and ongoing restrictions on movement and humanitarian access. Large parts of the enclave have therefore remained under persistent threat despite the formal declaration of a ceasefire.
A ceasefire was supposed to end the aggression, facilitate the withdrawal of forces, allow humanitarian aid to enter and begin the reconstruction process. Instead, the continuing death toll, assassinations and air strikes have left the agreement increasingly hollow, with Palestinians continuing to pay the price for the absence of a comprehensive and lasting cessation of hostilities.
More Than 1,300 Palestinians Killed Since the Ceasefire
Since the ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025, Palestinian and UN bodies have documented the killing of more than 1,300 Palestinians in Israeli bombardments and assassination operations across Gaza.
According to the latest Palestinian figures issued by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 1,394 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began, while more than 4,830 have been wounded. A further 831 bodies have been recovered from beneath the rubble.
Data from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that the pattern of killing did not end with the declaration of the truce.
The UN office has also warned that areas near the so-called “Yellow Line” have become persistent danger zones, documenting the killing of 196 Palestinians by Israeli forces near those areas.
The Yellow Line is the line to which the Israeli military withdrew as part of the first stage of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war on Gaza.
Assassinations Continue Under the Ceasefire
Israeli attacks have not been limited to bombardment of residential areas. Israeli occupation forces have continued assassination operations targeting activists and field operatives from Hamas and other Palestinian factions, in direct violation of the stated terms of the ceasefire agreement.
Among the most prominent figures assassinated during the fragile truce was Izz al-Din al-Haddad, commander-in-chief of the Qassam Brigades, who was killed along with several members of his family in an Israeli air strike on Gaza on 15 May.
His successor, Muhammad Awda, was then assassinated later that same month.
Israeli forces have killed dozens of other activists since the ceasefire took effect. Many of these attacks have also killed civilians, particularly women and children, contradicting repeated Israeli claims that its strikes are precise and limited to specific individuals it considers “wanted”.
Journalists Remain Targets
Over nearly three years of the war of genocide in Gaza, journalists have themselves become direct targets of Israeli forces, amid efforts to suppress reporting from the enclave and impose the Israeli narrative.
According to figures from Gaza’s Government Media Office and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, 254 male and female journalists have been killed since October 2023, an unprecedented toll.
The killing has continued during the ceasefire. Media reports have documented the deaths of 11 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since the truce began in October, as a result of direct Israeli attacks.
Testing the Ceasefire’s “Red Lines”
Since the ceasefire entered into force, Israeli occupation forces have pursued what amounts to a gradual policy of testing reactions and probing the “red lines” of Palestinian factions.
This has included a lengthy series of near-daily assassination operations targeting leaders of the Palestinian resistance, apparently aimed at measuring how far the factions are prepared to tolerate such attacks before responding militarily.
According to monitoring by Arabi21, Israel began in the first weeks after the ceasefire to manufacture battlefield pretexts to justify bombardments and assassinations, repeatedly promoting claims that Hamas had “violated the agreement”.
In some cases, Israel claimed clashes had taken place with besieged Palestinian fighters in Rafah’s tunnels. In others, it claimed its forces, deployed across approximately 60 per cent of the Gaza Strip, had come under fire.
Those claims were then used to justify strikes against figures in the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian factions.
Despite the repeated Israeli accounts, no tangible field evidence was presented to substantiate them. This strengthened a view among Palestinians that the objective was to test the limits of the factions’ reactions and establish how far Israel could go before provoking an armed response.
From Alleged Violations to Claims of Future “Intent”
Over time, Israel moved towards a policy that could be described as targeting based on alleged “intent”.
Bombardments and assassinations increasingly came to be justified by Israeli claims that members of the resistance intended to carry out future attacks against Israeli forces.
Such claims have become a near-daily justification for strikes, many of which are carried out in crowded civilian areas or among displaced populations, resulting in mass casualties.
According to the same monitoring, Israel’s growing confidence that Hamas and other Palestinian factions would avoid a military response in order to preserve the ceasefire encouraged it to expand its assassination campaign.
As a result, news of targeted killings has become an almost daily feature of life in Gaza, with Israel increasingly carrying out attacks without even relying on elaborate battlefield pretexts.
