In the first month of the Gaza ceasefire, the Israeli army carried out bombardments for 25 days, killing at least 242 Palestinians.
A month has passed since Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. A month that, however, has looked very little like an actual ceasefire. The Israeli army has violated the terms of the agreement at least 282 times since 10 October and, in its military strikes — which took place on 25 out of 31 days — has killed 242 Palestinians and wounded 622. At the same time, it has continued to restrict the entry of humanitarian trucks into the Gaza Strip, accusing Hamas of having failed to honour its commitments on the handover of the bodies of killed hostages.
Meanwhile, negotiations continue on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, concerning the future administration of the Gaza Strip.
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into force on 10 October 2025. Reached after lengthy negotiations and based on the proposal put forward by the administration of Donald Trump, its first phase provided for a number of commitments including, among other things, an end to hostilities in Palestinian territory, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, the entry of hundreds of humanitarian trucks, the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and of Palestinian prisoners held, often without charge or trial, in Israeli jails, as well as the handover — again by the Palestinian organisation — of the bodies of deceased hostages.
Only some of these points have actually been honoured. Hamas released all Israeli hostages within 72 hours and Israel did the same with Palestinian prisoners, while Israeli troops pulled back behind the so-called yellow line, which nonetheless covers more than 50 per cent of the Gaza Strip. As for the entry of humanitarian trucks, Israel has significantly restricted their access to Palestinian territory as a form of retaliation for Hamas's failure to immediately hand over the bodies of the deceased hostages — even though several international organisations have pointed out that recovering those bodies from the largely rubble-strewn territory of the Gaza Strip could take weeks if not months.
But it is on the question of ending hostilities that the ceasefire has shown its full ineffectiveness. The Israeli army has continued to bomb the Gaza Strip for as many as 25 days since 10 October. Violations of the ceasefire terms have numbered at least 282 and have resulted in the killing of 242 Palestinians and the wounding of 622. The worst days were 19 October, when the Israeli army killed 45 people in Rafah following the deaths of two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, and 29 October, when the Israeli army killed as many as 109 people, more than 50 of them children.
The first month of the ceasefire has proved extremely fragile. And if the commitments underpinning phase one of the agreement have been largely disregarded, negotiations towards phase two are not yet yielding any concrete results. The US plan envisages the disarmament of Hamas and the deployment of an international stabilisation force in the Gaza Strip, pending reconstruction and the establishment of a provisional government. But the Palestinian organisation is not currently willing to lay down its arms, not least because the international force would not simply have a peacekeeping role but a fully active military mandate, including the use of force to ensure order and security. Complicating the picture further is the fact that hundreds of Hamas militants remain trapped in underground tunnels, their only way out being to surrender to Israeli troops. The government in Tel Aviv would like to be able to kill or capture them, but doing so would mean violating the ceasefire terms even further. The United States are pressing for their release to be traded in exchange for a handover of weapons.
