Hours after Donald Trump announced a “historic” agreement for disarming Hamas and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Israel attacked Gaza, killing 19. Palestinians weren’t surprised. “We don’t trust Israel, and we don’t trust America,” said one resident.
Amid an alleged ceasefire, Israel continues massacring Palestinians and stealing land in Gaza. The ongoing violence is not accidental: it is a political necessity for any Israeli government in power.
Hamas dissolved its government in Gaza to remove any obstacle to reconstruction, but little has changed for ordinary Palestinians in the Strip — because Israel ultimately controls whether the nightmare it has inflicted on them will ever end.
Israel’s conditioning of its withdrawal from southern Lebanon on the disarmament of Hezbollah mirrors its strategy in Gaza: insist on terms that are impossible to implement to justify its constant state of war.
Diana Abu Daraz and her 1-year-old daughter, Siwar, were killed in an Israeli strike on the Mawasi “safe zone” in Khan Younis. Survivors say the Israeli army didn’t wait after giving them notice of the strike, dropping bombs on the tent city.
Israeli soldiers shot three-year-old Rayyan Abu al-Ajeen in his father’s arms and mocked his father’s pleas as he cried for his dying son. The father says they were in the part of Gaza designated as “safe” for civilians during the “ceasefire.”
In Gaza, a ‘ceasefire’ means Israel can kill more than a dozen people in under 24 hours — and over 1,000 people since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025 — while the world remains silent.
Gaza is paying the price for the failed U.S.-Israeli wars across the Middle East. As the countries have become mired in Lebanon and Iran, Gaza has faded into the background, and Palestinians’ hopes of ending the genocide have faded as well.
For Palestinians in Gaza, Phase 2 of the ceasefire offers little hope that it will fundamentally change the status quo Israel has established over the past three months, which many refer to as “a new form of genocide.”
Gaza’s Rafah border crossing was supposed to reopen in October as part of the ceasefire agreement. But the border remains closed, keeping Gaza shut off from the outside world and preventing families from reuniting with loves ones.