In Gaza, Israeli attacks continue despite the truce in force

The ceasefire in Gaza is in force, but on the ground the situation tells a different story from the one the term “truce” suggests. According to a field report by NBC News, Israel has intensified lethal attacks in the Strip and is consolidating control over more than half of the Palestinian territory, despite the agreement that was supposed to have halted hostilities.

A humanitarian organization present in Gaza, cited anonymously by the same outlet, describes a steady worsening of the daily situation.

“We’re seeing more incidents day to day” — a humanitarian organization in Gaza, anonymous source cited by NBC News

The phrase captures an escalation that does not align with the idea of a suspended conflict. On the other side, an Israeli spokesperson replied that operations remain targeted.

“focused on addressing immediate threats” — Israeli spokesperson, official Israeli statement

This formula follows the same line of justification Israel has adopted in other phases of the conflict: the actions would not violate the truce because they respond to specific threats, not to a general resumption of hostilities. What remains, as reported by NBC News, is that physical control over Gaza is expanding in parallel.

On the diplomatic front, the most significant news comes from Al Jazeera: Hamas has announced that it has accepted a plan for the progressive disarmament of its weapons, drawn up as part of a process referred to as the Board of Peace. This is a potentially significant step, since Hamas’s disarmament has for years been one of the central issues in any hypothesis of stabilization for the Strip. But the announcement, for now, remains unilateral: Israel has not yet confirmed acceptance of the new road map of which the plan would be part.

This gap — between an announcement of disarmament on one side and an expansion of territorial control on the other — is what makes today difficult to interpret in a single direction. The two main sources, NBC News and Al Jazeera, do not contradict each other in the facts they report: the former documents the intensification of Israeli military operations on the ground, the latter records Hamas’s announcement on disarmament and the lack of Israeli confirmation. These are two pieces of the same phase, not two incompatible versions of the same event.

What is missing, in both cases, is a definitive word on the parties’ intentions in the coming weeks. Israel has not made public an official position on the disarmament plan reported by Al Jazeera, and neither of the two sources consulted indicates a date by which this response is expected. Likewise, there are no updated figures, in the available excerpts, on casualties or wounded from the attacks described by NBC News: the source speaks of an increase in “incidents,” a term the outlet attributes directly to the humanitarian source without providing a count.

What can be established with certainty, based on what has been gathered by NBC News and Al Jazeera, is that the truce in Gaza today coexists with two parallel and as-yet unreconciled dynamics: an expansion of Israeli territorial control documented on the ground, and an announcement of Hamas’s disarmament that is still awaiting an official response from Jerusalem.