Three years after October 7, the UN calls for a permanent truce in Gaza

On the eve of the third anniversary of Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call to turn the current truce in Gaza into a permanent ceasefire. The statement was issued by the Secretary-General’s office and was picked up, along with a contextual analysis, by the Israeli press.

In his remarks, Guterres described the October 7, 2023 attack as “heinous,” recalling that it claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people, both Israeli citizens and foreign nationals, while another 251 were abducted and taken to Gaza.

“It is time for the ceasefire to become permanent” (transl. from English) — Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General

The Secretary-General also addressed the consequences of the military campaign conducted by Israel in Gaza in response to the attack, describing a situation of large-scale loss of life, displacement and destruction. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health — the body under Hamas authority whose figures, the UN statement specifies, are considered reliable by the United Nations — the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 74,200 people.

A year after the start of the truce announced by US President Donald Trump in October 2025, the Gaza peace plan remains largely stalled. Israel maintains control of most of the Strip’s territory, while Hamas remains armed: two factors that, according to reports, continue to make the arrangement agreed a year ago precarious.

Guterres’s call thus comes at a moment when the truce exists on paper but has not yet produced either disarmament or a full military withdrawal.

The statement issued by Guterres’s office did not disclose a specific deadline or mechanism through which the ceasefire should transform from a truce into a permanent arrangement. The text simply calls for the process to move forward, without indicating further procedural steps beyond those already discussed in previous months.

The third anniversary thus falls during a phase of stalemate acknowledged by the United Nations itself: a conflict that has surpassed, according to the figures cited by the UN, 74,200 victims on the Palestinian side and more than 1,200 on October 7, 2023, with 251 people abducted on that date and a peace plan that, a year after its announcement, has yet to bring about either full control of the territory by an authority other than the Israeli military or the disarmament of Hamas.