GAZA CITY — The Gaza ceasefire that was supposed to end two years of war marked its first anniversary on Saturday, and by the accounting of more than 100 humanitarian organizations, it has delivered anything but peace.

Human Rights Watch said Israeli forces have continued killing and wounding civilians and restricting food, water and aid in the year since the agreement took effect on October 10, 2025, calling the truce a ceasefire in name only. Human Rights Watch's anniversary assessment lands alongside a joint statement from Amnesty International, Save the Children and more than 100 other organizations making the same case.

The numbers behind that case are stark. Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 1,450 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 wounded since the ceasefire began — a toll the aid coalition puts at closer to 1,471 dead, according to Amnesty International's report. Just this week, strikes and gunfire killed at least eight more Palestinians over a two-day span; the Israeli military told AFP that three of those killed were members of armed groups.

A shrinking "safe" zone

Nine months into the truce, NPR reported that Israel controls nearly 70% of Gaza, having pushed the so-called "Yellow Line" — the agreed withdrawal boundary — further into the territory than the deal specified. Palestinians have been squeezed into an increasingly small and overcrowded strip along the coast, aid groups say, while reconstruction of flattened neighborhoods has barely begun.

"ISRAEL KILLS OR WOUNDS A PALESTINIAN EVERY 90 MINUTES IN GAZA SINCE THE CEASEFIRE" — AL JAZEERA, CITING LOCAL HEALTH OFFICIALS

Progress on the deal's harder commitments has stalled entirely. Hamas has said it agreed in principle to a U.S.-backed follow-on proposal but won't disarm until Israeli forces fully withdraw from the territory. Israel, for its part, says its continuing strikes target militants and accuses Hamas of repeatedly violating the agreement's terms.

The anniversary lands as the Trump administration, which brokered the original deal, continues to tout it publicly as a diplomatic win even as monitors on the ground describe a different reality. Reconstruction funding pledged by international donors has been slow to materialize, and Gaza's Health Ministry says its hospitals remain overwhelmed a year after the fighting was supposed to stop.

For now, neither side shows signs of walking away from the framework entirely — both have too much invested in not being blamed for its collapse — but humanitarian officials say the gap between the ceasefire's promise and its reality has only widened. What's next, aid groups argue, hinges on whether Washington is willing to pressure both sides toward the disarmament-for-withdrawal sequencing that has stalled the deal's second phase for months.