Gaza's Ceasefire Turns One Next Week — And the Killing Hasn't Stopped
The truce that halted the heaviest fighting of the Gaza war turns one year old next week, but Israeli strikes have kept killing Palestinians throughout, and the deal's later phases remain largely stalled.
A year after mediators announced a ceasefire meant to end two years of war in Gaza, the truce marking its first anniversary next week has done less to stop the dying than its architects promised, according to tallies from Gaza's Health Ministry and continued reporting of Israeli strikes inside the territory.
The ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, halting the heaviest fighting of the war and opening the door to a phased hostage-and-prisoner exchange. But Gaza health officials say Israeli fire has killed well over 1,000 Palestinians in the year since — a toll that has climbed steadily even as both sides formally remain bound by the agreement. Israel's military says many of the strikes have targeted militants violating the truce's terms near the so-called "yellow line" separating Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled areas; Gaza's civil defense agency says the dead have repeatedly included women and children.
The pattern has been visible almost from the start: periodic strikes described by Israel as self-defense, followed by Palestinian accounts of civilian casualties, followed by renewed international pressure, detailed in continuing coverage of the truce's rocky first months, to hold the line. The second phase of the deal — a more permanent end to hostilities, Israeli withdrawal from additional territory and the start of reconstruction — has barely advanced, officials involved in the talks say, bogged down by disputes over Hamas's disarmament and who will govern postwar Gaza.
THE GUNS NEVER FULLY WENT QUIET. THEY JUST WENT QUIET ENOUGH TO CALL IT A CEASEFIRE.
Humanitarian groups say the slow pace of the deal's later phases has left reconstruction largely frozen in a territory the United Nations has estimated will need years and tens of billions of dollars to rebuild. Egypt, Qatar and the United States — the ceasefire's main brokers — are expected to mark the one-year point with renewed pressure on both sides to lock in the agreement's unfinished provisions before the anniversary becomes a symbol of its failure rather than its success.
For now, Gaza's roughly two million residents remain caught between a war that formally ended and a peace that has not fully arrived.