Why Gaza's Ceasefire Still Hasn't Stopped the Killing

A ceasefire has held, on paper, in Gaza for most of the past year. In practice, Palestinians living through it describe something closer to a slow-motion continuation of the war. “Every day there is killing,” one Gaza resident told the BBC, describing life in the territory’s tent cities as Israeli strikes keep landing despite the truce BBC.

That gap between the ceasefire’s text and its reality is the story of Gaza right now. The broader U.S.-brokered plan to end the war — the framework that produced the truce and was meant to lead to reconstruction and a political settlement — has largely stalled BBC.

What the ceasefire was supposed to do

The deal that paused the fighting was never just about stopping strikes. It set out a sequence: an initial halt to major combat operations, the exchange of hostages and prisoners, humanitarian access, and eventually the harder phases — disarmament arrangements, the entry of an international stabilization presence, and rebuilding a territory where whole neighborhoods have been leveled.

The first phase largely held. Hostages came home. Flights that had been suspended during the wider regional escalation — including British Airways service to Tel Aviv, grounded since Israel’s February strikes on Iran under Operation Roaring Lion — have since resumed Jerusalem Post, a small but telling sign that the region’s governments and markets are treating the worst of the acute crisis as over. But normalization at the airport has not translated into normalization on the ground in Gaza. Hostages who did come home are still struggling, months later, to access the rehabilitation support they need AmericaStrikes — a reminder that a ceasefire ending the fighting is not the same as a conflict actually being resolved for the people who lived through it.

Where it has broken down

The later phases are where the plan has stalled. Reconstruction has not meaningfully begun. Displaced families who were supposed to be moving toward permanent housing are instead still living in the tent cities that sprang up during the war, with no clear timeline for when that changes BBC.

And the strikes have not stopped. Despite the ceasefire’s basic premise — that major combat operations are over — Israeli forces have continued to carry out strikes inside Gaza, and Palestinians living there describe the violence as a daily occurrence rather than an occasional lapse BBC. That pattern is the central reason the ceasefire is better understood as a reduction in the intensity of the war than an end to it.

Why it matters beyond Gaza

The stalling carries weight outside the territory’s borders, too. A durable Gaza settlement was the anchor of the broader de-escalation the United States pushed across the region after Israel’s operation against Iran earlier this year. Instability in Gaza makes it harder for Washington to argue the regional track is actually working, at a moment when other flashpoints have not cooled either — Houthi forces in Yemen struck airports in Saudi Arabia just this week AmericaStrikes, and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has required naval escort after an attack forced an evacuation AmericaStrikes. None of those episodes are directly tied to Gaza, but they are evidence the region has not settled into the calm the ceasefire was supposed to anchor.

What to watch

The practical test of whether the ceasefire survives in anything more than name is whether the stalled elements move at all: a genuine pause in Israeli strikes inside Gaza, the start of reconstruction funding and material reaching the territory, and progress on the security-force and disarmament questions that have sat untouched since the deal’s early weeks. Until one of those shifts, the pattern described by residents — a truce that stopped the war on paper while the killing continues day to day — is likely to persist.

This article will be updated as the situation develops.