By David M. Halbfinger
Jerusalem: Ten days into a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, relief is giving way to grim acknowledgments of the truce’s tenuousness, and of the need for continued outside intervention to keep it alive, let alone to make further progress.
A new round of violence on Sunday showed just how arduous the road to a broader agreement in the Gaza Strip will be between the two sides, which have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce.
Palestinians collect leaflets dropped by an Israeli drone warning people to stay away from the so-called yellow line – which is currently unmarked – in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit: AP
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another was wounded when Palestinian militants launched an anti-tank missile at an army vehicle, the Israeli military said. The attack took place in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on the Israeli-held eastern side of the ceasefire line. Israel called it a blatant violation of the agreement’s terms. Hamas officials were quick to disavow the attack.
‘Things are very unclear, very fragile and sensitive. I’m afraid that it will lead us during the coming weeks to a kind of attrition – almost everyday violations, clashes and crises.’
Michael Milshtein, Moshe Dayan Centre
Israel responded quickly, with a punishing bombardment of what it described as Hamas installations, and Gaza officials said that 44 Palestinians were killed across the territory on Sunday.
Israel said it was cutting off the supply of humanitarian aid to the devastated territory indefinitely, but later tempered that, saying that aid deliveries would be paused only until the bombardment was over. By Monday afternoon, the flow of aid was back to normal, relief agencies said.
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, demanded an immediate, open-ended resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas. “War!” he wrote in a one-word post on the social platform X.
Smoke rises following Israel’s strikes on Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, on Sunday.Credit: Anadolu via Getty Images
But the short-lived, if intense, Israeli military response, and the walk-back of the threat to shut off the flow of aid into Gaza, suggested the restraining influence of US officials, analysts said.
After all, both Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, one of President Donald Trump’s top envoys to the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Monday to try to push ahead with the peace plan, a US Embassy spokesperson said. And Netanyahu said Vice President JD Vance will arrive in Israel on Tuesday for a visit on Trump’s behalf.
“We will discuss primarily two matters,” Netanyahu said during an address at the Israeli parliament on Monday, “the security challenges before us, and the diplomatic opportunities before us”.
“He’s not coming to jointly command Israeli strikes on Hamas,” Shira Efron, an Israeli analyst at RAND, said of the vice president.
Even Netanyahu’s right-wing allies accused him of wilting under pressure from the Trump administration, and not for the first time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets US President Donald Trump in Tel Aviv last week.Credit: Getty Images
“Enough with the folding,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister, wrote on X.
Sunday’s violence was the heaviest wave of Israeli attacks on Gaza since the fragile ceasefire took hold. Other attacks have also punctured the calm. The Israeli military said last week that it had fired on a vehicle in northern Gaza, saying the car had crossed a demarcation line where Israel’s forces have withdrawn to since the ceasefire – the so-called yellow line. Nine people, including children, were killed, according to Gaza officials.
“Israelis are really outraged about the killing of two soldiers, but it’s not like there haven’t been deaths of civilians in Gaza in the past week,” Efron said.
“Both sides have pretexts to argue that the ceasefire has been violated. What keeps the negotiation going is the power that is brought by Trump and the mediators.”
Pressure is not only being applied on the Israeli government. After Hamas turned over the bodies of just four hostages last Monday — out of 28 believed to still be in Gaza — mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey passed along Israeli intelligence about the whereabouts of some of the others, prodding the militant group to recover more, according to US officials. As of Sunday, Hamas had turned over the remains of 12 captives.
As Hamas distanced itself from the Rafah attack, the group’s military wing reaffirmed its “full commitment” to putting the ceasefire into effect, even divulging that it had lost contact with its fighters in Rafah in March and did not know whether any of them were still alive.
‘An ongoing challenge’
Though the violence Sunday appeared to amount to a single, contained round, several analysts said they expected more such rounds to follow.
Michael Milshtein, an analyst at the Moshe Dayan Centre at Tel Aviv University and a former expert on Palestinian affairs for the Israeli military, said Hamas could be expected to continue to test Israel and see how it responds. And he said the yellow line between Israel- and Hamas-held territory was unmarked and difficult for Gaza residents to heed.
“Things are very unclear, very fragile and sensitive,” Milshtein said. “I’m afraid that it will lead us during the coming weeks to a kind of attrition – almost everyday violations, clashes and crises, big or more limited. And it will be an ongoing challenge.”
Still, Israeli analysts said the challenge of sustaining the ceasefire paled next to the challenge of advancing the Trump peace plan, particularly given that its call for Hamas to disarm effectively would require the group to renounce its entire ideology of armed resistance.
Milshtein said the past week had taught Israelis an unwelcome lesson about Hamas. “It’s very hard for many Israelis to admit, but they weren’t defeated,” he said. “They still exist, and they’re the dominant player in Gaza.”
Still, some Palestinian analysts said Hamas appeared eager to preserve the ceasefire agreement and might even be willing to offer more concessions to ensure the end of the war and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
“Hamas wants to come down the tree, but in a dignified way,” said Mohammed al-Astal, an analyst in Gaza. “It needs an honorable exit ramp.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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