Gaza ceasefire under strain

The latest strain on Gaza’s ceasefire was not a diplomatic memo. It was an airstrike. On April 6, an Israeli strike near a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 10 people, according to health officials, after clashes erupted east of the Maghazi refugee camp. Witnesses told Reuters, via Al Jazeera’s republication, that Israeli drones fired missiles during the fighting. The dead and wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. (aljazeera.com) That matters because this was supposed to be the quiet part. The current ceasefire, described in recent reporting as U.S.-backed and already fragile, has not stopped Israeli strikes inside Gaza. Al Jazeera’s report on the April 6 attack says Israel has continued hitting sites across the strip since the truce took hold in October, including Maghazi, an area the Israeli military had earlier labeled a “safe zone.” That label has long since lost any clear meaning for civilians there. (aljazeera.com) The violence on the ground is colliding with a much bigger argument about what the ceasefire is actually for. Mediators are no longer talking only about pauses, aid, or hostage exchanges. They are trying to force a decision on Hamas’s future as an armed movement. The Times of Israel reported on April 7 that the U.S.-led Gaza Board of Peace has given Hamas until the end of this week to accept a disarmament proposal tied to the next phase of Gaza’s reconstruction. The proposal was discussed in Cairo by the board’s Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, and senior Hamas officials. Minor edits are still possible. Fundamental changes are not. (timesofisrael.com) That ultimatum did not appear out of nowhere. It is the sharper version of a line Israel and the Trump administration have been pushing for weeks. On February 16, a senior Netanyahu adviser said Hamas would get 60 days to hand over all its weapons or face a renewed Israeli military campaign. He said that meant not only rockets and tunnels, but even rifles. The message was blunt: disarmament is not one bargaining chip among many. It is the center of the plan. (timesofisrael.com) The problem is that the plan asks each side to do the thing it least wants to do. Hamas has not flatly rejected the latest proposal, according to the April 7 report, but it has pointed to what it says are Israeli violations of the first phase: limited operation of the Rafah crossing, too little aid entering Gaza, continued strikes deep inside the territory, and the expansion of an Israeli-controlled buffer area known as the Yellow Line. The same report says mediators doubt Hamas will say yes without major caveats. They also doubt Israel will fully honor the next stage even if Hamas does. (timesofisrael.com) That is why the April 6 strike feels larger than a single deadly incident. It shows what this ceasefire is becoming: not a bridge to a political settlement, but a narrow corridor where reconstruction, coercion, and intermittent military force are all happening at once. In Maghazi, one of Gaza’s smallest refugee camps before the war, the population had already more than tripled in the first months of fighting as displaced families crowded into places they were told might be safer. On Monday, people there were again carrying bodies into a hospital in Deir al-Balah. (aljazeera.com)