Gaza ceasefire: aid and access failing

Six months after the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, Gaza is still not functioning like a place at peace: aid groups say people remain trapped, under-supplied, and exposed to regular attacks instead of moving back into anything like normal civilian life. (oxfam.org) The ceasefire did stop the full-scale fighting that had devastated the strip, but it did not deliver the things civilians were told would come next: safe movement, steady aid, medical exits, reconstruction, and a basic sense that the war had actually ended. (usnews.com) Oxfam and four other humanitarian groups graded the deal against its own promises and said it is failing on civilian protection, humanitarian access, reconstruction, economic recovery, and freedom of movement. Their scorecard says most of Gaza’s population still cannot reliably get enough food, water, shelter, or healthcare. (oxfamamerica.org) One number in that scorecard explains the gap between a ceasefire on paper and life on the ground: at least 1.7 million people are still living in displacement sites, many in damaged tents with poor sanitation and little medical care. A pause in bombing does not rebuild a home, reopen a hospital, or reconnect a water pipe. (webassets.oxfamamerica.org) Medical evacuation was supposed to be one of the clearest humanitarian gains, because Gaza’s hospitals cannot handle many cancer cases, heart conditions, or major trauma injuries on their own. But the medical corridor has remained largely suspended, and even the limited evacuations that resumed through Rafah in late March were interrupted again this week after a World Health Organization contractor was killed in Gaza. (ochaopt.org) (diplomatie.gouv.fr) Aid access has narrowed to a bottleneck. Reuters reporting carried by U.S. News said Gaza’s 2 million residents are receiving limited supplies through a single Israeli-controlled crossing, which leaves the entire territory dependent on one choke point for food, medicine, and fuel. (usnews.com) At the same time, people are still being killed after the deal that was supposed to protect them. Oxfam’s coalition says children are still being killed or maimed at a rate of at least two a day under current conditions, and Gaza’s health authorities say hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was announced. (oxfam.org) (ochaopt.org) That is why reporters and aid workers keep describing the situation with two clocks running at once. On the diplomatic clock, the war is in a ceasefire phase; on the civilian clock, airstrikes, shelling, blocked aid, and displacement are still shaping daily life. (aljazeera.com) The unfinished parts of the deal are the parts that turn a truce into an aftermath. Disarming Hamas, setting up an international stabilization force, and starting large-scale reconstruction have all stalled, so the agreement has frozen the battlefield without rebuilding the society underneath it. (usnews.com) So the story six months in is not that the ceasefire collapsed in one dramatic moment. It is that Gaza entered a half-state where the bombs are fewer than before, but the crossings, hospitals, roads, and homes still do not work well enough for 2 million people to live ordinary lives. (oxfam.org) (usnews.com)