Israel resumes offensive in Gaza Strip after ceasefire with Hamas ends
A weeklong ceasefire in the Gaza Strip collapsed Friday morning, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for breaking a truce that had allowed the exchange of hundreds of hostages and prisoners and briefly raised hopes of a more sustainable agreement. put an end to the fighting.
The Israeli military said it has carried out 200 attacks since fighting resumed, some of which Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saw from a seat in an Israeli attack helicopter flying over Gaza.
“This morning we started attacking Hamas again with full force,” he said wrote on the social media platform X. “The results are impressive.”
“Hamas only understands violence,” he added.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement that Israel was “committed to achieving the war’s objectives – freeing our hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the people of Israel.” For days, he and other Israeli leaders had tried to undermine any idea of an indefinite extension of the ceasefire, despite mounting international pressure, repeatedly stating that even if the pause lasted a few more days, the Israeli offensive would resume .
According to Gaza’s Interior Ministry, among the areas targeted on Friday was Khan Younis, a town in the southern part of the territory.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in the south after Israel ordered civilians to flee the north, where the bombing has been heaviest and where Israel has mounted a ground invasion. In their campaign to eradicate Hamas, which controls Gaza, Israeli forces are expected to turn their attention to the now overpopulated south.
Hostilities resumed shortly before the ceasefire – which was extended several times over the week – expired at 7am on Friday. Israel said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza. On Friday evening, air raid sirens sounded again across central Israel, warning of possible incoming missiles in the greater Tel Aviv area.
Qatari mediators worked into the early hours on Friday to bridge the rift between Israel and Hamas so the lull in fighting could continue.
The ceasefire was built in part around the formula of Hamas releasing at least ten Israeli hostages per day, with Israel releasing three Palestinian prisoners for every hostage returned; almost all in both groups were women or minors. Over the course of a week, 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners captured in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel were released, as were 240 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
But as the number of women and children still held captive in Gaza decreased, leaving mostly men and Israeli soldiers as hostages, the talks became increasingly charged. Ultimately, the two sides failed to overcome differences, including over how to define soldiers versus civilians and how many Palestinian prisoners Israel would release for its hostages, Israel and Hamas officials said.
Just before leaving Dubai at the end of a two-day visit to the Middle East, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken blamed Hamas for the broken truce. He said it was “important to understand why the pause ended: it ended thanks to Hamas. Hamas went back on the commitments it had made.”
Mr Blinken, who had pressed the Israeli government to step up efforts to protect civilians as the war resumed, said he was already seeing signs that Israel was doing so. He cited that Israel has released public information about locations that would be largely spared from military attacks.
The Israeli military published an online map on Friday that it said would help Palestinian residents determine whether they should “evacuate from specific places for their safety.”
But the map did not specify where people should go, and it was unclear whether Gazans would be able to gain access there the cardas many have no electricity or internet, and cell service in the bombed enclave has been unreliable since the start of the war.
Health officials in Gaza quickly began reporting casualties after the resumption of fighting. By evening, Gaza health authorities reported that 178 people had been killed and 578 injured on Friday.
The cessation of fighting had given Gaza’s 2.2 million residents a brief reprieve from the devastating Israeli attacks. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped about 240 hostages, the Israeli government has killed more than 13,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
“I deeply regret that military operations have restarted in Gaza,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a genuine humanitarian ceasefire.”
At least one proposal from mediators to extend the ceasefire sought to follow the formula used last week, with the release of women and children held in Gaza in exchange for women and minor Palestinians from Israeli prisons, in addition to a increase in aid to Gaza.
The parties gave different explanations as to why this had not worked.
Hamas said it considers some of the women on Israel’s list of 10 hostages proposed for release Friday to be soldiers, meaning the terms of trade to free them would be different, said Zaher Jabareen, a Hamas official who monitors holds on prisoner issues, in a telephone interview.
Mr. Jabareen said Hamas had made three other proposals, all involving small numbers of Israelis in exchange for at least dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
One involved Hamas trading the bodies of the Bibas family’s mother and two young children for several dozen Palestinians held by Israel since 2014, Mr. Jabareen said.
The fate of the Bibas family has caused great fear in Israel. Hamas announced this week that Shiri Bibas, 32, and her children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, had been killed in Israeli airstrikes while trapped in Gaza; the Israeli military has said it is trying to verify this claim.
Hamas also proposed exchanging the children’s father, Yarden Bibas, who it said is still alive, for several dozen of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, including some who have been there since the 1980s, Mr. Jabareen.
Another proposal from Hamas would require both sides to release all prisoners over the age of 60, he said. He was not sure how many hostages there were in Gaza, he said, but described it as about 130 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were held by Israel after Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack.
Israel has rejected all offers, Mr. Jabareen said.
“It is clear that we are moving towards a continuation of aggression and that there is no horizon for continuing ceasefires and prisoner exchanges,” he said.
A person with knowledge of the negotiations said Hamas’ final offer included Mr. Bibas, the bodies of his wife and their two children, and six surviving women, children and elderly people. Israel rejected that offer because it wanted to secure the release of all living women and children held hostage before negotiating for the others, the person said.
The Israeli military said on Friday that Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli captured during the attack on the Tribe of Nova rave in Re’im, had been found dead in Gaza. His remains were identified by medical and forensic officials on Wednesday, the military said in a statement.
Four other people believed to have been taken hostage by Nir Oz, one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas gunmen on October 7, were pronounced dead on Friday.
They “were considered hostages to this day,” said a kibbutz spokeswoman, who declined to comment further.
Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, Ben Hubbard from Istanbul and Thomas Voller from San Francisco. Reporting was contributed by Michael Crowley, Aaron Bokserman, Sheera Frenkel, Victoria Kim, Iyad Abuheweila, Hwaida Saad And Johnatan Reiss.