Israel and Hamas have resumed hostilities after a week-long pause — and now the fighting is moving into southern Gaza, where most of the region’s more than 2 million residents are living in overcrowded conditions without adequate access to food, medicine, clean water, and other basic necessities.
What this means for the people of Gaza and the militant group Hamas is more open-ended death and destruction, while Israel chases an ambiguous goal that may not have any realizable markers to define success. While Israel wants the complete destruction of Hamas, the US has signaled that removing senior leadership would be acceptable. Meanwhile, the destruction and death on the ground, especially without a political future for Palestinians — or a Palestinian state — virtually guarantees further radicalization.
Israel Defense Forces have killed 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past two months of fighting and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of buildings in the north during its campaign there. But despite the destruction, it’s not clear to what extent the military campaign is effectively rooting out Hamas — or how much more devastation the campaign will cause.
The pause in hostilities ended just before 7 am local time on Friday in Israel, when it was due to expire after two extensions, with both sides trading blame for breaking it. According to the BBC, the IDF reported it intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza around that time, and later both sides accused each other of not abiding by the conditions under which Hamas would exchange hostages it took October 7 for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
During the pause, 240 Palestinians were released from Israeli jails, many of them minors and women, except for 64 18-year-old boys and one 19-year-old. Hamas released 105 hostages, primarily Israelis but also Thai, Filipino, and Russian nationals, and an American child. The pause also briefly allowed for desperately-needed humanitarian aid to come…
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