BREAKING: Israel resumes strikes on Gaza; Over 100 killed by overnight strikes
Aerial view of the destruction south of Gaza governorate © October 2025 UNRWA photo.
After committing over 100 violations of the ceasefire, Israel launched its biggest air strike on Gaza since Oct. 10
On Oct. 28, witnesses reported massive explosions in Gaza City, including a missile that fell behind the al-Shifa Hospital, which had been recently put back in service. This comes moments after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his military to carry out “powerful” strikes on Gaza, leading to Hamas’s military wing declaring it will postpone the handover of a recently discovered captive’s body.
Following Netanyahu’s announcement, Israel launched a barrage of strikes on the cities of Sabra and Khan Younis, leaving 20 dead. The Associated Press reported Israel informed the US of these attacks in advance.
During the attacks yesterday, Suhail al-Hindi, a representative of Hamas, said they are still committed to the agreement, according to reporting done by al-Jazeera.
Overnight, Israel launched the deadliest strikes since the ceasefire was put in place. As of Oct. 29, 9:00 a.m., local medical sources confirmed these strikes throughout the night killed 104, including 46 children.
Early this morning, Israel claimed the ceasefire is back on. So far, Israel has committed over 125 violations according to the Gaza Government Media Office. These various attacks ultimately killed over 90 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more.
Additionally, Israel continues to deny entry from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, preventing crucial aid from going through. The UN World Food Programme said they are short 1,250 tonnes because only two access points to Palestinian territory have been opened.
Hamas has accused Israel of preventing heavy machinery from entering Gaza, including Red Cross personnel. This machinery is needed to search for the remaining bodies of the captives hidden underneath all the rubble.
Israel has accused Hamas of “staging” the return of the bodies and “failing” to return the remaining bodies of the 13 captives. Israel has also accused Hamas of misidentifying the most recently returned captives’ bodies.
Setting their sites not only on Gaza, but also on the occupied West Bank, Israel’s parliament voted 71-13 to pass non-binding legislation which calls for the annexation of the West Bank. This move has been criticized by many, as it violates international law, just like its original occupation, and has been strongly denounced by the US.
In the last two years, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, with illegal settlers becoming more violent. In the past eight months, settlers have launched over 1,000 attacks on the West Bank.
Israel’s history of violating ceasefires
Both sides have accused each other of violating the many ceasefires put in place in the past two years, but Israel’s history of doing so dates back to 1967. In violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreement, Israel launched a preemptive assault on Egypt and Syria.
At the time, Israel claimed self-defense; however, former prime minister Menachem Begin admitted this was false.
On Jan. 14, 2002, Israel assassinated Fatah militant leader Raed Karmi. At the time, there was a ceasefire in place that all Palestinian militant groups agreed to in the prior month; ultimately, Fatah called off the ceasefire, causing the violence to start again.
Several years later, in November 2008, Israel again violated a ceasefire held by Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups by launching several attacks. Militant groups fired back, and this ultimately led to over 1,400 Palestinians dead, including 300 children.
On Oct. 29, 2011, Israel broke two months of calm by violating a truce. The next day, Egypt brokered another truce, which Israel immediately violated again, killing nine Palestinians and one Israeli.
The present often mirrors the past, where similar patterns can be recognized in the two years since Oct. 7, 2023. In March earlier this year, Israel decided to totally scrap the two-month ceasefire, during which it committed over 1,000 violations according to the UN Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, and launched a multitude of attacks on the Gaza Strip.
These airstrikes killed or injured 400 Palestinians. Israel claimed this was a targeted ground operation in central and southern Gaza, but video evidence captured by an NBC News crew near the Nasser Hospital showed charred tent camps and the bloodied bodies of young children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised, “This is just the beginning.”
US President Donald Trump and Israel blamed Hamas for the ceasefire falling through, and claimed they had refused to meet Israel's demands of releasing more hostages. However, this was not included in the original ceasefire agreement signed Jan. 19.
This three-phase ceasefire deal was the second attempt to end the violence. The first phase called for Hamas to release 33 hostages and the bodies of eight, in exchange for 1,900 Palestinian hostages. This phase ended on March 1, with the second to begin 16 days later.
However, the second phase never began because Netanyahu accepted Trump’s new plan to extend the ceasefire for 50 days to discuss a new agreement.
This newly proposed ceasefire agreement was rejected by Hamas. Following this, Israel blocked the flow of aid and goods, a move that violates international law. Article 23 of the 4th Geneva Convention mandates the free passage of essential humanitarian supplies and does not allow it to be used as leverage during war.
In May 2024, Israel responded to a proposal that Hamas had accepted by launching its siege on Rafah. These air strikes killed 46 innocent civilians in an attack on a shelter, many children, and over a dozen members of an entire family. Between May 7 and May 26, over 30 more were slain by these indiscriminate bombings, especially women and children.
More recently, on Sept. 9, Israel launched an attack that violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter (and others), on Doha, Qatar, as Hamas leaders were meeting with Qatar mediators to discuss the latest US-brokered ceasefire proposal.
Opportunities to bring the hostages home
Many in the state of Israel have blamed Netanyahu for these negotiations falling through, thereby preventing the hostages from being released to their families. After launching an illegal attack on Qatar, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for blocking all ceasefire attempts.
The Israeli prime minister claimed Hamas is the “main obstacle” to releasing the hostages. However, the families of these hostages believe the onus should be on Netanyahu.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum criticized the prime minister for the attack on Qatar and called it sabotage on a social media post. This organization was formed less than a day after Hamas’s brutal attack on Oct. 7, which killed 1,200 Israeli civilians and took 254 hostages.
Einav Zanguaker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, said the families of the hostages were done waiting for Netanyahu to “stop the war when it’s convenient for him politically.”
As Zanguaker alluded to, Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for using starvation as a method of warfare, intentionally launching attacks on civilian populations and crimes against humanity. Furthermore, he faces three major corruption charges: Case 1000, Case 2000 and Case 4000, all of which accuse him of fraud and breach of trust.
Case 1000 alleges that Netanyahu received lavish gifts worth 700,000 shekels ($192,000 US dollars) from two prominent businessmen in exchange for political favors. Case 2000 accuses Netanyahu of paying the owners of newspapers in Israel for favorable coverage. In a similar vein, Case 4000 alleges that Netanyahu gave many favors to Bezeq, an Israeli telecommunications company, in exchange for favorable coverage from a news publication controlled by the company’s former chairman.
If this war were to end, Netanyahu could no longer leverage claims of a security threat to postpone his hearing in court, which has been repeatedly rescheduled for 14 months. In the past, he attempted to overhaul Israel’s judicial process, and in the present, unsuccessfully tried to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Why experts believe this war is a genocide
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
A ceasefire does suspend the violence, but does not address the root cause, which is Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as its alleged genocidal tactics used to bring harm to innocents found in the middle of this conflict.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees reports an estimated 80% of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed in the past two years, as of August this year. To those in need of medical attention, almost all of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed. The UN reports it will take $7 billion just to repair the damage to Gaza’s medical services.
As of Oct. 23, this alleged genocide has killed 68,2234 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. From indiscriminate bombings to creating the world’s worst famine in recent years, Israel has been accused of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the UN, Amnesty International, Jewish Voice for Peace and the US Center for Constitutional Rights.
The specific genocide case brought by South Africa in the International Court of Justice has been supported by Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Libya, the Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua and Turkiye.
As some of the biggest experts on genocide, holocaust survivors have been firm on their stance that Israel is committing genocide. Stephen Kapos, retired architect, artist and holocaust survivor, wrote an opinion piece for Al-Jazeera.
In this piece, he detailed his experience surviving the Nazi regime, his beliefs on Israel and Palestine and being questioned by the UK police for sharing his beliefs at a protest in 2024.
“As Israel resumes its indiscriminate bombing - murdering hundreds more civilians in Gaza - it’s vital for all of us in Britain to speak out now against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”
Similar to Kapos, over 55 scholars of the Holocaust warned the world this would happen in a statement from Dec. 9, 2023.
“We, scholars of the Holocaust, genocide and mass violence, feel compelled to warn the danger of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza,” the statement wrote. “We are also deeply saddened and concerned by the Israeli attack on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack. Israel’s assault has caused death and destruction on an unprecedented level.”
In the two months leading up to this statement, the IDF killed 17,000 Palestinians, with nearly half of them being children and youth. Even more are still buried under the rubble, causing many experts to believe that the death toll at the time and to this day is an underestimate.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese urged the international community to recognize that the situation in Gaza is a genocide. Albanese herself has said she is a “reluctant chronicler of genocide.”
“If you go to a doctor because you have cancer and you are diagnosed with fever, you have a big problem - it’s the same with the people who are being genocided.”
The genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders and zionists serves as another indication that Israel is committing genocide. Israel’s Channel 12 aired leaked audio of Israel’s former military intelligence saying the 50,000 Palestinians that had been killed at the time were "necessary and required for future generations.”
“For everything that happened on October 7, for every one person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die,” IDF Gen. Aharon Haliva said. “It doesn’t matter now if they are children.”
This war has not only been deadly for Palestinians but also for journalists and aid workers. The UN humanitarian office said a record 383 aid workers have been killed in 2024. In early September, the UN reported that at least 248 journalists have been killed in Gaza, more than in any other conflict in modern times. Saleh Aljafarawi was one of these journalists and was killed days after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire.
Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza and weaponization of aid distribution sites are another key factor in why experts have concluded Israel is committing genocide. In July earlier this year, during the height of the violence and deliberate starvation of Palestinians, the UN’s Children Fund reports that in the past 21 months, an average of 28 children a day had been killed, the size of a large classroom. In total, 20,000 children have been killed.
Many doctors have witnessed these deaths, such as Canadian doctor Fozia Alvi. She saw children as young as seven or eight killed by sniper shots to the head.
In early July, around 15 Palestinians were killed by a strike while waiting in line at a UN aid distribution site in Deir al-Balah. Among the survivors was Donia, a mother who was critically injured and rushed to the hospital. Lying in her bed, she clutched her son Mohammed’s tiny shoe; all that was left to remember him by, after he had been killed in the attack. Hours before, Mohammed said his first words; the first and last time his mother would hear his voice.
Between May 27 and July 7, the UN reported 798 Palestinian civilians were killed at or near aid distribution sites. Many of these civilians were children. The UN reported over 20,000 children were being treated for acute malnutrition, and over 360 Palestinians had died from hunger.
“One out of every three people has not eaten for days,” UNICEF reports. Over 5,000 children had been treated for life-threatening malnutrition in July. However, Gaza’s treatment centers lacked fuel and supplies to keep up with the influx of starved Palestinians, and health workers themselves haven’t eaten in days. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians were fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while working.
Israel manufactured this famine and deliberately prevented aid from entering Gaza, claiming this was a legitimate strategy to pressure Hamas to release the hostages taken on October 7. Regardless of the intent, the weaponization of aid in the midst of a war, alongside targeted attacks on civilians, is illegal under international law and proprietary norms.
Behind every statistic is a story, a life and a dream that was stolen from the Palestinian people. Before the wreckage and ruin, before the occupation, there was a land people called home. Even though the current ceasefire is technically in place, it has been unsuccessful at stopping Israel from launching attacks on the Palestinian people. Any peace plan for Gaza going forward must include justice for the Palestinians and must prevent Netanyahu from creating a false pretext to resume the violence at his choosing.
