People run for cover after an Israeli strike on a building in the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza on Sunday.EYAD BABA/AFP/Getty Images
Israel’s military said Sunday that it would continue to uphold the country’s ceasefire with Hamas after a day of renewed Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, a resumption of hostilities that threatened the tenuous calm of the past week.
Hamas also said Sunday that it remains committed to the ceasefire.
According to the Israel Defence Forces, the strikes in the southern city of Rafah were a reaction to the firing of an anti-tank missile by militants. The IDF said two of its soldiers were killed. Hamas denied involvement, but the IDF said it struck dozens of targets associated with the group, using more than 120 munitions.
But the IDF said in a statement late Sunday that it would “continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement,” while also warning it would “respond firmly to any violation of it.”
Israel said earlier in the day that its strikes destroyed tunnels used by militants in an area near the principal humanitarian crossing into Gaza. That crossing will remain closed for now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said this weekend.
Israel also halted the movement of aid supplies into Gaza Sunday, local media reported. An Israeli official later told the Associated Press that aid deliveries would resume Monday.
“We have instructed the IDF to act forcefully against Hamas targets in Gaza,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said Sunday.
A displaced Palestinian boy wheels a box of emergency supplies in the central Gaza Strip, on Sunday.EYAD BABA/AFP/Getty Images
The exchange risked unravelling the fragile ceasefire that began on Oct. 10 and was negotiated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
Local media reported additional strikes on a refugee camp and in central Gaza, including one that killed a Hamas commander.
“Hamas will pay a heavy price for every shot fired and every violation of the ceasefire. If the message is not understood, the intensity of our response will escalate,” Mr. Katz said.
Inside Gaza, local militias struggle to break free from Hamas rule
In a statement posted to social media by Hamas’s militant arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the group denied responsibility for the Rafah attacks, saying that it is “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area.”
“We affirm our full commitment to implementing everything that was agreed upon, foremost among which is the ceasefire in all areas of the Gaza Strip,” the Al-Qassam Brigades said.
Many thousands of Gazans have returned home over the past week after the ceasefire agreement brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump in which Hamas agreed to release all remaining hostages. Israelis broke out into national celebrations on Oct. 13 when 20 living hostages returned home. Israel, meanwhile, set free nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
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But Hamas has been slow to return the remains of dead hostages. Two additional bodies were transferred to Israel on Saturday night, identified as Ronen Engel and Sonthaya Oakkharasri – but the remains of 16 are still in Gaza. Hamas claims it is difficult to retrieve and identify the bodies because it lacks specialized equipment to search the strip – nearly 85 per cent of which has been reduced to rubble, according to the most recent UN figures – and the fighters who buried the hostages are presumed dead.
On Sunday, Hamas said it had identified the body of another dead hostage, but warned that any return could be delayed by Israeli military escalation.
The war will “end for good when the terms of the agreement that were accepted are implemented,” Mr. Netanyahu told Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 on Saturday.
In Israel, political pressure is building on Mr. Netanyahu to abandon the ceasefire agreement. Politicians on the far right said the latest attack on Israeli forces constituted grounds to resume the war, which Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday said should officially be named “The War of Redemption.”
It is time for Israel “to fully resume combat in the Gaza Strip with maximum force,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a statement posted to social media.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, declared that Hamas “has retaken control of Gaza and continues to harm us.” The group “must be destroyed,” Mr. Bennett wrote Sunday on social media.
Israel’s leadership has said it is fully prepared to continue fighting, knowing that it no longer needs to balance military action against the imperative to preserve the lives of hostages.
Heavy machinery is used in the search for deceased hostages in Khan Younis.Ramadan Abed/Reuters
“If the agreement is not implemented, Israel will have to continue its operations – but from a much better position than we were in last week, now that all the live hostages have been freed,” Ophir Falk, foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, told The Globe and Mail Saturday.
“Military operations will be easier to carry out, if unfortunately it is needed. As President Trump recently said, if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”
Two previous ceasefires have failed, one in 2023 and another earlier this year.
Israeli forces continue to control roughly half of Gaza after staging a partial withdrawal under the terms of the current ceasefire.
In a brief visit to Israel last week, Mr. Trump declared that the war was over, bringing “the end of an age of terror and death.”
Mr. Trump has since declared an openness to new assaults on Hamas after the group publicly executed rivals. “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” he said.
The ceasefire agreement has left unaddressed a series of critical issues, including how Gaza will be governed, the terms by which Hamas would agree to cede its weapons or the makeup of an international stabilizing force to oversee security.
Palestinians in Gaza City voiced ongoing struggles on Wednesday, days after a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect. ‘There is no work, no food, no drinks, no housing, and now winter is coming,’ said one displaced Palestinian, another said he was heading home ‘not knowing where to stay.’
Reuters
The White House has signalled that it will take new steps this week to intervene in the region, with a high-level visit that is expected to include Mr. Trump’s envoys to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as Vice-President JD Vance.
In Gaza, meanwhile, United Nations officials reported the arrival of new supplies under the terms of the ceasefire.
“More aid trucks are coming through, hundreds a day now, bringing food, tents, fuel, medicine,” Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, wrote in a diary entry documenting events on Saturday, which was published by The Observer.
“Cooking gas alone is transforming lives, I’m told. Others tell me they are desperate for eggs. So we need more. Not a trickle, but an avalanche of aid.”
Smoke billows following an Israeli strike that targeted a building in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday.EYAD BABA/AFP/Getty Images