Within hours of United States envoy Jared Kushner leaving talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aimed at salvaging the Gaza “ceasefire”, Israeli strikes were again hitting residential areas in the enclave, and by week’s end, senior officers were describing a return to pre-ceasefire rules of engagement. Kushner’s August 17 talks produced two working groups – on disarmament and humanitarian issues – but exposed rather than resolved the core issues: Israel’s unwillingness to withdraw from Gaza as it believes Hamas will not disarm alongside its refusal to allow the aid, supplies and construction materials required to rebuild the territory. Hamas says Israel’s ongoing attacks and refusal to withdraw its forces from Gaza are a violation of Trump’s 15-point plan announced on July 30.
Kushner said he would not object to attacks against “imminent threats” but warned against interpreting that broadly. The attacks that followed suggested that Kushner’s warning had done little to constrain Israel’s interpretation of what constituted an “imminent threat”. Hours after Kushner left, a strike on a crowded cafe at the Gaza City port – itself a displacement camp – killed at least seven Palestinians, including a child.
The next day, a strike on Gaza City’s former police headquarters killed at least nine people, including the acting director of Gaza’s police force, the head of its women’s police division and a 13-year-old girl. A Hamas source told Al Jazeera the officials had gathered to prepare for the weapons handover called for under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan – meaning, if accurate, Israel killed the very people organising the disarmament it demands. A separate strike that day killed a man Israel called a Hamas commander in Nuseirat.
The campaign continued all week: a drone attack killed a man Israel said was a Hamas commander in Deir el-Balah on Saturday. The week’s final trigger for Israel’s return to such bellicose footing in Gaza was, improbably, kites. After several landed in an Israeli border community, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday ordered the military to treat any kite, balloon and drone from Gaza as “an act of war”, threatening attacks and neighbourhood displacements, according to The Times of Israel.
Netanyahu’s office echoed the warning, declaring Gaza “will not return to the situation before October 7, 2023”. Subsequent attacks on Sunday killed at least three Palestinians, among them four-year-old Muhammad Abdel Salam Taha. A predawn attack on a family’s tent in Deir el-Balah killed two brothers on Monday, according to Palestinian reports.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health put the number of casualties since the October “ceasefire” at 1,288 killed and 4,290 wounded as of Monday, with a cumulative toll of at least 73,422 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023. Meanwhile, Israel has continued to advance its illegal settlement project in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, widely seen as a death knell for the prospect of a Palestinian state along 1967 lines as part of the so-called two-state solution. On August 18, Israel issued a tender for 1,234 units in the southern section of the East1 plan in occupied East Jerusalem, moving the long-frozen project on the path towards active construction.
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