Fighting in Gaza Resumes After Truce Expires

Facts

• After a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas ended Friday morning, hostilities between the two began again, with Israel striking Gaza and Hamas launching rockets into Israel. Israel also dropped more leaflets over southern Gaza calling for civilians to evacuate.¹
• Over 100 have already been reported from bombing on Friday (per the Gaza Health Ministry), with strikes taking place across the entire strip. Israeli Prime Minister claimed that Hamas broke the truce and did not release all women captives as agreed, nonetheless, negotiations mediated by Egypt and Qatar have continued.²
• As of Friday evening, the Israeli military claimed that it had hit over 200 targets in Gaza. Israel released an online map of Gaza broken into hundreds of numbered areas to inform civilians which areas it will target.³
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly notified Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting between the two on Thursday that the US is preparing to announce a series of visa bans against Israeli settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The ban could come into effect as early as the next few weeks.⁴
• Hostilities on the Lebanese border also began again on Friday and Lebanon's Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an attack on Israeli towns near the border. In response, Israel shelled south Lebanon, killing two.⁵
• Gaza's health ministry reports that the conflict has left almost 15K people — the majority of whom were women and children — in the Gaza Strip dead, while the official Israeli death toll stands at 1.2K people.⁶

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²The Guardian, ³BBC News, ⁴NDTV, ⁵Alarabiya and ⁶Axios.

Narratives

• Pro-Israel narrative, as provided by The Jerusalem Post. Though, of course, Israelis are glad to see some of the hostages now safe and sound back in Israel, the country must not allow Hamas to regroup. Hamas seized upon the temporary pause to mark Israeli positions and prepare itself for continued attacks on Israeli forces in Gaza. Indeed, the pace at which Israeli forces maneuvered in Gaza threw Hamas's military leadership off-kilter, and Israel will have to work intelligently in its campaign of fully eliminating the terrorist group so it can never launch an attack like Oct. 7 again.
• Pro-Palestine narrative, as provided by Middle East Eye. Israel continues to demonstrate that its war is not against Hamas but against the Palestinian people as a whole. Nowhere in Gaza is safe, and Israel has effectively rendered the north of the strip unlivable. Unfortunately, the temporary ceasefire only gave civilians a few days of relative rest, and now Israel has returned to killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate. The US, Israel's biggest ally, must exert more pressure to end the war.

Predictions