The president of the United States, , has placed many of his hopes in the pacification of Gaza: to get rid of a problem that distracts him from other things, to preserve his businesses in the Middle East, to earn merit for that Nobel Peace Prize that he longs for… So he has promised to roll up his sleeves and sign whoever is necessary for the ceasefire to be fulfilled.
This morning, and in response to complaints from both Hamas and Israel, the Republican confirmed that the armistice remains in force. In statements to the press aboard Air Force One on the way to Washington, he even exonerated the Hamas leadership for the clashes that occurred in the Strip and which were responded to by Israel with a series of bombings.
“There has been some shooting and we believe that perhaps the leaders (of Hamas) are not involved in that. They are some rebels from within. Either way, we are going to handle it harshly, but appropriately,” he said, literally, in a gesture that upset his friend.
The president also responded affirmatively when a journalist asked him if the ceasefire “is still in force.”
A week after the ceasefire promoted by the Trump Administration came into effect, Israel bombed several points in the Gaza Strip and killed dozens of people, in response to what it interpreted as a “violation” of the agreement by Hamas. After that, the Israeli Army claimed to have “resumed the application of the ceasefire.”
The bombings were recorded this Sunday, after clashes in the morning in the Rafah area, southern Gaza and controlled by the Israeli Army, which left two Israeli soldiers dead. These clashes allegedly occurred between a unit of the Gaza Government Police, dependent on Hamas, and Israeli troops, but both Hamas and its armed wing disassociated themselves from them in separate statements. Today there are armed groups, backed by Israel, with which the Islamic Resistance Movement is clashing, with such seriousness that .
During the week, the Radea Force, a police unit of the Hamas Government in Gaza dependent on its Ministry of the Interior, has carried out persecutions and executions against different militias and clans that it accuses of collaborating with Israel.
Human rights defender and former UNRWA spokesperson, Chris Gunness, highlighted tonight the difficulty of recovering the bodies of captives murdered in Gaza, which is one of the violations denounced by Israel. He stresses that the Palestinians have little power to stop the resumption of the conflict, furthermore. In this sense, the agreement was destined to fail, right? Due to the number of bodies under the rubble and the great confusion generated after two years of genocide, it was going to be very difficult to release the bodies of the captives,” Gunness declared. “So Israel has a pretext to cancel the plan, reimpose the blockade and restart the genocide if it wants, and the Palestinians in Gaza lack the means to prevent it.”
Palestinian children receive treatment after being injured in an Israeli attack on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on October 19, 2025.
Diplomatic pressure
The vice president of the United States, , declared this Sunday that he could travel to Israel in the coming days to supervise the implementation of the agreement. that the ceasefire agreement will have “ups and downs” but will produce lasting, long-term peace. He has acknowledged, however, that “it will be difficult” to maintain it, because he fears that Hamas “will shoot at Israel” and “Israel will have to respond.”
Additionally, Vance has also predicted that some factions of Hamas would not respect the ceasefire agreement and has considered that “it would be a little absurd for the president to say, ‘Well, Hamas will be disarmed in three or four days.'”
In reality, his statements clash with those of the president, who also said yesterday Sunday that “there is no fixed deadline” for this disarmament. “It’s a deadline I have in mind, and if at any point they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, we’ll have to do it for them,” Trump said.
For now, the two negotiators appointed by the magnate, Steve Witkoff and his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are going to Israel today to have various meetings with the country’s leaders to learn about the state of the matter on the ground. Witkoff, interviewed before Israel’s latest attacks, has said it will not be difficult for rich countries to raise funds to rebuild Gaza, where Israel has destroyed more than 80% of the buildings. “It is estimated that it will be about $50 billion. It could be a little less, or a little more,” he declared. “I don’t think it’s a lot of money in that region.” Some human rights advocates have argued that Israel should pay for the reconstruction of Gaza as it is responsible for the damage.
Diplomatically, it is also important that today, in the Slovenian town of Portoroz, the Euro-Mediterranean summit is being held, in which the leaders of the nine countries in this region plan to analyze the situation in Gaza after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that both parties accuse each other of having violated. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, will be in the game. Slovenia has the current presidency of what is called the MED9 and that is why it is acting this year as the host country of a meeting in which Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Malta and Cyprus will also participate.
But along with the leaders of each country (except in the case of Italy, since according to the organizers Giorgia Meloni will not attend and will be represented by her Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani), the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will be present. This year, King Abdullah II of Jordan has also been invited to the summit, a presence that becomes especially relevant amid the events in Gaza following the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the peace plan led by the United States.
An unsustainable situation
Meanwhile, from Gaza, a video from the UN humanitarian chief has been released showing the immense destruction in the strip, which barely receives help from secondary, minor steps, while Israel keeps the Rafah one, the essential one, closed, in retaliation for the alleged violations by Hamas.
Tom Fletcher shared images taken from his vehicle while traveling from Khan Younis to Gaza City online, showing shocking scenes of the devastation that Israel unleashed in the area. “There is nothing left: just piles of rubble on a desolate wasteland,” he says.
Human rights advocate Kenneth Roth cited the UN Genocide Convention in response to the images. >”Today’s devastated Gaza: One way to commit genocide is to ‘deliberately inflict’ on a group ‘conditions of life that will result in their physical destruction, in whole or in part,'” Roth wrote in a social media post.
Nearly a year after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu on charges of war crimes, including the use of famine as a weapon of war, the Israeli prime minister continues to threaten Palestinians with aid restrictions.
On Sunday, the Israeli government temporarily suspended the flow of humanitarian assistance and has partially blocked it for days to pressure Hamas to locate and transfer the bodies of murdered captives. Blocking aid appears to be a clear violation of the ceasefire. It also constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law.
The ICC Statute prohibits “starvation of civilians as a method of war, depriving them of goods indispensable for their survival, including the deliberate obstruction of relief supplies provided for in the Geneva Conventions.” Additionally, UN investigators concluded in a report last month that Israel was using famine as part of its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
“Israel’s use of famine as a method of warfare through the total siege of the Gaza Strip has had devastating effects on children as well, resulting in famine, alarmingly high rates of acute malnutrition, increasing risks of outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and chronic diarrhea, and significant excess mortality,” the report notes.
