BALANCE SHEET OF THE YEAR || The UN warned, but ended up making two unprecedented statements in relation to the Gaza Strip
After two years of confrontation, Israel and the Islamist group Hamas agreed in October to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, ending a conflict of unprecedented devastation in the territory, but not the uncertainty of its future.
The truce came into force on October 10 and has since survived cross accusations of successive violations in the first phase of a broader plan to end the war in the Palestinian enclave.
When the agreement was signed, promoted by the United States with the support of other mediators (Egypt, Qatar and Turkey), Israel was carrying out a vast operation to occupy Gaza City, eliminate the last strongholds of Hamas and recover the hostages still held by the Palestinian militias.
Despite maintaining the military initiative, the Israeli authorities faced growing criticism from the international community, which gained ground with accumulated accusations of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe, since Israel broke, in March and after six weeks, the first ceasefire of 2025 with Hamas, and imposed a total blockade on the territory.
In September, a UN panel of experts declared a famine in the north of the Gaza Strip and, the following month, another United Nations commission accused Israel of orchestrating a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian inhabitants, an allegation refuted by Tel Aviv as “distorted, false” and that it only served Hamas.
This conclusion was added, however, to others in the same vein from various human rights organizations and to the arrest warrants, issued at the end of 2024 by the International Criminal Court, for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since the start of the war, the number of deaths recorded by the enclave’s Ministry of Health – controlled by Hamas but considered reliable by the UN and other international organizations – has already exceeded 70,000, mostly civilians, of which over 350 occurred after the last truce.
In September, Israel also faced a wave of diplomatic recognition of the Palestinian State, in a total of ten Western countries – including the United Kingdom, France and also Portugal – before accepting the beginning of the plan designed by Washington.
In the first phase, the agreement provided for the exchange of hostages still held by Hamas for almost two thousand Palestinian prisoners, the partial withdrawal of the Israeli military and the access of humanitarian aid to the territory.
The agreement has been hanging by a thread on several occasions, following accusations of attacks by Hamas fighters against Israeli soldiers, retaliated with heavy bombings in the enclave, or delays or mistaken identity in the delivery of the bodies of the last dead hostages to Israel, after the return of the 20 who were alive.
The Israeli authorities make the recovery of all hostages conditional on the discussion of the second phase of the North American plan and the continuation of their withdrawal, along with the disarmament and removal of Hamas from the management of the enclave, which would be ensured by a transitional “peace council” led by the leader of the White House, Donald Trump, and also the deployment of an international force.
The war in the Gaza Strip, which began with the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, which resulted in around 1,200 deaths and 251 hostages, had waves in the Middle East, where Israeli forces entered, for 12 days in June, in direct confrontation with Iran, and attacked the Hamas negotiating delegation in Qatar a month before sealing the truce.
They also continue to carry out almost daily air raids in Lebanon, despite the ceasefire in force with the Shiite group Hezbollah, and where they still maintain military positions, as in neighboring Syria since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime a year ago.
The future of the Gaza Strip is still linked to the situation in the West Bank and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements under international law, in turn accompanied by the intensification of violence in 2025 involving the army and Jewish settlers and the Palestinian population.
Hunger and genocide
Until the ceasefire, in force in the Palestinian enclave since October, the population of the Gaza Strip experienced a situation of hunger and genocide in 2025, according to two unprecedented UN declarations, along with the explosion of violence in the West Bank.
As a precursor to the pause in fighting, an independent UN investigative commission in September accused Israel of committing genocide over two years of conflict, with the “intent to destroy” the Palestinian population.
The commission’s report was met with outrage in Tel Aviv and classified as “biased and untrue”, despite the panel of experts pointing to statements by Israeli authorities and the pattern of their troops as demonstrations of genocidal behavior.
The release of the document coincided with a vast occupation operation in Gaza City and widespread protests in several global cities demanding an end to the offensive and action by the global community.
The pressure contributed to a dozen Western countries, including Portugal, increasing the number of UN members that recognize the State of Palestine to more than 150 and several European governments imposing arms embargoes on Israel.
Another UN panel of experts had described the previous month that half a million people were facing famine in the north of the territory and for the first time in the Middle East, with a risk of high spread.
Once again Israel referred to the conclusions of the Integrated Food Security Classification report as “Hamas-based falsehoods”, whose experts referred to catastrophic conditions “entirely man-made”, in reference to Israeli operations.
This picture of humanitarian disaster was also consistent with repeated warnings from UN agencies and other international organizations, especially since Israel imposed a total blockade on the enclave, shortly after breaking the first ceasefire of the year with Hamas in March, leaving the Palestinian inhabitants more alone.
During the months of blockade, the only authorized aid was concentrated on the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, supported by Washington and Tel Aviv, whose distribution centers were linked to several episodes of chaos and violence, which resulted in more than 1,100 deaths recorded by local authorities.
These numbers add to the statistics of over 70,000 deaths in two years, according to data from the enclave’s Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, but considered reliable by the UN, which in turn indicated, based on verified deaths, that 70% of the victims are women and children.
The vulnerability of civilians has been highlighted in the coverage of Palestinian journalists, who continue their work in a territory closed to the international press, despite the risks attested by more than 250 professionals killed in two years.
Until the last ceasefire, 90% of the 2.1 million inhabitants of the territory devastated by the bombings were displaced and their fate was even more uncertain given the threat, by members of the Israeli Government, of concentration in a “humanitarian city” or even deportation, which was even suggested by the North American leader, Donald Trump, when he referred to the idea of a “Middle East Riviera”.
The violence is attributed by the UN and the Palestinian Authority to the Israeli army and Jewish settlers under the cover of impunity, along with announcements of more illegal settlements, accompanied by demolitions and expulsions of inhabitants, fenced roads, agricultural fields and water lines and financial strangulation.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than a thousand Palestinians have died in the West Bank in the wave of violence in the last two years.
In October alone, 264 settler attacks resulting in casualties, property damage, or both were recorded in the West Bank, representing the monthly maximum in nearly two decades of data collection.
