US President Donald Trump has insisted that a Washington-brokered ceasefire in Gaza remains in place despite Israeli forces killing more than 100 Palestinians, including 46 children.
At least 104 Palestinians were killed and 253 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza in about 12 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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“These documented crimes join a long list of ongoing violations against our people,” the Palestinian Civil Defense Organization in the Gaza Strip said in a statement, calling for an “immediate and comprehensive ceasefire” across the entire Gaza Strip.
One of the recent attacks hit a tent housing displaced people in Deir el-Bala, central Gaza, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Some attacks targeted the northern and southern parts of the enclave.
The US president on Wednesday defended Israel’s actions, citing reports that a 37-year-old Israeli soldier was killed in southern Gaza. A brief Israeli military statement did not say when the soldier was killed, but said his family had been notified before the information was made public.
“My understanding is that they took an Israeli soldier,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Japan to South Korea, adding that he had heard that the soldier had apparently been killed by sniper fire. He added that the Israeli attack was “revenge” for the deaths of soldiers, adding: “So Israelis should fight back and fight back. If that happens, we should fight back.”
Hamas denied responsibility for the alleged attack on Israeli forces in Rafah, southern Gaza, and said in a statement that it would continue to abide by the cease-fire agreement.
The US president asserted that there was “nothing that would jeopardize” the ceasefire.
“Hamas needs to understand that they are only a part of peace in the Middle East, and they must act.”
“If they (Hamas) are good, they will be happy, and if they are not good, they will be fired. Their lives will be over.”
The Israeli military announced in a statement on Wednesday that it had restored a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip after carrying out a series of attacks on dozens of “terrorist targets” including “30 terrorists in command positions.” No evidence was provided to support these claims.
Several foreign leaders expressed concern and disappointment following the Israeli attack. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said the attack was “very disappointing and frustrating for us.”
“Fortunately, I think both the main parties recognize that the ceasefire should stand and that the agreement should stick,” al-Thani added during a visit to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Separately, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “deeply concerned” about the strikes and told British parliament that a ceasefire was “the only path to long-term peace for Israelis and Palestinians”.
“Indefinite, long-term occupation”
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City on Wednesday, said the new attacks had left Palestinians in a state of “panic.”
“As of this morning, we can see that our fleeting hopes for calm have turned to despair. The skies are full of fighter jets, drones and reconnaissance aircraft,” he said. “And the fear now is that what started last night will continue for days to come.”
As funerals for the dead were held, the emergency ward at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital told Al Jazeera that many of the patients they treated were suffering from shrapnel wounds and internal bleeding after the Israeli attack, and many were in critical condition.
Save the Children called reports that children were killed along with their families “unbearable”.
“This cannot become the new normal under a ceasefire,” Ahmad Alhendawi, the charity’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, said in a statement. “A durable ceasefire must mean safety, relief and recovery so that children no longer have to continue to suffer. It must be fully respected and supported.”
“Please uphold the ceasefire, protect our children and give Gazan families the step towards real peace they have been waiting for,” Alhendawi said.
Mouan Rabbani, a non-resident researcher at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, told Al Jazeera that Israel “has not actually fulfilled any of its commitments” under the agreement, such as withdrawing to the agreed line in the Gaza Strip or allowing agreed amounts of aid to Gaza.
Rabbani said Israel is deliberately trying to break the cease-fire agreement that the United States reluctantly entered into. He said it was clear that “Israel does not feel that it can simply unilaterally break the ceasefire,” adding, “so what we are seeing is a gradual intensification of the erosion process.”
“The important question here now is how the United States will respond,” he added.
For Rob Geist-Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at King’s College London, the ceasefire was fragile “from day one” because both Israel and Hamas agreed to the deal after significant pressure from the United States.
He told Al Jazeera that since Israel still controls about 50 percent of the Gaza Strip, “it’s no surprise that for many Palestinians in Gaza, this looks less like an actual ceasefire, and certainly not a peace plan, but more like an indefinite, long-term occupation with no end in sight.”
Pinfold said there is a “game of chicken” on the ground between Hamas and Israel, with both sides testing each other’s limits and trying to test each other’s limits.
“The fact that a soldier was killed in Rafah, we still don’t know by whom he was killed, we still don’t know if this was on the orders of Hamas or by someone else,” he said. But what this incident did was “allow Israel to use this opportunity to break the ceasefire, because this is what they have wanted all along.”
