Israeli fire in Gaza killed at least six Palestinians on Sunday, including a 9-year-old girl, and wounded more than a dozen others, according to local health officials. The dead were not abstract numbers. They were people pulled from a blacksmith shop in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood, a displacement camp in central Gaza, and a displacement tent in Khan Younis, while the military that controls the sky and the ground called it “routine activities.”
Who Pays for the Orders
A drone strike hit a blacksmith shop in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood and killed at least four Palestinians, officials at Shifa hospital said. The casualties were taken there after the strike. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance service said the strikes in Gaza City wounded 14 people. That’s the human cost of a military machine that speaks in the language of “terrorist infrastructure” and leaves hospitals to sort through the wreckage.
The Israeli military acknowledged striking the area and said it targeted “terrorist infrastructure,” without elaborating. It later said it struck a Hamas weapon production site. After the first strikes, Palestinians received an evacuation order from the military. Roughly an hour later, intense airstrikes hit the same blacksmith shop. The sequence matters. First the order. Then the blast.
The Bottom of the Hierarchy
Also on Sunday, Israeli gunfire killed 9-year-old Tala Abu Matar in a displacement camp in central Gaza, according to officials at the Health Ministry. The Israeli military said it was unaware of such an incident. In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, an Israeli strike on a displacement tent killed one Palestinian, according to health officials at Nasser hospital, where the body was taken. Israel’s military said it carried out a strike in that area and called it “part of routine activities.” The military said it was not aware of casualties.
That’s how power talks when it doesn’t have to answer to the people under it. A child dies in a camp. A tent gets hit. The apparatus says it doesn’t know, or that it’s routine, or that the target was something else entirely. The language stays clean. The bodies don’t.
Israeli strikes have lessened considerably since a ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, but they continue almost daily. Israel’s military says it targets Hamas and other militants, often asserting they were planning attacks. The strikes have also killed many civilians. At least 1,098 Palestinians, including at least 260 children, have been killed since the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed in that time.
What the Ceasefire Actually Means
The ceasefire hasn’t stopped the violence. It has only changed its pace. The military keeps striking. Families keep burying children. The people at the bottom keep paying for decisions made far above them, while the armed institutions on both sides keep their own machinery running.
The Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas-led militants that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people in Israel and saw 251 others taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 73,221 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry. It is part of the Hamas-led government and is staffed by medical professionals who maintain detailed records viewed as generally reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. It does not distinguish between civilians and militants but says women and children make up around half of all deaths.
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas remain largely deadlocked over the implementation of the ceasefire’s second phase, including the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza. Most of the population of over 2 million people remains displaced, with many living in crowded tent camps with little or no basic services or in the ruins of buildings. That’s the real terrain here: not diplomacy, but displacement; not reconstruction, but survival in the wreckage left by states and armed factions alike.