Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, including a 4-year-old child, even as President Donald Trump announced progress toward implementing a ceasefire agreement that's been stalled since it was signed last October. The strikes continued for a second straight day, with Israeli officials saying they won't halt attacks until Hamas fully disarms.
Civilian Toll Mounts as Talks Continue
Local Gaza hospitals reported at least 17 people killed in the latest strikes, including children. A strike on a residential apartment in southern Gaza killed three family members, among them their 4-year-old child, according to Nasser hospital. The Israeli military said the strikes targeted militant operatives. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 73,000 people have been killed in Israel's offensive since Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 others hostage. Women and children make up around half of all fatalities, according to ministry records that U.N. agencies and international organizations generally consider reliable.
Most of Gaza's 2 million Palestinians are now living in squalid tent camps and destroyed neighborhoods. The areas Israel controls have been mostly destroyed and depopulated.
Dispute Over Disarmament Timeline
Doron Spielman, spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, said Israel had shared "serious security concerns" with the White House about the proposed disarmament deal with Hamas. Israel's intelligence assessment is that Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military rather than genuinely demilitarizing. "Our assessment is that if we redeploy before Hamas is truly disarmed, it will quickly expand its presence throughout Gaza, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, once again threaten Israeli communities, and seek to carry out another Oct. 7-style attack," Spielman said. He added, "Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less."
Hamas said it would hand over its weapons for storage only after Israel stopped military operations and withdrew its forces, in line with the agreement reached last year. An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel wouldn't withdraw from its current military positions unless Hamas carried out a "genuine disarmament."
Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Netanyahu's security cabinet, said there was no agreement to halt the strikes on Gaza and said Israel needed to take full control of the territory, which he said it already controlled 70% of.
The Roadmap That Hasn't Been Implemented
Trump said on Thursday that there'd been a breakthrough after Hamas agreed to disarm under a U.S.-backed initiative to implement the ceasefire agreement. The Trump-led Council of Peace published a 15-point roadmap on Friday setting out the final steps for implementation. The roadmap hasn't yet been carried out.
According to a copy of the agreement obtained and verified by the AP, all weapons held by the Hamas-run police would be transferred to the U.S.-backed Palestinian technocratic committee, known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, when it arrives in the enclave. The agreement also said a process to decommission and store heavy weapons and dismantle military production sites and tunnels would begin after the arrival of the Palestinian committee and the deployment of international forces, and that the process would be linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal. It wasn't clear when the committee would arrive because that depended on other steps.
Behind-the-Scenes Tensions
U.S. officials said Israel had been consulted at every step of the negotiations and wasn't being asked to do anything beyond what it had already committed to in the ceasefire and hostage release agreement signed last October. Two people with knowledge of the deal said Israel had raised its concerns with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who's part of the Trump-led Board of Peace. One of them said Israel wanted freedom to conduct military operations in Gaza. Another person familiar with the deal said Israel also wanted Qatar and Turkey excluded from verifying the stages of the agreement and wanted Hamas' weapons destroyed after confiscation.
Mohammed Dahlan, the ex-high-ranking Fatah official who's in the United Arab Emirates, said in a Facebook post that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser involved in the initiative, had told him he was working with the Israeli side to stop the attacks on Gaza. Dahlan said contacts with the U.S. were continuing to ensure the agreement was fully implemented and said its success now depended on Israel ending its daily attacks on Gaza.
The minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called the initiative unacceptable and said Israel should continue killing Hamas leaders. Netanyahu didn't comment publicly on the initiative. The White House didn't provide additional comment on Sunday when asked about Israel's assessment that Hamas remained committed to rebuilding its military.
Why This Matters:
The continued airstrikes and mounting civilian death toll underscore the human cost of the stalled ceasefire implementation. With more than 73,000 Palestinians killed since the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, and women and children comprising half of all fatalities, the failure to halt military operations leaves Gaza's 2 million residents trapped in destroyed neighborhoods and tent camps without relief. The dispute over disarmament timing reveals a fundamental gap in the agreement: Israel demands weapons surrender before withdrawal, while Hamas insists on withdrawal before disarmament. Without international enforcement mechanisms that both sides trust, and with Israel seeking to exclude Qatar and Turkey from verification while maintaining freedom to conduct military operations, the roadmap published Friday remains unimplemented. The humanitarian crisis deepens each day the ceasefire remains on paper only.