Reem Asaad Awad, 33, was killed early Wednesday when an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Gaza City's Rimal neighborhood. Two others were injured, including a girl. A medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital told Türkiye's Anadolu Agency that staff received her body and the two wounded. The strike wrecked the apartment it targeted and nearby buildings, then a large fire broke out. Civil defense crews extinguished it.
That's the ceasefire, a little over a year after it was signed in October 2025.
The State's Monopoly
Rimal wasn't the only place under fire. Witnesses said Israeli military vehicles and quadcopter drones opened heavy fire toward Palestinian homes in Tuffah, northeast of Gaza City, while explosive devices fell on nearby al-Sikka Street. Sources said the army also demolished homes on a large scale in areas where its forces are deployed east of Gaza City.
In the central Strip, military vehicles and bulldozers moved beyond areas the army already controls, east of Deir al-Balah. Gunfire hit residents' homes along Salah al-Din Street and triggered panic. No injuries or deaths were reported there. Artillery shelling struck areas northeast of the Bureij refugee camp, and a drone dropped an explosive device on a tent. No injuries were reported there, either. A tent. That's what the drone found worth the explosive.
The Gaza Health Ministry's figures tell the bookkeeping story. Israeli violations of the October 2025 ceasefire have killed at least 1,498 Palestinians and injured 5,306. Since October 2023, the war has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and injured 175,000, while around 90% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the Daily Sabah report. We're in the fourth year of it now.
Who Benefits
The Israeli military and the Shin Bet describe a routine. According to Walla, they're conducting an average of two to three targeted operations a day against Hamas operatives and commanders in Gaza. Some of those targeted took part in the October 7 attacks, the report says; others are allegedly organizing attacks or trying to cross the Yellow Line.
Military officials told Walla that Gaza is closer to escalation than to reconstruction or a negotiated arrangement. They cited attempts by Hamas's military wing to rebuild and strengthen its forces, ongoing training exercises, efforts to provoke confrontations with troops along the Yellow Line, and intelligence warnings about planned attacks. Among the concerns they listed: attacks in the run-up to Israel's elections, aimed at influencing the result.
Read that again. Israeli officials are weighing a rival armed organization's possible attacks against the electoral calendar. Two apparatuses, each with an incentive to keep the other armed and ready. Neither one lives in Rimal.
Security officials also said that, according to assessments in Jerusalem, Israel will oppose any reconstruction measures unless Hamas is disarmed in practice and Gaza is demilitarized, including the removal of infrastructure, weapons and fighters. Rebuilding depends on one armed force disarming another. Meanwhile, 90% of the infrastructure is damaged or destroyed, and families in Rimal, Tuffah and Deir al-Balah wait on a negotiation they have no seat in.
Who Gets Crushed
The pattern in the base reporting is plain. Every announced framework, whether a ceasefire, a demarcation line or a reconstruction condition, is written between armed bodies. The consequences land on an apartment in Rimal, homes along Salah al-Din Street and a tent near Bureij. Awad's name appears in one sentence of the wire copy, and then the story moves on to the officials.
The Health Ministry's tally of 1,498 dead since the ceasefire sits beside the word ceasefire. No UN statement, guarantor or negotiating round in the reporting changes who is being killed in apartments while the arrangements are debated. Civil defense crews—not a ministry or mediator—rebuilt, sheltered and put out the fire in Rimal.