When midnight struck in Gaza city on Tuesday, residents were sleeping or trying to. They had grown used to the uneasy quiet since a fragile ceasefire took hold weeks earlier. But within moments, the sky had lit up again as Israel began bombing the city and across the Gaza Strip.
“The home of our neighbours, the Al Mousa family, was hit directly,” Mohammed Shaheen, 36, told The National.
“We went to bed knowing the army was preparing for escalation, but we didn’t think it would be our neighbourhood, that we would be bombed in our sleep.”
Israel attacked after accusing Hamas of responsibility for the killing of a soldier in southern Gaza on Tuesday, and of failing to return all the bodies of hostages still held by the militant group.
One woman was killed instantly and several other relatives were injured in the strike on the Al Mousa home. Mr Shaheen said his wife and children were injured and treated briefly at the hospital before being sent back to what remained of their home.
“The army doesn’t want Gaza to live in peace,” he said. “Even under a ceasefire, they don’t stop. We’re living among rubble, and they still bomb us. Gaza can’t survive another round of this.”
More than 100 Palestinians were killed in less than 12 hours of renewed Israeli attacks, including about 35 women and children, according to Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence in Gaza.
Israel said on Wednesday it had returned to observing the ceasefire. But the same evening, the Israeli military announced it had carried out a further strike on northern Gaza, claiming to have hit a weapons storage site where an
“The hospitals can no longer handle the number of wounded and martyrs,” Mr Bassal told The National. “The situation is beyond catastrophic.
“What is happening is a crime that demands immediate intervention from mediators, especially the United States.”
He called for an immediate comprehensive ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow urgently needed aid and medical supplies into Gaza.
According to political analyst Aziz Al Masri, the new round of bombings − the second round of Israeli strikes across Gaza since the ceasefire began on October 10 − was not a reaction but a calculated plan.
“What happened in Gaza was an Israeli operation approved by the United States,” Mr Al Masri told The National. “It cannot be separated from Israel’s recent statements. The so-called ‘security incident’ in Rafah was merely a pretext to carry out pre-planned strikes.”
He said Israel compiles lists of targets, waits for a convenient trigger, and then strikes them all at once, often under fabricated claims that Hamas broke the ceasefire, ensuring Washington’s tacit approval.
He noted that Israeli media reports were contradictory, first blaming Hamas’s handling of a hostage’s body in Khan Younis, then citing the soldier’s death in Rafah.
“Even the US administration said this was a moral, not material violation, not worth a military response,” he said. “But Netanyahu bombed anyway, to satisfy his ego and political vanity, and over 100 innocent people paid the price.
“Israel will keep doing this,” said Mr Al Masri. “It will fabricate escalations, invent threats, and strike to maintain dominance and pride, with American cover.”
Eyad Hamad, 28, said one of the strikes hit near his family's tent in Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza, where they live after fleeing an Israeli military offensive on Gaza city before the ceasefire.
“A tent belonging to the Al Munirawi family was hit,” he told The National. “Journalist Mohammed Al Munirawi and his wife were killed.”
The blasts, sirens and smell of burning “brought us right back to the war”, he said.
Mr Hamad said he had refused to return to Gaza city for fear of another offensive. “I thought being in the central area was safer,” he said, “but the Israeli army knows no mercy, no safety, no red lines. They bomb whenever they want, kill whoever they want, and the world says nothing.
“The hardest thing is that the ceasefire is supposedly still in effect. Yet we’re being bombed, threatened and hunted,” he said. “We can’t rebuild our lives; everything around us is death.”
“Gaza is devastated in every sense of the word,” said Mr Shaheen. “We have nothing left – not homes, not safety, not rest. The war never really stopped.”
