“The ceasefire is holding — the situation is improving”

On October 9, 2025, US President Donald Trump announced from Truth Social that Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire agreement. After 730 days, the bombs were supposed to stop. The ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025.

The agreement — Trump's 20-point plan, endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 — committed to an immediate halt to attacks, full humanitarian aid entry, reopening of the Rafah crossing, Israeli military withdrawal to a defined "Yellow Line," and the beginning of reconstruction. It was presented, in the words of Refugees International, as "the foundation for a fundamentally improved reality in Gaza — one that would deliver stability, humanitarian relief, and the beginnings of recovery." [16]

The ceasefire announcement also triggered something else: a dramatic decline in international media coverage of Gaza. As global attention shifted to the US-Israel conflict with Iran in early 2026, editors deprioritized Gaza coverage even as conditions on the ground remained unchanged. [1] The narrative resolution — "a deal was reached" — preceded the reality. This article documents what that reality has been.

Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, Israeli attacks have killed at least 922 Palestinians and injured at least 2,786. This figure covers the period to May 28, 2026 and is sourced from the Palestinian Ministry of Health as reported by OCHA, tracked by Al Jazeera's ceasefire violations monitor — the same methodology validated by the UN throughout the war. [2]

The UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk documented who these people were, on April 10, 2026 — exactly six months after the ceasefire took effect: [3]

UNRWA's reporting breaks the geography of the killings down precisely. Between October 10, 2025 and February 27, 2026, OHCHR recorded the killing of at least 224 Palestinians in the vicinity of the Yellow Line, and 347 Palestinians in attacks far from it — inside areas explicitly designated as civilian zones under the ceasefire agreement. [4]

More than 100 of those killed were children. UNICEF noted that this figure "only reflects incidents where sufficient details were available to record, and the actual number is expected to be higher." [5]

Türk added: "The unrelenting pattern of killings reflects continuing disregard for Palestinian lives, enabled by sweeping impunity. Targeting civilians not taking direct part in hostilities is a war crime, regardless of their proximity to deployment lines." [3]

At the moment the ceasefire took effect, Gaza's housing stock was already almost entirely gone. OCHA reported that 92% of homes in the Gaza Strip — approximately 436,000 structures — had been destroyed or damaged. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced. [6]

A joint assessment by the World Bank, United Nations, and European Union placed the total physical damage at $35.2 billion. Rebuilding Gaza will cost an estimated $71 billion over five years. As of May 2026, little of that rebuilding has begun. 1.7 million Gazans — the majority of Gaza's population — remain living in displacement sites: tent encampments and temporary structures, unable to return to homes that no longer exist. [7]

The demolitions have not stopped since the ceasefire. From October 10, 2025 to April 14, 2026, Israel demolished Palestinian properties on 273 documented occasions. [8]

Before October 7, 2023, Gaza grew its own food. Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun supplied much of the Strip with fruits and vegetables. Farmers tended olive and pomegranate orchards. There were functioning irrigation wells and greenhouse operations.

By late 2025, FAO-UNOSAT satellite analysis showed: 87% of Gaza's cropland damaged or destroyed. 80% of greenhouses gone. 87% of agricultural wells damaged. The Gaza Governorate suffered total agricultural losses. North Gaza suffered nearly complete destruction. [10]

By early 2026, the picture had worsened further: up to 98% of fruit-bearing tree cropland — including olives and pomegranates — destroyed. Only 1.5% to 4% of Gaza's agricultural land remains both accessible and undamaged. [11] Mercy Corps assessed that only 7% of agricultural infrastructure remains functional, with soil contaminated by explosive remnants and heavy metals making recovery on even accessible land dangerous and largely impossible without massive external support. [12]

The ceasefire has not reversed this. Al Jazeera reported in February 2026 that farmers trying to reach their fields risk being shot by Israeli forces operating in the expanded buffer zone. Blueprints released as part of the Board of Peace plan show many northern Gaza agricultural areas redesignated — effectively erased from any future Palestinian use. [13]

From October 10, 2025 to May 27, 2026, Israel violated the ceasefire agreement at least 3,005 times. The Gaza Government Media Office documented: 921 instances of shooting at civilians, 1,109 bombardments, 97 raids into residential areas beyond the Yellow Line, and 273 demolitions of Palestinian properties. Israel also detained 82 Palestinians from Gaza during the ceasefire period. [2]

The UN Human Rights Office confirmed in May 2026: "The ceasefire has reduced the scale of violence in the Gaza Strip but killings and destruction continue, while forced displacement in the occupied West Bank has reached a rate unseen in decades." [15]

The OHCHR report covering October 2023 to May 2025 — released in May 2026 — concluded that the totality of Israeli conduct in Gaza raises serious concern about compliance with the obligation to prevent acts within the scope of the Genocide Convention. The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory separately found in September 2025 that four of the five acts of genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention had been committed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Both findings were made before the ceasefire took effect. Neither has been addressed in the political framework governing the ceasefire's implementation. [15]

The "situation is improving" framing is not simply an error. It is being produced by a specific combination of factors that this platform exists to make visible.

The ceasefire announcement functioned as a narrative resolution — a signal to editors and audiences that the story had ended. The Board of Peace framework gave Western governments a diplomatic object to point to. The decline in media coverage made the gap between the framework's promises and the ground reality invisible. [1]

Refugees International's humanitarian scorecard, published April 9, 2026, graded the ceasefire's implementation across every major category — civilian protection, humanitarian access, reconstruction, and freedom of movement — and found it failed across all of them. [16] This scorecard received a fraction of the coverage that greeted the original ceasefire announcement.

The Board of Peace's own High Representative told the Security Council there is "no recovery in Gaza." The UN Human Rights Commissioner said living conditions have not improved. Four UN agencies warned famine could return. 922 people have been killed under the ceasefire. None of this generated headlines proportionate to the original announcement.