Israeli strikes kill in Gaza, wound journalists as control expands

A year after the ceasefire took hold, the map of Gaza has been redrawn. Nearly two-thirds of the territory now sits under Israeli military control or subject to access restrictions that amount to the same thing. The boundary that was supposed to mark a pullback—the "Yellow Line" established under the Trump administration's twenty-point plan—has become a fiction. Israeli forces have not withdrawn further. They have advanced.

On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike struck a vehicle in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, in the northeast. One person was killed. Several others were wounded. Emergency services confirmed the strike to Al Jazeera. It was one incident among many. Three weeks earlier, in az-Zawayda in central Gaza, a four-year-old boy named Osama Ahmed Abed died from wounds sustained in an Israeli attack. His death brought the total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to more than 74,382.

The ceasefire, signed in October 2025, has not stopped the violence. It has changed its character. Gaza's Civil Defence agency reported that Israeli forces have been conducting what it described as repeated forced displacement operations near the Yellow Line. The agency documented "massive explosions" and "indiscriminate gunfire" that have damaged hundreds of tents sheltering displaced people and further weakened homes that had already been struck in earlier attacks. The agency issued an urgent appeal for intervention, framing the ongoing operations as "a war against the civilian population."

The physical destruction across Gaza is nearly total. More than eighty percent of the territory's buildings have been destroyed or damaged. At least 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the truce began. No Palestinian technocratic administration has been established to manage the territory or coordinate reconstruction. The US-backed Board of Peace marked the ceasefire's first anniversary by crediting Trump's leadership with ending "a war that had no end in sight." The characterization sits uneasily against the facts on the ground.

In the occupied West Bank, the pattern has been different but the trajectory is the same. Israeli forces conducted raids in Ramallah and el-Bireh, wounding a child with live ammunition and leaving several Palestinians exposed to tear gas, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Two journalists covering the operations were injured. Khaled Mattawa, a correspondent for Palestine TV, was wounded in the hand by a sound bomb. Firas Lutfi, reporting for Sky News Arabia, was struck in the leg by shrapnel.

The raids extended beyond the streets. Israeli forces entered the offices of several Palestinian non-governmental organisations and the courtyard of the Palestine Medical Complex. Al Jazeera's correspondent Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah, characterized the operations as "yet another step to undermine the Palestinian Authority." Human rights lawyer Muhammad Dahleh explained the legal mechanism: Israel uses military orders to designate Palestinian rights groups as "terrorist organisations" based on classified evidence that is never disclosed to the groups or their lawyers. Several organisations were outlawed in 2021. Legal objections were rejected by Israeli military authorities. The process has continued.

Netanyahu addressed the operations directly. In a video posted to X, he stated that Israel was "preparing for a scenario in which Palestinian Authority forces turn their guns against Israel in the West Bank." He then articulated the vision driving the raids and the territorial expansion: "There will be no Arab army west of the Jordan River. There will be the [Israeli military]." He said Israel would extend its control across the West Bank. The statement was not a prediction. It was a declaration of intent.