Israel resumed heavy airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, reportedly killing over 400 Palestinians and shattering a tenuous ceasefire agreement that was signed in January. Many families were just beginning to prepare their pre-dawn Ramadan meals as missiles descended from the sky.
Gaza’s hospitals, decimated by Israeli bombardment over the past 17 months, quickly filled up with the wounded, dead and dying.
“The [emergency room] was just chaos, patients everywhere on the floor. There were probably three men and the rest were all children, women, elderly, everybody caught in their sleep, still wrapped in blankets. Terrifying. A level of horror and evil that its really hard to articulate. It felt like Armageddon,” one doctor told CNN.
While the preceding two months were punctuated by deadly Israeli strikes, Tuesday’s offensive definitively marks a return to a war that has left Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants in a humanitarian crisis and wiped out entire families. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Tuesday’s strikes were only the start of what’s to come.
“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from U.S. Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength.”
Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of violating the ceasefire and acting in bad faith. According to the original agreement, both sides were supposed to exchange prisoners across two phases, with the first phase, ending by early March, followed by a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and permanent ceasefire. But less than two days before the first phase was due to expire, Israel, which has continued to launch attacks on Gaza, backed a U.S. proposal to extend the first phase for another two months while demanding that Hamas release the remaining hostages immediately.
Hamas, arguing that such a proposal contradicted the original agreement, insisted on further guarantees that Israel and the U.S. would honor phase two as soon as possible. Israel, calling such terms unreasonable, rejected the counter-offer and resumed its blockade of aid shipments and electricity into the largely-destroyed enclave, hoping to enforce its side of the bargain and “ensure that Hamas is no longer in Gaza afterwards.”
While Israel has insisted that it is acting to secure the release of 24 living hostages still in Gaza, a group representing the hostages’ families said that by breaching the ceasefire agreement, their government had “chose to give up the hostages” and were engaged in a “deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones.” Family members have been at the forefront of anti-Netanyahu protests throughout the war, accusing the the prime minister of using their grief to pursue a campaign of mass destruction against the Palestinians that has also killed dozens of hostages.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, President Donald Trump and administration officials were consulted by Israel over its plans to attack Gaza.
“President Trump has made it absolutely clear that Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, and all those who seek to spread terror, not only against Israel but also against the United States, will pay a price for their actions,” Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News.
Democrats, who have vacillated over how much to criticize Israel or fight back against Trump, largely remained silent over the renewed Israeli offensive. When asked for his reaction on CBS, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he didn’t know the “exact details” of how the deal fell apart and expressed hope that negotiations could resume. “I think our government has to work really hard to bring them back to the table and get the hostages home,” he said.
Other lawmakers did not hesitate to condemn Israel.
“The Israeli apartheid regime has resumed its genocide, carrying out airstrikes all across Gaza and killing hundreds of Palestinians,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., posted on social media. “This comes after a complete blockade of food, electricity, and aid. They will never stop until there are sanctions and an arms embargo.”
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