The Gaza Ceasefire Is Fragile and May Break Down: Here's Why

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Video originally published on October 21, 2025.

After two years of bitter fighting and incredibly intense bombardment, the Gaza Strip is governed by a desperately needed ceasefire. The last of the living hostages held by the Hamas organization have been returned to Israel, humanitarian aid has been allowed to flood into the Gaza Strip, and the nations of the world have organized an all-out diplomatic push to ensure that this is the last time that a Gaza ceasefire ever has to be negotiated. Right now, in Israel, Gaza, and all across the globe, there is genuine hope that this crisis could be over, and that whatever comes out of an eventual accord will leave the Middle East more stable, more prosperous, and more peaceful than it was before the war. However, a growing chorus of international experts are warning that the Gaza conflict is far from a settled issue, and that the overwhelming pressures that both sides have to deal with risk crumbling the ceasefire deal before it can be converted into a permanent peace.

Key Takeaways

The Gaza ceasefire remains in effect as of October 20, 2025, but both Israel and Hamas have already engaged in actions that could be interpreted as violations of the agreement.

Israel launched widespread airstrikes across Gaza on Sunday in response to Hamas militants killing two Israeli soldiers, resulting in over 35 deaths and temporarily suspending humanitarian aid delivery.

Hamas has begun internal purging operations targeting clans disloyal to the organization, killing dozens of fighters in the streets of Gaza City shortly after gaining control.

The ceasefire only requires Israel to withdraw from approximately 47% of the Gaza Strip, leaving Israeli forces present in substantial portions of the territory and creating contested zones.

Israel's response to provocations has been disproportionate, choosing widespread strikes across Gaza rather than limited, targeted retaliation, demonstrating a willingness to test the ceasefire's limits.

Hamas has signaled it intends to maintain control of Gaza without disarming, directly contradicting the later stages of the peace deal which call for disarmament in exchange for amnesty.

Understanding the Current Ceasefire Framework

In order to understand the situation in Gaza today, it is essential to understand a much broader rule in global affairs: a ceasefire is a ceasefire because all parties agree that it's a ceasefire. Both Israel and Hamas have already engaged in actions that could very reasonably be interpreted as a direct breach of the ceasefire arrangement as written, and yet, as of Monday, October 20, 2025, the ceasefire is still holding.

Although it is certainly not a good thing when either side violates the agreement, the mere fact that occasional violations are happening does not mean that the ceasefire has failed. Those violations can be addressed, terms of a deal can be strengthened or changed, and both sides are capable of deciding to continue the ceasefire even if it has been put under strain. Whether in Gaza or anywhere else, a ceasefire only fails when one or both sides of a conflict decide, for whatever reason, that they are no longer going to constrain or adjust their behavior to align with the terms of a truce. As of the time of writing, that has not happened yet.

What has happened, however, is that both Israel and Hamas have already shown a willingness to push the limits of the truce. The ceasefire in its current form only calls for Israel to withdraw from approximately forty-seven percent of the Gaza Strip, leaving Israeli forces present in substantial portions of the territory. This partial withdrawal arrangement has created ambiguous zones where the boundaries of acceptable military presence remain contested, contributing to the fragility of the overall agreement.

Recent Violations and Escalations

The most notable test of the ceasefire came in a wave of attacks that Israel carried out on Sunday. According to the Israel Defense Forces, Hamas fighters were the ones to break the ceasefire first when militants from the group fired upon Israeli soldiers and killed two of them. Hamas denied having ordered the engagement, although Hamas is hardly a credible source and may have only a limited ability to control the most radical among its base of fighters. The Israeli troops had been operating in an area where the ceasefire permits them to be present. They were the first Israeli troops to be killed since the ceasefire agreement was signed the previous week.

In response, Israel launched a series of strikes across the territory, using both aircraft and artillery to hit dozens of targets that Israel stated were associated with Hamas. These targets included places where field commanders and foot soldiers were thought to be present, multiple weapons depots, and at least one tunnel. The death toll from the strikes has climbed upward of thirty-five as of the time of writing and is expected to rise further. During the course of the day on Sunday, Israel temporarily and unilaterally suspended the delivery of humanitarian aid across the territory. Although the suspension was lifted after Israel's strikes wrapped up, the incident confirms that Israel is still willing to cut off the flow of aid unilaterally, at its leisure, to pursue military objectives.

This round of airstrikes was not the only time that the ceasefire has come under strain. Shortly after it was handed control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas began a series of internal purging operations, targeting clans that don't bear loyalty to the terrorist faction. Within just days, Hamas claimed to have killed dozens of fighters operating in support of those clans, including a number of men who were executed in the streets of Gaza City by masked Hamas gunmen.

After initially suggesting that Hamas had been granted a level of acceptance for its crackdowns, US President Donald Trump threatened that, quote, 'If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.' On Saturday the eighteenth, the US State Department announced that it believes Hamas may be planning an, quote, 'imminent ceasefire violation […] against the people of Gaza.' The US declined to offer any further details, and unsurprisingly, Hamas claimed that it was planning nothing of the sort.

Another point of tension has been Hamas's failure to promptly return the remains of deceased hostages. While Hamas claims that it has turned over all the bodies it has and would need to sift through the rubble across Gaza in order to find the rest, Israel claimed this weekend that Hamas could return up to five more bodies immediately and has not yet done so.

Immediate Threats to Ceasefire Stability

None of these problems, by themselves, make it impossible for Israel, Hamas, and the international community to salvage this ceasefire. Despite the killings and the outstanding points of dispute, this situation can be stabilized. However, whether or not that will happen is another story entirely. Each one of those isolated incidents are symptoms of a series of larger problems, and those problems, in turn, are far from the only roadblocks that Israel and Hamas have to overcome. These roadblocks can be broken into two basic categories: problems that can cause the ceasefire to deteriorate in the immediate future, and larger systemic issues that make it unlikely that a ceasefire can hold.

When it comes to the immediate factors, the most obvious problem on the Israeli side is the fact that Israel is still bombing the Gaza Strip. Yes, by Israel's own account, it was provoked into launching a retaliatory strike, but it is simply not accurate to state that Israel was compelled to respond in that way—or at least, that there was anything compelling Israel beyond Israel's own expectations about what it does when it has been attacked. Israel had every opportunity to engage in a more limited retaliation, targeting the specific suspected Hamas unit that killed its soldiers or striking a small handful of targets in the immediate vicinity. Instead, it chose to rain down strikes all across the Gaza Strip.

Whether or not Israel's supporters may believe that its response was deserved, it was still disproportionate, and thus it was a clear escalation that Israel chose to engage in despite not having to do so. Not only that, but Israel demonstrated that it remains willing to restrict the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip. In a way, that's another escalation: Hamas broke one part of the ceasefire, specifically the bit where Hamas and Israel aren't supposed to shoot each other, and in response, Israel broke that same condition and another by restricting aid.

The reason that Israel's manner of response is important isn't just because this single ceasefire violation is a problem. After all, in the aftermath, both Israel and Hamas reiterated their desire to stick to the larger deal. The problem is what might happen if this process starts to become routine: Israel cutting off the flow of aid and launching what appeared to be basically unrestricted airstrikes when it's provoked. Should Hamas be provoking Israel? Absolutely not. But only Israel can choose to either absorb the pain of a Hamas attack in order to work toward a peace, or respond in proportion to whatever has happened, or to respond disproportionately.

Israel's conduct, by restricting aid and bombing the Gaza Strip, suggests a belief in Jerusalem that this ceasefire can be tested and still hold together. That calculus may well prove to be correct. After all, the United States is Israel's most important backer and has been essential to the ceasefire process, while Israel is the far more militarily powerful fighting force and no longer has to consider the fates of living hostages, meaning that it's Israel that could probably get away with more while still counting on the international community to try and de-escalate. But there's also an acute danger in that way of thinking, because even though the ceasefire deal may have some wiggle room for Israel, there's no way to know which actions would precipitate a return to fighting until that return to fighting has already happened.

Hamas's Destabilizing Actions and Signals

If Israel risks stressing the ceasefire to its breaking point, then the same can certainly be said for Hamas. For one thing, Hamas has clearly chosen to interpret the ceasefire as an opportunity to reconsolidate its power inside the Gaza Strip, targeting and killing internal enemies almost as soon as it had the opportunity to do so. Not only does Hamas make what might be a flawed assumption—that Israel and the international community won't interpret internal acts as a breach of the ceasefire—but it also signals to Israel and the entire world that its members remain well-armed and highly motivated to fight.

Israel has stated for years now that one of its overarching war goals is to destroy the Hamas organization in its entirety. By sending its fighters out to patrol openly and to engage in gun battles in the streets, Hamas is quite pointedly demonstrating that it has not been destroyed yet. Just as important, Hamas's attempt to gain control of the Gaza Strip implies what many experts on the conflict already suspected: that it does not intend to disarm or give up its authority in Gaza anytime soon.

The later stages of the peace deal that Hamas and Israel are working toward would call for exactly that: for Hamas to disarm in exchange for amnesty, and for its former members to accept that they will never have a place in the administration of a post-war Gaza. Hamas's actions signal the exact opposite. According to senior officials speaking to Reuters late last week, the group fully intends to maintain control over the Gaza Strip without disarming. Speaking to the outlet, high-ranking Hamas member Mohammed Nazzal refused to commit to any disarmament initiative.

That's a problem not just because it would almost certainly derail efforts to reach a second stage of the ceasefire, but because it risks signaling to Israel that any further negotiations are pointless. If Israel doesn't believe that Hamas has any intent to disarm, then why would Israel remain engaged in the ceasefire process instead of returning to airstrikes, aid cutoffs, or even its ground invasion when that's convenient?

Even if Hamas leaders didn't directly order the attack on Israeli troops that precipitated the latest round of airstrikes, there's a larger problem to consider. Hamas's command and control is still devastated in the wake of the conflict with Israel, and it's not clear that they're able to control their field commanders or their individual foot soldiers. The most ideologically extreme members among the Hamas ranks may not believe that a ceasefire is in their interests or may reject the entire premise of a ceasefire on principle. Even if the claim that the fighters who most recently killed Israeli soldiers were acting alone is accepted, it only takes a very small number of fighters to carry out a provocative attack, and once they do, Hamas cannot stop Israel from simply assuming that the attack came on orders from the leadership.

Netanyahu's Coalition Politics and Israeli Domestic Pressures

Zooming out past these immediate inflammatory factors, a whole range of other confounding problems start to come into view. Starting with Israel, the politics of Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition simply have to be taken into account. Israel's hard-right political parties, including groups led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have made clear that they expect Israel to continue its war against Hamas until the organization is fully destroyed. They responded to the most recent deaths of Israel's soldiers by reiterating their calls for war, and they've threatened to quit the Netanyahu government outright.

If Netanyahu fails to restart the war, then Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are likely to act on that promise. If that happens, Netanyahu's government collapses, he most likely fails to assemble a replacement, and he's left exposed against a series of corruption charges—plus an expected inquiry into the failures of governance that led to the October 7 attacks. This creates a powerful political incentive for Netanyahu to find reasons to resume military operations, regardless of whether doing so serves Israel's broader strategic interests or contributes to regional stability.

Meanwhile, Israel is still awaiting the return of the remains of deceased hostages. Israel has received fourteen sets of remains since the start of the ceasefire, including at least one body that Israel said was actually not a hostage, but fifteen still remain. Hamas has claimed that the rest of the deceased are buried under rubble, and most likely that's true of at least a few of them, while the whereabouts of others may have been lost because the Hamas members entrusted with that knowledge have since been killed.

For Israel, the outstanding issue of the hostage remains would make a return to war more likely in two ways at once. First, Israel insists that Hamas could return more bodies than it has, and further delays could lead to sufficient public outcry that Jerusalem may feel compelled to act. Or, if Jerusalem chooses to resume hostilities for some other reason, then it can use the outstanding issue of hostage remains as a pretext to reopen its offensive. This dual function of the hostage remains issue—as both a genuine grievance and a potential justification for renewed conflict—makes it a particularly dangerous element in the fragile ceasefire arrangement.

Hamas's Existential Concerns About Disarmament

On the other side of the equation, the issues that Hamas faces around disarmament go well beyond their desire to maintain immediate control of the Gaza Strip. For Hamas, disarmament means a total concession of defeat, and it also means that Israel could do basically whatever it wishes with both the group's ex-members and the Gaza territory overall. The later stages of the peace deal laid out by Washington call for Hamas fighters to receive an amnesty deal, but amidst all the discussions around other outstanding issues, the question of amnesty has been almost entirely ignored.

It's highly unlikely that Israel would accept amnesty for Hamas as a pre-condition for peace, and even if it did, Hamas fighters certainly understand that if they chose to voluntarily relinquish their weapons, they'd have no way to stop Israel from going back on a deal. This fundamental lack of trust creates an almost insurmountable barrier to the kind of comprehensive disarmament that would be necessary for a lasting peace.

Just as salient is Israel's insistence that Hamas never be allowed to take part in the civil administration of a post-war Gaza—a condition that Hamas leaders have indicated that they'd refuse to accept. There's also the question of a potential relocation and the threat that some of the more extreme plans for a post-war Gaza, including that whole Riviera-of-the-Middle-East concept, could be back on the table as soon as Hamas loses the ability to mount a violent opposition.

These concerns are not merely theoretical for Hamas. The organization understands that without weapons and without a role in Gaza's governance, its members would be entirely at the mercy of Israeli decision-making regarding the territory's future. The possibility that disarmament could lead to forced relocations, permanent exclusion from political life, or even prosecution despite amnesty promises creates powerful incentives for Hamas to maintain its armed capabilities regardless of what any ceasefire agreement stipulates.

The Irreconcilable Differences

The pressures pushing against a permanent truce in Gaza are simply too many to count, and the differences between these two sides may turn out to be irreconcilable. The fundamental problem is that Israel and Hamas have mutually exclusive requirements for what a post-war Gaza should look like, and neither side appears willing or able to compromise on their core demands.

Israel insists on the complete destruction or disarmament of Hamas, the organization's permanent exclusion from Gaza's governance, and security arrangements that would give Israel substantial control over the territory's borders and internal security. Hamas, meanwhile, refuses to disarm, insists on maintaining a role in Gaza's administration, and views any arrangement that leaves it defenseless as an unacceptable capitulation that would leave its members vulnerable to Israeli retribution.

These positions are not merely negotiating stances that can be split down the middle through diplomatic compromise. They represent fundamentally incompatible visions for Gaza's future, rooted in deep-seated security concerns, political imperatives, and historical grievances on both sides. Israel cannot accept a Hamas that remains armed and in control of Gaza without abandoning its stated war aims and exposing Netanyahu's government to collapse. Hamas cannot accept disarmament and political marginalization without effectively signing its own death warrant.

The international community, led by the United States, has organized an all-out diplomatic push to ensure that this is the last time that a Gaza ceasefire ever has to be negotiated. However, diplomatic pressure alone cannot resolve contradictions this fundamental. Unless one side experiences a dramatic shift in its strategic calculus—whether through internal political changes, external pressure that fundamentally alters the cost-benefit analysis of continued conflict, or some unforeseen development that creates new possibilities for compromise—the current ceasefire appears to be a temporary pause rather than a pathway to lasting peace.

If the Gaza Strip can avoid a return to war, it will be a blessing and would represent a triumph of diplomacy over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. However, right now, that would also be a major surprise. The immediate violations and escalations, the systemic political pressures on both sides, the unresolved questions about disarmament and amnesty, and the fundamental incompatibility of Israeli and Hamas visions for post-war Gaza all point toward a ceasefire that is more likely to break down than to evolve into a permanent peace agreement. The hope remains that this assessment will prove wrong, but the evidence currently available suggests that unless something changes fast, this ceasefire is headed for a breakdown.

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FAQ

What defines when a ceasefire has actually failed?

A ceasefire only fails when one or both sides of a conflict decide, for whatever reason, that they are no longer going to constrain or adjust their behavior to align with the terms of a truce. Occasional violations can be addressed and terms can be strengthened or changed, so violations alone don't mean the ceasefire has failed—it requires a deliberate decision by parties to abandon the agreement.

What triggered Israel's airstrikes on Sunday?

According to the Israel Defense Forces, Hamas militants fired upon Israeli soldiers operating in a ceasefire-permitted area and killed two of them—the first Israeli troops killed since the ceasefire was signed. Hamas denied ordering the engagement. In response, Israel launched strikes across Gaza using aircraft and artillery, hitting dozens of Hamas-associated targets including field commanders, weapons depots, and at least one tunnel, resulting in over 35 deaths.

How much of Gaza is Israel required to withdraw from under the current ceasefire?

The ceasefire in its current form only calls for Israel to withdraw from approximately 47% of the Gaza Strip, leaving Israeli forces present in substantial portions of the territory. This partial withdrawal arrangement has created ambiguous zones where the boundaries of acceptable military presence remain contested.

What internal actions has Hamas taken since the ceasefire began?

Shortly after being handed control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas began internal purging operations targeting clans that don't bear loyalty to the organization. Within just days, Hamas claimed to have killed dozens of fighters operating in support of those clans, including men who were executed in the streets of Gaza City by masked Hamas gunmen.

What did President Trump say about Hamas's internal crackdowns?

After initially suggesting Hamas had been granted acceptance for its crackdowns, US President Donald Trump threatened that 'If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.' The US State Department also announced it believes Hamas may be planning an 'imminent ceasefire violation against the people of Gaza.'

Why is Israel's manner of response to provocations significant?

Israel chose to launch widespread strikes across the entire Gaza Strip rather than engaging in limited, targeted retaliation against the specific Hamas unit responsible. This disproportionate response, combined with temporarily cutting off humanitarian aid, suggests Israel believes the ceasefire can be tested and still hold together. The danger is that there's no way to know which actions would precipitate a return to fighting until that return has already happened.

Has Hamas committed to disarming as part of the peace process?

No. According to senior officials speaking to Reuters, Hamas fully intends to maintain control over the Gaza Strip without disarming. High-ranking Hamas member Mohammed Nazzal refused to commit to any disarmament initiative. The later stages of the peace deal call for Hamas to disarm in exchange for amnesty and accept they will never have a place in post-war Gaza administration, but Hamas's actions signal the exact opposite.

What political pressures does Netanyahu face regarding the ceasefire?

Israel's hard-right political parties, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, expect Israel to continue the war until Hamas is fully destroyed and have threatened to quit Netanyahu's government if he doesn't restart the war. If they follow through, Netanyahu's government collapses, he likely fails to assemble a replacement, and he's left exposed to corruption charges and an expected inquiry into the failures that led to the October 7 attacks.

Sources

About the Author

Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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