The Ceasefire in Gaza Looks More Like a Continuing War — That Has Been Scaled Down

Ever since the US-mediated ceasefire was initiated to stop fighting in Gaza, there have been almost daily violations by Israel. According to the latest data available till June 4, 2026 from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, about 950 people of Gaza have been killed while about 2950 have been injured during the ceasefire period. The number of Palestinians killed or injured during ceasefire in Gaza is more than the number of people who died in several active wars in much bigger areas. Israel has continued to attack the Palestinians using direct shootings, artillery and of course air attacks.

If over 100 people are being killed every month and about 300 are being injured in direct attacks during the ceasefire in such a small territory of just about 140 sq. miles, then this cannot really be called a ceasefire. It is more like a continuing war that has been scaled down.

Of course the war period of two years from October 2023 to October 2025 was much worse. During this period at least about 72,000 Palestinians were killed over a period of about 24 months or about 3000 per month in a very small area. The people who died due to indirect war related factors like disease, stress, denial of medicines, medical care and other essentials of life was much higher. Nearly 173,000 were injured, or about 7200 per month. In other words nearly 1 out of 14 persons, or one person in every three families, was injured, sometimes in life-altering ways, at a time when medical facilities were being rapidly disrupted.

Nearly 1.9 million of the 2.2 million total number of Gaza’s people were internally displaced, some of them twice or multiple times, while nearly 1.2 million lost their homes.

Thus keeping in view the scale of the devastation, the period of ceasefire should have been one of large scale rehabilitation in a satisfactory way, not of continuing attacks.

In fact the spirit of ceasefire has been entirely missing as aggression against the Palestinians has also increased significantly in West Bank. In fact despite the massive international support received by the two state solutionTwo-State SolutionA proposed diplomatic framework envisioning an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel., this has been pushed away even further in recent months. There has been absolutely no progress in this direction in recent times.

The living conditions for the people of Gaza are becoming increasingly precarious as Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has called upon his soldiers to gain control of 70% of the land of Gaza. Even before the war, Gaza had a very high population density, nearly 12 times that of Israel. If the people of Gaza have to be squeezed into only about a third of their land, population density will reach record levels of around 50,000 people per square mile (up from around 16000 or so in 2022). With adequate humanitarian aid not reaching people, with the livelihood base destroyed, with essential infrastructure of medical care and education lost on a large scale, water and sanitation badly disrupted, how will the people survive, particularly as weather conditions are also increasingly more adverse in times of climate change?

It is extremely sad that even in the context of an issue that has been at the center of world debates, it has not been possible for the international community to come anywhere close to justice. Instead one injustice appears to have been piled up on top of another. Now with some of the ideas that Trump and those close to him have proposed and with Israel speaking time and again of voluntary migrationVoluntary MigrationA controversial term used by some politicians advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza. of the people of Gaza, it appears that justice-based solutions including the two state solution are drifting away further.

It is extremely sad that even after continuing genocidal actions in Gaza for months, Israel leadership has neither apologized nor expressed sincere regret or sadness for the over 70,000 genocidal deaths in Gaza. Instead its highly aggressive attitude has continued to be the same as before.

This, on top of other grave injustices and arbitrary actions in country after country, reminds us of the urgent need for creating a justice-based peace movement worldwide that can increase the chances globally that such intolerable unjust aggressions can be stopped and justice-based peace can become a possibility.