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Palestinian factions reject US-backed plans linking humanitarian aid to weapons surrender, demanding a political horizon.
In the shattered neighbourhoods of Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, the roar of Israeli drones and the concussive thud of controlled demolitions are daily reminders that the war has never really ended.
Despite a “ceasefire” in place since October, families continue to pull bodies from the rubble. According to local medical sources, 828 Palestinians have been killed since the “truce” began. Now, families in Gaza are bracing for a renewed offensive as Israeli officials threaten to tear up the fragile agreement to force a surrender.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly cancelled a scheduled security cabinet meeting on Sunday, opting instead for smaller consultations. Simultaneously, the military has ramped up pressure to resume hostilities. A senior official in the Israeli military’s General Staff told Channel 15 that an additional round of fighting was “almost inevitable”, citing the refusal of Hamas to surrender its weapons and the alleged “failure” of the International Stabilization Force, a multinational body deployed under the recent truce framework to oversee security and manage the ceasefire’s implementation.
Israel’s Army Radio reported that on the ground, the military has steadily been enlarging the territory it controls in the besieged enclave. By gradually pushing the “ceasefire”-established “Yellow Line” westwards, Israeli forces have expanded their territorial control to 59 percent of the Strip, regularising their occupation through daily violations of the “ceasefire” and moving additional troops from the Lebanese front into Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The ‘political surrender’ trap
In Cairo, mediators are applying intense pressure on Palestinian factions to accept a new framework pushed by Nikolay Mladenov, the high representative for the United States-backed Board of Peace.
Abdul Jabbar Said, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the Palestinian website Ultra Palestine that Mladenov has tried to enforce a roadmap that would require the complete disarmament of Hamas within 281 days over five stages. The plan, which builds on United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point vision, strictly conditions humanitarian aid, reconstruction and the opening of crossings into Gaza on the phased handover of weapons. Analysts and Palestinian officials have previously told Al Jazeera this framework is designed to enforce the complete “political surrender” of the armed groups.
Analysts noted the strategy aims to turn the newly formed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NGAC), a technocratic body established to govern civilian affairs and oversee reconstruction in the enclave, into a proxy security arm for the occupation.
Said confirmed to Ultra Palestine that a unified front of Palestinian factions — including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — has universally rejected the disarmament prerequisite. Instead, the groups insisted on the full implementation of the first phase of the “ceasefire”, which Israel has repeatedly violated by blocking the agreed-upon entry of 600 aid trucks daily.
Linking security to statehood
Wissam Afifa, a political analyst in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that Hamas is navigating the diplomatic pressure by linking security arrangements directly to comprehensive political rights.
“The resistance insists that disarmament is tied to the ambition of establishing a Palestinian state and a complete end to the occupation,” Afifa said. He noted that the US and Israel are trying to decouple the issue of weapons from any political horizon — meaning a guaranteed, diplomatic path toward Palestinian independence and sovereignty — turning humanitarian relief into a tool for blackmail.
Military exhaustion and smoke screens
The drumbeat of war in Gaza may also be a tactical distraction from Israeli strategic failures elsewhere, analysts said. Mamoun Abu Amer, an expert on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the threats are a “smoke screen” designed to extort mediators and salvage Netanyahu’s political standing before the October elections.
Abu Amer highlighted that resuming the war would spell the collapse of the flagship US peace initiative, a move Netanyahu can ill afford while seeking coordination with Washington against Iran.
Furthermore, the Israeli military is buckling under the strain of multifront conflicts. Citing former military operations chief Israel Ziv, Abu Amer noted that the army is deeply exhausted, with reservists serving an average of 80 days a year in 2026. Opening a renewed front in Gaza while the crisis in southern Lebanon remains an “open wound”, Abu Amer said, would present a strategic nightmare for the Israeli establishment.
For the Palestinians trapped in the enclave, the geopolitical wrangling offers little respite. According to medical data released on Saturday, the death toll since the war began has reached at least 72,608. With three more Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes on Sunday afternoon alone, the people of Gaza remain caught between the creeping reality of endless occupation and the looming shadow of another devastating war.
