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Ceasefire No: Israel Seeks to ‘Eat’ Into Gaza

CrossFireArabia
June 12, 2026

As Palestinian factions meet in Cairo to discuss Gaza’s future governance, aid groups and analysts warn that realities on the ground are moving in the opposite direction of the ceasefire framework meant to pave the way for reconstruction and recovery.

While negotiations continue, Israel has expanded its control over large parts of the enclave, strikes have continued, humanitarian access remains severely restricted and reconstruction has yet to begin, leaving Gaza’s more than 2 million residents trapped in a deep humanitarian crisis.

“The implementation of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire has remained limited and inconsistent, particularly due to repeated airstrikes,” Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, told Anadolu.

Around 1,000 people have been killed and 3,000 injured since the ceasefire began, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures.

In September, US President Donald Trump announced a 20-point plan outlining a framework, with the first phase including a ceasefire and prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian factions.

However, implementation of the agreement remains unfulfilled amid ongoing Israeli military operations and mounting humanitarian restrictions.

Israel deepens territorial control

While the ceasefire framework envisioned a gradual Israeli withdrawal, analysts say developments on the ground point in the opposite direction.

Under the Trump plan, Israeli forces initially withdrew to a demarcation known as the Yellow Line, leaving Israel in control of roughly 53% of Gaza’s territory. Since then, Israeli officials have acknowledged expanding their control further.

In May, Israel said it had increased its control to 60% of the Gaza Strip and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military to take control of up to 70%.

Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, said Israeli policy has focused on maintaining long-term military control while avoiding direct responsibility for Gaza’s population.

“Israel’s plans for Gaza have been remarkably consistent: refuse any direct rule over or responsibility for the territory’s impoverished residents, take and hold as much territory within Gaza as possible whilst emptying it of residents and stop any credible external actor from rebuilding Gaza.”

According to Pinfold, Israel does not need to occupy the entire territory to achieve its objectives.

“Indeed, doing so would be counter-productive for Israel without ethnically cleansing the territory of its 2 million inhabitants, since it would find itself responsible for their welfare,” he said.

Instead, he said, Israel appears to be seeking greater strategic depth through buffer zones and allowing its military to operate freely against perceived threats. The expansion also further entrenches Israel into Gaza and makes future withdrawals less feasible, he added.

“Israel is happy to expand further into the territory, however, as a way to squeeze Hamas and keep the possibility of a comprehensive ‘voluntary migration’ – that is, in fact, not voluntary – open,” he said.

Pinfold argued that Israel has been able to act with impunity as the US focuses on other priorities, including negotiations with Iran.

Jafari said plans to place 70% of Gaza under Israeli control raise serious concerns for Palestinians confined to the remaining territory.

“Such a move would further restrict the already limited space available to civilians, many of whom have been repeatedly displaced during the ongoing conflict and are struggling to access shelter, food, water, healthcare and other essential services,” she said.

Humanitarian promises unfulfilled

Aid agencies say many commitments outlined in the ceasefire framework’s first phase have yet to be implemented.

Under the agreement, Gaza was expected to receive between 500 and 600 aid trucks daily. According to Jafari, actual deliveries have averaged between 150 and 250 trucks a day, with many carrying commercial rather than humanitarian goods.

More than 95% of Gaza’s population depends on humanitarian aid for daily food.

“Aid is being weaponized by obstructing it,” said Jafari.

Humanitarian groups say the consequences extend beyond food shortages.

Large parts of Gaza remain covered in rubble, with bodies still believed to be trapped beneath collapsed buildings. Damaged sewage systems, mounting waste and overcrowded displacement sites have contributed to growing public health concerns.

“Access to safe water is limited, and solid waste is accumulating in residential areas. This is attracting pests and rodents that contaminate food and living spaces and increase cases of illness, particularly among children,” said Jafari.

According to assessments cited by UN agencies, rodents and other pests were reported at roughly 80% of sites hosting displaced families, affecting an estimated 1.45 million people.

Reports from Gaza have shown children and others suffering from rodent bites, large infestations and a growing number of skin conditions like scabies. At the same time, hospitals have limited essential medications to treat those affected.

Despite ongoing mitigation efforts with pesticides, Jafari said that health risks remain high.

Closure of key crossings

Humanitarian organizations say access restrictions continue to hamper relief efforts.

Since May 24, Israeli authorities have kept the Zikim Crossing in northern Gaza closed, leaving Kerem Shalom as the last remaining crossing for approved cargo entering the enclave.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt is strictly limited to pedestrian traffic.

“Furthermore, on 1 June, Israeli forces began routing humanitarian convoys through a new road, with a new checkpoint, to reach Kerem Shalom from inside Gaza,” Jafari said.

“As a result, only some of the supplies planned to be collected from Kerem Shalom could be picked up and the volumes of incoming fuel dropped.”

Israel also temporarily closed the Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings following an Iranian missile attack on June 8 before reopening them in subsequent days.

On Wednesday, the UN said Kerem Shalom had been reopened but congestion and operational limits continued.

Reconstruction remains stalled

Despite reconstruction being a central objective of the ceasefire framework, experts say virtually no rebuilding has begun.

Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing Balakrishnan Rajagopal said Gaza’s housing stock and civilian infrastructure remain devastated.

“Housing and civilian infrastructure has been totally destroyed and is still being destroyed, including in Gaza City a few days ago,” he said. “Estimates are that over 90% of the built environment is damaged or destroyed.”

He argued that meaningful reconstruction cannot begin until military operations cease, access restrictions are lifted and supplies can enter Gaza in significantly larger quantities.

“This is a grave situation in terms of violation of international law and a fundamental challenge to the idea of an international community based on rule of law,” Rajagopal said.

News

Hush, Hush! Israeli Expert Says Iran Destroyed Spy Center in First Days of The War

CrossFireArabia
June 2, 2026

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Iran destroyed one of Israel’s most sensitive military intelligence units in the first days of the 39-day war. Israeli intelligence analyst Yossi Melman revealed that an Iranian missile struck a base belonging to Unit 9900 and put it out of action for good, creating a major psychological boost for Iran.

Melman revealed the information on the US SpyTalk website. In one of his articles he stated Unit 9900 is one of Israel’s most prominent military intelligence units, undertaking advanced tasks in intelligence gathering, analysis, and the production of field data relevant to military operations. Striking it on the first days of the war would be a major blow to the US-Israeli military alliance on Iran.

The analyst noted the Iranian missile targeting Beit Shemesh where nine Israelis were killed and the injury of dozens more, also struck sensitive facilities, including a military base located on Tel Azka, as well as a satellite station in the Wadi al-Sant (Emek Ha’ila) area, about five kilometers from Beit Shemesh according to Qudspress.

Because of the strict military censors Israel imposes, such information has only been recently received and/or talked about.

In a related matter, Melman said it is Israel that builds military bases

near residential areas, despite the fact that Jewish leaders have consistently accused Palestinian and Lebanese factions like Hamas and Hezbollah of operating from among centers with civilian populations, endangering the residents there, and using them as human shields.

“The reality is that a significant number of Israeli military and intelligence bases operate near, and sometimes even within, populated areas,” he added, which is like the pot calling the kettle black.

These military bases carry significant risks and danger to the civilian populations who are living within the vicinity of such installations, he concluded.

Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman and blogs for crossfirearabia.com

News

Zamir: Israel May Resume War on All ‘Active Fronts’

CrossFireArabia
April 29, 2026

Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said Monday that intense fighting could resume across all of Israel’s active fronts this year according to the Drop Site website.

“We remain ready and on alert for the possibility of a resumption of intense fighting on all these fronts—2026 could still be a year of fighting on each of them,” Zamir told army officers during a meeting. I

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to say whether the Trump administration would support Israel resuming the war in Gaza, but said that “the entirety of this project only works if Hamas is demilitarized.”

Hamas has consistently refused to discuss disarmament until Israel ceases its violations of the ceasefire and fulfills its Phase One obligations according to Drop Site.

Opinion

The US General Who Swallowed His Own Truth

CrossFireArabia
March 6, 2026

By Jassem Al-Azzawi

General Dan Kaine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a confidential warning to President Trump with the utmost candor—the kind of candor that democracies rely on and empires routinely ignore. He said: “We don’t have enough ammunition to win this war. It’s not going to be pretty.” This warning wasn’t born of cowardice; it was the last vestige of institutional integrity that still flickers within the halls of American military power.

Trump’s response was that of a circus clown, not a commander-in-chief. Through his “Truth Social” platform—that distorted mirror of American political life—he dismissed the warning with the arrogance of a street vendor, saying: “Oh, no, no, no. If we do it, we’ll win easily.” Thus, a sober assessment became mere publicity, and caution a lie.

But the biggest lie came later. When Kaine’s warning leaked, Trump not only rejected it but completely reversed it. With the confidence of a man who has never been held accountable for anything, he told the American public the general had said the exact opposite—that the United States had plenty of missiles, munitions, and everything else. “That’s not what he said at all,” Trump declared, putting words of false victory in the mouth of a man who had offered only warnings.

And General Cain remained silent

This silence is not just a footnote in this story; it is the story itself. By remaining silent, Cain allowed the American public to absorb the falsehood as truth. He did not say: “No, Mr. President, that’s not what I said.” He did not invoke his oath, nor the soldiers who would pay with their lives for the gap between political rhetoric and logistical reality. He chose the safety of silence over the danger of truth, and in doing so, he betrayed not only himself but the Republic. This is the rot at the heart of American militarism.

As historian Andrew Bacevich has long warned, the professional military has become more of an instrument of imperial ambition than a defender of democratic values, with senior officers more concerned with their next post than with the Constitution they swore to uphold. Kaine’s silence was not a mere slip of the tongue; it was a symptom of a deeper malaise.

The logistical picture Kaine described in private was not theoretical; the calculations were unforgiving.

Current stockpiles of interceptor missiles and precision munitions could not sustain a prolonged air campaign against a country three times the size of Iraq. The Wall Street Journal documented a “worrying gap” in U.S. missile stockpiles, noting that reserves were “far below” the requirements of intensive and sustained operations. Pentagon contractors were instructed to “double or even quadruple” production of Patriot, SM-6, and precision-strike missiles—a tacit admission that the arsenal built for Cold War scenarios is inadequate for the war being fought today.

Consider Gaza: Israel, the most heavily armed military power in the Middle East, with complete air and naval dominance, has turned a tiny coastal strip into a moon-like landscape of devastation over two and a half years, yet it has not broken Hamas. Gaza is only 37 kilometers long. Iran, on the other hand, is a nation of 90 million people, with mountainous terrain, strategic depth, fortified infrastructure, and a combat-hardened Revolutionary Guard. The idea that it will collapse under a few weeks of American airstrikes is not strategy; it is wishful thinking. “God help us if this continues, if it gets to four weeks,” Colonel Daniel Davis warned on the Deep Dive podcast. He was speaking in military terms, and the same prayer applies. Politically.

When Trump now raises the prospect of sending ground troops, he is not escalating from a position of strength, but rather improvising from a position of denial. Admitting that air power and missiles alone cannot achieve the political objective is an admission that the original objective was never honestly assessed. This is the pattern of American wars at the end of an empire: Glittering promises, disastrous calculations, and then a grim and horrific reckoning paid in blood by those who had no seat at the table where the lies were told.

The costs are already piling up—not just in the currency of munitions and riches, but in the currency that empires always ultimately spend and regret most: credibility. America’s word, already devalued by two decades of contrived justifications for war, is getting cheaper by the day.

Democracies can tolerate miscalculations, and they can tolerate bad presidents, but what they cannot long tolerate is the institutionalization of a culture where the truth is whispered behind closed doors and swallowed whole in front of cameras. When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff allows his words to be weaponized for propaganda — when the man in charge of counting missiles refuses to correct a president who pretends they are plentiful — something far greater than military credibility collapses.

What is crumbling is the social contract between the governed and those who send them to their deaths.

Caine’s silence was not cautious; it was complicity. And in an imperial machine suffering from a shortage of ammunition and a shortage of truth, complicity is the only resource that seems inexhaustible, because when the missiles finally run out, slogans won’t replace them.

Reality will.

Al-Azzawi is an Iraqi writer who contributed this piece to Al Rai Al Youm which was translated and appeared in crossfire.com

News

‘Europe Shouldn’t Toe The Israeli Line’

CrossFireArabia
February 8, 2026

Linking reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip to demilitarisation legitimises the ongoing genocide Israel has been committing in the enclave for more than two years and violates peremptory norms of international law.

This condition ignores the grave crimes committed by Israel against civilians and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and turns the population’s right to reconstruction into a bargaining chip for political leverage, in explicit breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which require the protection of civilians and the provision of their basic needs without restriction or condition.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor condemns the comments made by EU High Representative Kaja Kallas, who tied Gaza’s reconstruction to Hamas’ demilitarisation. This stance significantly deviates from the EU’s commitment to preventing genocide by setting political and security conditions that endanger civilians’ rights to life and safety.

Kallas confirmed in remarks on 29 January and 2 February that “Gaza’s reconstruction will depend on Hamas’ demilitarisation,” underscoring a clear insistence on linking civilians’ rights to reconstruction and survival to a political condition unrelated to protection obligations under international law, particularly for a population in a territory almost entirely destroyed by the genocide Israel has been committing since October 2023.

The position adopted by the EU High Representative reinforces a systematic European approach of complicity, militarily, economically, and politically, with the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinian civilians. This approach is reflected in the continued failure to adopt meaningful accountability or pressure measures despite the grave and unprecedented crimes committed over the past two years, alongside the ongoing export of weapons and military equipment by key European Union states documented as being used in war crimes against Palestinian civilians, thereby engaging those states’ legal responsibility for contributing to and sustaining such violations.

The prevention or delay of reconstruction in the Gaza Strip falls within Article II(c) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which prohibits “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted, rendering the conditioning of reconstruction, an essential requirement for the population’s survival, on the fulfilment of a political or security condition, including disarmament, legally void.

This condition constitutes a serious breach of the European Union’s and its Member States’ positive obligation to prevent genocide, which requires the use of all possible and legally available measures to halt and end the deadly living conditions imposed on the civilian population, rather than creating additional obstacles to their removal or using political and economic influence to shield the continuation or prolongation of the crime.

Lima Bustami, Head of the Legal Department at Euro-Med Monitor, stated that “both legal and moral imperatives require the European Union to direct its political pressure towards Israel as the party responsible for this destruction.”

“This should be achieved by suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement and linking all forms of economic, military, and diplomatic cooperation to the immediate cessation of the genocide, compliance with the rulings of the International Court of Justice, and the initiation of Gaza’s reconstruction alongside reparations for victims,” Bustami added. “Instead, Israel is imposing impossible living conditions on victims, effectively tying their right to life to security arrangements to which they are not a party.”

She continued, “This approach represents a flagrant inversion of justice: the perpetrator of genocide is effectively granted yet another veto over the reconstruction of what its military machinery has destroyed, while victims are punished twice, first through mass killing, and again by being denied their fundamental right to rebuild their lives.”

Euro-Med Monitor warns that these political conditions may be implemented on the ground by withholding or suspending reconstruction funding, restricting the entry of construction materials and essential goods, banning financial transactions, disrupting UN mechanisms and obstructing their work, or imposing other measures that deprive the population of life’s necessities. Such measures go beyond political bias and may legally amount to complicity in genocide, as they provide political cover and tangible material support that sustain deadly living conditions.

The conditioning of the fundamental rights of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, including the rights to housing, health, and survival, on political, military, or security objectives, constitutes collective punishment expressly prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It also undermines core principles of international humanitarian law, particularly the principle of distinction and the prohibition on punishing civilians for acts they did not personally commit, and places direct legal responsibility on those imposing such conditions for the resulting consequences.

Euro-Med Monitor stresses that the rules of international humanitarian law apply unconditionally, irrespective of political considerations, and that reconstruction is a legal right of victims and an essential component of the duty to provide reparation, not a reward or bargaining chip used for political gain at the expense of affected civilians’ rights.

This condition constitutes a grave violation of the international human rights framework, as reconstruction and the entry of necessary materials are indispensable to the realisation of the civilian population’s fundamental rights, foremost the rights to life, an adequate standard of living, housing, health, food, and water. The most vulnerable groups, particularly children and women, bear the brunt of this deprivation, as their rights are immediately and directly harmed by ongoing destruction, siege, and the denial of life-sustaining essentials.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, must publicly retract her statements linking Gaza’s reconstruction to demilitarisation and refrain from policies that provide cover for the continuation of genocide in the Gaza Strip and for Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people as a whole.

Influential international actors, particularly the European Union, must impose deterrent economic and diplomatic sanctions on Israel to compel compliance with the International Court of Justice’s rulings. This legal duty extends beyond permitting reconstruction to include the immediate imposition of a comprehensive arms export ban on Israel and ensuring accountability for the perpetrators of these crimes.

Euro-Med Monitor stresses that it is profoundly disgraceful for the European Union to deliberate over the conditions for rebuilding the destruction caused by machinery supplied by some of its Member States.

The international community must act decisively to compel Israel to comply with international law by immediately and comprehensively ceasing all crimes and grave violations against civilians in the Gaza Strip. Achieving justice requires activating a comprehensive and effective accountability process and guaranteeing victims the right to an effective remedy and to fair, comprehensive compensation for the material and moral harm suffered, as this is both an obligation on Israel and a legal entitlement for victims, unaffected by limitation periods.

Euro-Med Monitor calls on influential international actors, including the European Union, to comply fully with international law by separating the humanitarian track, including reconstruction as an inalienable right, from political and security considerations, ensuring that reconstruction is recognised as a legal duty and a right of victims rather than a tool of negotiation or coercion.

The international community must act urgently to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip and ensure the unrestricted entry of reconstruction materials, as this is a binding legal obligation and a humanitarian necessity to safeguard the rights, lives, and dignity of the civilian population. – Human Rights Monitor