On 31 January the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched heavy and intermittent airstrikes across multiple locations in Gaza killing at least 36 Palestinians, including six children.
The attacks in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza City on houses, tents, apartments and a police station constituted one of the deadliest days of bombing since the October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
A 63-year-old Palestinian man, Khaled Dahliz, was killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Al-Shakoush area northwest of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Talha Al-Hajin, a two-year-old toddler, lost all his family and remains in critical condition with severe head and leg injuries.
The IOF targeted a woman’s police station in northern Gaza killing female police officer Najoud Al-Madhoun. Three young sisters, Zeina, Mariam, and Menna Mahmoud Al-Atbash, were killed alongside their grandmother and their aunt after an Israeli airstrike hit a residential apartment west of Gaza City.
Israeli naval gunboats also opened fire near the Al-Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing five-year-old Hala Abu Dhalfa while she was playing in the sand.
One video captured moments as Israeli shelling struck the vicinity of the Ghaith Camp in the southern Gaza Strip, which shelters large numbers of displaced families living in tents and is home to the vast majority of the enclave’s population of two million.
Shrapnel from the missiles flew long distances, with debris cutting through tents, causing widespread injuries and panic.
While Israel has framed these strikes as responses to alleged Hamas breaches of the ceasefire, observers have noted that Israel has been violating its terms for months.
The multi-phased US-brokered ceasefire agreed last October was intended to halt the Israeli war on the Strip, secure the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, allow in humanitarian aid, and lay the groundwork for a phased transition to peace and the disarmament of Gaza’s resistance groups.
While Hamas has adhered to all the key points in the first phase of the agreement by releasing all remaining living and dead Israeli hostages, Israel never committed to its obligations to withdraw all its occupying forces to agreed lines in Gaza or allow in the entry of crucial humanitarian aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also delayed the opening of the Rafah Crossing for months until 1 February. Humanitarian groups said that only a trickle of aid has been allowed in, with very few Palestinians allowed to cross through Rafah for medical care under strict Israeli supervision and control.
Israel violated the ceasefire hundreds of times between October 2025 and late January 2026, with estimates ranging from 730 to over 1,450 recorded violations by early 2026 through air attacks, artillery raids, shootings, and demolition operations inside Gaza.
These actions include bombardments, direct shootings at civilians, raids beyond the agreed “Yellow Line”, property destruction, and the detention of Palestinians.
Reported Palestinian deaths from Israeli fire since the ceasefire began exceeded 500 to 520 by late January, according to Palestinian Health Ministry tallies, an average of just over 4.5 deaths per day.
Another 1,400 people have been wounded. While these figures sit below the daily averages seen during the genocide phase (the daily average then exceeded 92 deaths) prior to the ceasefire, they still represent an ongoing genocide.
A large share of the incidents has occurred along the so-called “Yellow Line”, an artificial and ostensibly temporary demarcation imposed by the IOF through the middle of the enclave. The line separates areas under Hamas control from zones occupied by the Israeli army, which now comprise just over half of the Gaza Strip.
Despite ceasefire terms aimed at vastly increasing humanitarian access, Israel has continued to restrict aid, delay critical supplies, and keep crossings closed. Humanitarian organisations have emphasised that ongoing violence, restricted aid access, and the slow implementation of reopening crossings have meant that Gazans continue to live in near-war conditions, with inadequate food, medical care, and infrastructure.
Israel has barred dozens of medical, international, and humanitarian groups from operating in or entering Gaza. The list includes the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Oxfam, CARE International, and the International Rescue Committee.
On Sunday, foreign ministers from several Muslim-majority countries issued a joint letter condemning Israel’s repeated ceasefire violations in Gaza, which they say have killed and wounded more than 1,000 Palestinians since the October 2025 agreement.
Drafted by Saudi Arabia and co-signed by Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey, the letter warns that Israel’s actions risk escalating tensions and undermining efforts to advance phase two of Trump’s ceasefire plan.
In mid-January, the Trump administration announced the launch of phase two of the agreement that addresses the establishment of a technocratic government in Gaza and disarmament. In the absence of details and mechanisms agreed to by both parties, the already fragile ceasefire deal is facing major stumbling blocks.
Writing in the left-leaning Israeli Haaretz newspaper, Israeli political analyst Gideon Levy charged that Netanyahu is deliberately escalating the violence in Gaza to sabotage the agreement and return to full-fledged war on the Strip.
The 31 January Israeli massacre in Gaza was timed, wrote Levy, to coincide with the reopening of the Rafah Crossing, which Israel wants to keep closed and maintain its blockade of the Strip since October 2023.
“The reopening of the Gaza-Egypt border is supposed to mark a new beginning. Phase II of the American plan begins. Is that indeed the case? Israel will do all it can to sabotage it,” Levy wrote.
“It’s the desire to disrupt Donald Trump’s plan, in order to return to war.”
Others have suggested that Israel has used the ceasefire periods to reshape realities on the ground, conducting strikes in Gaza and beyond in Lebanon and the West Bank, and pursuing military objectives under the guise of security.
For the first time since the war began in 2023, Israel has accepted the Palestinian death toll count as accurate. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted military officials as saying that “we estimate that about 70,000 Gazans were killed in the war, not including the missing.”
The acknowledgement is seen as an attempt at improving Israel’s globally damaged reputation. Because it was untenable for Israel to dismiss this basic tally, accepting the figure gives it room to control the narrative and dispute findings.
Palestinians say tens of thousands of people remain trapped under rubble.
The enormity of the war’s death toll has rendered Israel’s daily killing of Palestinians routine.
“Who believed that ‘if they only released the hostages’? Who believed in the ceasefire?” UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese wrote on X.
“After killing over 500 people in about three months, Israel, armed and supported by the US, continues its genocide in Gaza undisturbed. Don’t let it become the new normal,” she said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: