A new Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal has been signed
This new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas includes details on how to bring the fighting to an end, however, actions do not guarantee peace.
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Back in early October of 2023, Hamas, otherwise known as the Islamic Resistant Movement, attacked Israel. This attack sparked devastating conflicts in Gaza. Hamas, a designated terrorist organization by the United States, broke off “from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood [another political Islamist organization] in the late 1980s,” as noted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hamas notoriously refuses to recognize the state of Israel and resists its occupation of Palestine. Hamas is especially active in the Gaza Strip, where fighting between Israel and Hamas has been ongoing since Oct. 7, 2023. It has been estimated by NPR that this conflict has killed one out of every ten people in Gaza, and four out of every 100 children have lost at least one of their parents to the violence. In a response to Hamas’s first attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel declared war and has since fought to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, as the Human Rights Watch has declared.
On Oct. 9, 2025, just two years after the war began, an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal was agreed upon. This is not the first ceasefire that has been negotiated during this conflict. Earlier in January, former president Joe Biden announced a ceasefire deal during his presidential farewell address. About two months later, in the early morning hours of Mar. 18, 2025, Israel broke the ceasefire deal that was agreed to under the Biden Administration, launching air strikes on Gaza, and creating “one of the deadliest days of the Gaza War,” as per NPR. On Oct. 13, 2025, President Trump traveled to Israel and Egypt, where he met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for a ceremony to acknowledge this new ceasefire, which was negotiated during his administration. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not in attendance. The ceasefire process will take place in several steps and stages; it is not guaranteed yet that the fighting is over in Gaza.
American University detailed the three main stages of this ceasefire; first guaranteeing the release of hostages, with peace as a follow-up if both sides continue to follow the terms of the agreement. Each stage will last 42 days. American University stated, “In the first stage, being implemented now, 33 Israeli hostages comprised of women, children, elderly, and wounded, will be returned in return for the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners. It is unknown whether the Israeli hostages returned in this stage will be alive or not.” Humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, was also allowed to enter Gaza again and help the surviving Palestinians, according to AP News. The second stage planned for the exchange of more Palestinian prisoners for younger, male Israeli prisoners. The third and final stage would mark the end of the war; Israeli troops will finally leave Gaza and reconstruction will begin.
President Trump’s more detailed step-by-step plan includes 20 points that the ceasefire agreement must follow. These points detail how and when hostages must be returned, how and which members of Hamas will be allowed to peacefully leave Gaza, how much aid will be sent into Gaza for reconstruction and rehabilitation, and how the United States will continue to interact with Gaza.
Currently, however, the ceasefire has been broken. Still, officials remain set on their goal of reaching a lasting peace in Gaza. On this past Sunday, Israeli forces fired another round of airstrikes, violating the ceasefire, as they claimed that Hamas had also violated the terms, killing Israeli soldiers, according to AP News. An Israeli security official, who spoke to journalists from AP News anonymously, stated that by Monday, aid had again entered Gaza and Israel had “resumed enforcing the ceasefire.”
President Trump commented on Israel's and Hamas’s breaking of the agreement, further according to AP News. He reported that Israel’s actions were “under review” and that groups who violated the ceasefire would “be handled toughly but properly.” AP News also reported that “a senior Egyptian official involved in the ceasefire negotiations said ‘round-the-clock’ contacts were underway to de-escalate the situation.” While the state of the ceasefire after these strikes is still being discussed, as the US president told reporters, those attacks were in violation of the ceasefire agreement that was made earlier this month. Al-Awda Hospital in Central Gaza reported 24 patients between two camps that had been struck by the Israeli airstrikes.
Earlier this year, President Trump hosted the Israeli Prime Minister at the White House and discussed plans for the US occupation of Gaza, which would come after a ceasefire had been successfully carried out. Gaza’s history of conflict over territorial control is lengthy, dating as far back as the Egyptian capturing of Gaza in 1948. President Trump suggested to Netanyahu that “the U.S. will take control over the Gaza Strip.” This would see, as President Trump also suggested, the relocation of millions of Palestinians living in Gaza.
Several weeks after the meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump posted an AI-generated video to his Truth Social account, depicting a “Trump Gaza” with gold statues and large, gaudy buildings. Some people were upset by this video; Palestinian authorities have called the video a “serious violation of international law,” with focus on the fact that others have tried to take over Palestine and displace its citizens before, while emphasizing that Palestinians’ goal is to exist as a free state.
Palestinian Foreign Minister, Varsen Aghabekian Shaheen, specifically referenced the Arab-Israeli war, which led to the creation of Israel in 1948. Shaheen said about current conflicts in Gaza, “we have tried displacement before, and it will not happen again.” However, as reported by PBS News, Benjamin Netanyahu has seemingly supported President Trump’s plan. Also mentioned by PBS, human rights scholars have condemned the plans, echoing Palestinian authorities' sentiments that President Trump’s plans on how to handle Gaza after the conflict's end could violate international law.
It has yet to be seen how this ceasefire agreement, and the legal consequences for all parties in this conflict, will play out, especially after the recent violations of the agreement and the high casualty numbers of this conflict. “At least 64, 964 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since [the conflict’s beginning in 2023], according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the [United Nations],” as per BBC.
In September of this year, BBC also reported that the United Nations has said “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” BBC cited a report which stated that there was reasonable evidence that four genocidal acts, according to international law, had been committed in Gaza since 2023. These genocidal acts are, as listed by BBC, “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births.” The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect lists genocide as one of “the Four Mass Atrocity Crimes,” which “during the 2005 United Nations World Summit, heads of state and government accepted the responsibility of every state to protect its population [against].”