Israeli forces continue to deliberately target and kill Palestinian civilians with snipers, drones, and airstrikes, while further expanding their occupation of territory in Gaza, despite the ceasefire that has been in place since last October, AP reported on 31 May.
“To call it a ceasefire is a joke,” one Israeli soldier told AP.
“We need to stop using this term,” another soldier told the news agency.
It’s not serving people who want to stop the war.
The soldiers described how they shoot Palestinians for approaching the so-called yellow line dividing Gaza that was established as part of the ceasefire agreement reached seven months ago between Israel and Hamas.
The terms of the truce allowed Israeli troops to temporarily occupy the territory to the east of the line, roughly 50 percent of the strip. At the same time, Palestinians were confined to the remaining 50 percent to the west of the line.
“It was a jungle,” said one soldier deployed to Gaza recently. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them,” he told AP.
One Israeli combat soldier described how members of his unit yelled in celebration and congratulated each other after shooting a Palestinian car driving near the yellow line,
killing everyone inside.
The soldier said scenes like this had “become common” after the ceasefire took effect.
“In the weeks he was stationed in Gaza, he said, he saw soldiers relishing the chance to go after those who crossed–or came close to crossing–the so-called yellow line,” AP wrote.
In many cases, Israeli forces have failed or refused to clearly mark the yellow line, leading to confusion among Palestinians living near it and giving Israeli troops the opportunity to kill them for sport.
AP has documented cases of Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian civilians, including children playing, near the yellow line. The soldiers said it “felt like the killings never stopped” after the ceasefire was announced.
Since the ceasefire went into effect, more than 900 people have been killed in Gaza, including dozens shot near the yellow line, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Separate data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S. nonprofit, said Israeli troops killed 73 Palestinians near the yellow line in April, a 25 percent increase from January, when 58 were killed.
Israel has also escalated its killings through airstrikes in recent months. An internal report circulated among aid groups last month said Israel has become “increasingly proactive” with its airstrikes, AP added.
On 26 May, the night before the Eid al-Adha holiday, three Israeli strikes killed 12 Palestinians, according to UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (UNHROPT). A 14-year-old girl injured in that day’s strikes later died. A 30-year-old woman and a five-year-old girl were killed in the same strike.
“Since the announcement of a ceasefire, at least 32 children and eight women have been killed in Israeli attacks in which fatalities were exclusively women and children,” the UNHROPT stated.
“Our concerns about the commission of war crimes in Gaza have not stopped,” said Ajith Sunghay, the head of UNHROPT.
“It is difficult enough to navigate life in chronic displacement in the ruins of Gaza, under blockade, and after Israeli attacks virtually destroyed every essential system: healthcare, education, food production, law enforcement, and civil order. Continuing military attacks on a population living under these conditions is unthinkable,” he stated
Spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basal, said on 31 May that at least 29 Palestinians, including many women and children, have been killed since the start of Eid al-Adha in ongoing Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, while warning of severe shortages and calling for urgent international action to protect civilians and support Gaza’s humanitarian and service sectors.
At least 930 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since the announcement of the so-called ceasefire on 11 October, 2025.
Israel has also occupied additional territory in Gaza beyond the 50 percent temporarily allowed by the truce agreement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged last week that his troops occupy at least 60 percent of the strip. He said he had given the order for the army to expand it further, to 70 percent, as an additional step toward occupying all of Gaza.
During a speech at the Ein Prat Leadership Academy, one audience member shouted that Israel should take “100 percent” of Gaza. Netanyahu responded, saying that “We’re going in order,” suggesting this was the long-term goal of his government.
First 70 percent … we’ll start with that.
Religious nationalist Israeli Jews in Netanyahu’s cabinet hope to colonize all of Gaza by ethnically cleansing it of its Palestinian inhabitants and building settlements for Jews like those they have illegally built in the occupied Palestinian West Bank since 1967.
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