Six Killed in Gaza Despite Truce, Hamas in Cairo

For Belgrade, which for years has carefully balanced its ties with Israel and with its Arab partners, and whose foreign policy is increasingly shaped by its European perspective, what happens in Gaza is not a distant story but a test of the entire diplomatic channel Serbia maintains in the Middle East. On Sunday, July 12, Israeli strikes killed at least six people in Gaza, even though a ceasefire brokered by the United States has been formally in force for nine months. Among the dead was nine-year-old Tala Abu Matar, killed in the Al Bureij refugee camp, while four more people died in an airstrike on a metal foundry in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The picture these attacks leave behind clashes with the promise that accompanied last autumn’s deal. The October 2025 ceasefire halted major combat and opened the way for prisoner exchanges, but it did not silence the guns entirely. According to Palestinian figures, Israeli forces have since killed more than 1,000 people in individual strikes, giving the whole arrangement the character of a fragile, selective peace rather than a durable end to the conflict.

Why does the truce fail to stop the fire?

The answer lies in the nature of the agreement itself. The ceasefire was designed as the first phase of a wider plan by US President Donald Trump, and it governs the halt of major operations and humanitarian access while leaving the most sensitive questions open. Israel retains the right to so-called targeted strikes whenever it judges there is a threat, and it is precisely that clause, interpreted very broadly, that turns each incident into a potential tragedy for civilians who have nowhere to shelter.

The Sabra neighbourhood and the Al Bureij camp are not exceptions but a pattern. The metal foundry hit in Gaza City is officially a military target in the Israeli reading, while for residents it was a workplace in a densely populated area. In an arrangement where the line between combatant and civilian is drawn from the air and at a distance, a nine-year-old girl becomes a statistic in a report about a violated, yet formally valid, truce. This is the geopolitical reality facing mediators in both Cairo and Washington.

Cairo, disarmament and the plan’s second phase

While the casualties are being counted in Gaza, the diplomatic part of the story is unfolding in the Egyptian capital. Hamas leaders travelled to Cairo for talks on implementing the second phase of the Trump peace plan, one that involves two demands the movement has not yet accepted: disarmament and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from its remaining positions. Sources close to the negotiations say there is no breakthrough for now, because it is exactly over the question of weapons that the backbone of the entire arrangement is breaking.

Hamas has, however, already taken one step read in Western chancelleries as a signal of readiness to compromise. On July 6 the movement announced that it was dissolving its civilian administration in Gaza and handing power to a Palestinian technocratic committee foreseen by the agreement itself. That raises the question of who will actually govern the enclave, who will guarantee security and under whose oversight, and the answer will determine whether the second phase can take hold at all. Egypt and Qatar, as traditional mediators, are trying to bridge the gap, but without American pressure on both sides a shift is hard to imagine.

For Serbia and its European partners, who at the multilateral level back a two-entity solution, the message from this weekend is uncomfortably clear. A ceasefire that permits strikes, and negotiations held while bombs still fall, do not build the trust needed for the next step. If the plan’s second phase is not translated into verifiable guarantees, it is doubtful whether Cairo can deliver anything but delay. Do you think a peace built on a conditional truce can survive at all while civilians are buried on the very same day?