Gaza Strikes Kill 18 as Israel Demands Disarmament First

Israeli warplanes struck Gaza City in the north, Deir al Balah in the center and the area around Khan Younis in the south of the Strip on Sunday, and Palestinian health officials reported that at least 18 people were killed, the highest single day toll in several weeks and one of the deadliest days since a ceasefire was reached last October. The strikes came four days after US President Donald Trump announced a breakthrough in enforcing that agreement, and they measure the gap between what gets signed under American guarantees and what actually happens on the ground, a gap every small country that builds its own security on someone else’s guarantees watches closely, Serbia included.

Sunday’s toll, according to Palestinian officials and the civil emergency service, looked like this:

• at least four people were killed in Deir al Balah
• in Al Mawasi near Khan Younis, a married couple and their nine-year-old son were killed in a strike on a house
• in Gaza City, a married couple and their child were killed in a strike on an apartment
• two people were killed in a strike on a tent near the office of the Egyptian mission in Gaza City
• one person was killed near Jabalia in the north of the Strip

A separate strike in Al Mawasi wounded five people and set tents on fire, the civil emergency service said. The Israeli military said it had killed Abdallah Adnan Taha Abu al Tayf, a member of Hamas’s Nuhba unit and a participant in the October 7 attack, in Deir al Balah, and that it had killed Jalal Sobieh, commander of Hamas’s Daraj Tuffah battalion, in the Shati refugee camp.

What Israel Is Demanding as a Condition

Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Army Radio on Sunday that no agreement had been reached to halt the attacks on Gaza.

In the agreement we signed with the United States, our position is that Hamas must be dismantled. That is the first thing that has to happen.

Cohen added that he was very skeptical disarmament would actually happen, and that if it did not, Israel would have to take full control of the enclave. The prime minister’s office said the same day that Washington had been told of Israel’s concerns over the disarmament plan.

For Israel, the most important thing is that nothing can happen before Hamas is fully and genuinely disarmed.

That was the message from Doron Spielman, spokesman for Netanyahu’s office. A sharper tone came from the right flank of the coalition: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called the disarmament plan unacceptable.

Who Moves First, Hamas or the Israeli Military?

The dispute is not over what the road maps say but over their order. Hamas rejects the word disarmament outright and instead offers to hand its weapons over for safekeeping to the US-backed Palestinian Authority, but only after Israel halts its attacks and withdraws troops from the areas it seized after the October agreement. Israel is demanding the reverse: full disarmament and destroyed tunnels before any troop movement. Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said Sunday that the movement had shown considerable flexibility and accused Israel of imposing facts on the ground.

This escalation, which coincides with progress on the political track, clearly shows that the occupying government is seeking to undermine efforts to end the war and to impose facts on the ground by force.

We noted the same deadlock when the disarmament deal was first announced, in a report on how strikes on Gaza continued despite the announced agreement. In three days, the death toll changed. The question of who moves first did not.

The Yellow Line Has Shifted

The October 2025 agreement left Israeli forces in control of 53 percent of the Strip, with a gradual withdrawal planned. Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed Sunday that the Israeli-held zone had now grown to 60 to 70 percent of the territory as the military searches for tunnels. The yellow blocks marking the line of demarcation have moved in at least five areas, including Gaza City, Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, forcing residents out, seven local residents told Reuters. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on July 20 that thirty families had left the area along the yellow line east of Gaza City after an Israeli evacuation order.

Sixty year old Soumaya Dawla of Gaza City said the Israeli-controlled zone had shifted toward her house, since the blocks had appeared closer than the day before.

We are waiting to be displaced at any moment. Our whole life is gone, our whole future is gone, and our children’s future is gone.

Dawla added that she had hoped Trump’s announcement would bring change, but instead both the destruction and the displacement had increased. Aya Mohamad Zaki (32) described the Sunday by phone from the Strip.

It felt like the war had started all over again, there was a strike every hour or more often, and planes were hitting places across the Gaza Strip, in the north, the center and the south, everywhere.

The 15-Point Road Map and the Numbers Behind It

Trump’s Board of Peace, the American body overseeing the ceasefire, released a 15-point road map on Friday laying out the final steps for implementing the agreement. Nikolai Mladenov, the Board’s envoy for Gaza, wrote on X that the strikes had been carried out despite mediators’ efforts to get Palestinian factions to accept the road map, and that he was working with the parties and regional partners on de-escalation and on creating room for the full implementation of Trump’s plan.

Lasting peace is difficult, but achievable if everyone makes their best effort.

Since the October agreement, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,230 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza, while Hamas does not disclose how many of its fighters have died. Over the same period, four Israeli soldiers have been killed, according to Israeli figures. More than two million residents of the enclave are packed into a narrow coastal strip, most of them in makeshift tents and damaged buildings.

If the 15-point road map fails to settle the question of sequencing, and neither side is yet backing off its own reading of it, the next test will be the shift itself, from political statements to troop movements. Mediators, according to Mladenov’s post, are working on that with the Palestinian factions and regional partners.