Israel's Deadly Gaza Strikes Cast Doubt On Ceasefire Progress After Kushner Visit

Fresh Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and cast renewed doubt on the fragile ceasefire that has held since October, coming just days after a marathon meeting between senior U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What Happened

According to local hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent, two separate strikes on Wednesday killed at least 10 people. A strike on a police station in Gaza City killed at least nine people and wounded 15 others, while a separate strike in Nuseirat killed one person. The Israeli military said the Nuseirat strike targeted a Hamas commander who had taken part in the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, while a strike in the Tuffah area of Gaza City targeted another Hamas commander allegedly planning further attacks on Israeli forces.

The strikes came a day after an Israeli strike on a seaside cafe in Gaza killed seven Palestinians, including a child, on Tuesday evening.

Separately, witnesses and a Hamas official said around 15 Israeli troops crossed the ceasefire line into the Muwasi coastal area west of Khan Younis in the early hours of Wednesday, detaining a colonel with the Hamas-led Blue Police force along with another resident.

The Diplomatic Backdrop

The violence comes just two days after U.S. negotiators reportedly pressed Israel to scale back its strikes on Gaza. Kushner, a senior adviser and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, held an hours-long meeting with Netanyahu on Monday to raise the issue, following a separate meeting with Hamas leadership days earlier as part of a broader push to keep the ceasefire on track.

The ceasefire, in effect since October as part of a US-backed peace plan, has significantly reduced the scale of fighting in Gaza compared with the earlier stages of the nearly three-year war. But it remains fragile: Israeli strikes since the truce took hold have killed at least 1,273 people, according to health officials in Gaza. The broader conflict has killed more than 73,400 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up roughly half of the fatalities.

Talks on the next phase of the ceasefire remain stuck over the sequencing of two key steps: Hamas's disarmament and Israel's withdrawal from its current positions in Gaza. Trump said earlier this month that Hamas had agreed to disarm, but Hamas has said it would only begin doing so once Israel halts strikes and withdraws, and has tied full disarmament to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state — a demand Netanyahu's government has firmly rejected. Netanyahu has said Israel will not pull back from its current lines until Hamas disarms completely.

Other Developments

Also on Wednesday, Israel's military said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents involving troop conduct during the war and would open criminal investigations into two cases: the killing of a five-year-old girl and her family, and the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics.

The renewed violence underscores how, even with a ceasefire technically in place, the underlying disputes over disarmament, territorial withdrawal and the future governance of Gaza remain far from resolved — leaving U.S. mediators with a narrowing window to convert a fragile truce into a durable settlement.

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