A year ago, Shurouq and her four-year-old daughter were told the war was over. “It doesn't seem like it to us,” the 32-year-old Save the Children worker told her colleagues on Monday. A few days ago, Israel attacked a vehicle that was passing through the neighborhood where they live. Her daughter panicked. Today he still gets scared when he hears the slam of a door or a horn, because he grew up with the sound of ambulances. "If I'm honest, I'm afraid too. I try to hide it and pretend that everything is normal because she needs it," says the woman, who lost her husband at the beginning of the war.
The October 10, 2025 ceasefire, sponsored by Donald Trump as part of his plan to bring peace to Gaza, has stalled: Israel carries out almost daily attacks and occupies about two-thirds of the devastated strip.
"In our hospital, we continue to receive people with war wounds. Last month, we performed several amputations, many of them on children," Dr. Murad Asaliyya, head of medical activities at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) field hospital in Deir al Balah, told La Vanguardia.
In the last year, at least 1,400 Palestinians have died, including 300 children, in addition to 5,000 injured, according to the strip's Health Ministry. Israel claims its attacks target Hamas, which it accuses of carrying out attacks and rearming. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed, according to the Israeli army.
Trump announced in July that Hamas agreed to hand over its weapons on the condition that Israel withdraw from Gaza. A plan that Tel Aviv has rejected while stating that it will continue to advance.
In the first months of this year, Israel has expanded its control beyond the so-called “yellow line”, which limited its presence to 53% of the strip after its withdrawal during the first phase of the ceasefire. However, Israeli forces currently occupy about 65% of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aims for 70%.
“The yellow line has become a mechanism of encirclement and ethnic cleansing,” says Amande Bazerolle, head of MSF's emergency response for Gaza. “The threat to those who live near a line that is not clearly marked is increasingly immediate,” says the organization, which has treated gunshot wounds hit nearby. In addition, rival Palestinian militias of Hamas, which Israel supports, Netanyahu admits, attack from behind the line. Five of them were active in the last year.
Meanwhile, more than two million people live confined to a third of the strip. The vast majority have lost their home, due to it being damaged or destroyed (like 82% of the homes in the strip, according to data from the Palestinian Authority) or are located behind the yellow line. Both cases affect Dr. Asaliyya, who has had to travel 13 times with his wife and two daughters since the start of the war.
However, Shurouq acknowledges to this newspaper that the bombings have decreased. “More humanitarian aid has arrived and health care and access to water and food have slightly improved,” he says, but regrets the Israeli veto on products that he considers dual-use (civil and military), such as essential medical material or intended for reconstruction. “Gaza has gone from surviving constant bombardment to surviving among mountains of ruins,” he notes. Asaliyya, 42, agrees: “What is most painful for me, as a doctor, is having lost patients that we could have saved if we had the necessary medical equipment.” Shorouq adds: “How do you explain to a child that he doesn't have the prosthesis he expects if the war is supposed to be over?”
At least “there is no longer famine,” Raquel Martí, director of the Spanish committee of UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, which has nearly 11,000 local workers in Gaza, tells La Vanguardia. “But there is still malnutrition and, in many cases, acute malnutrition, especially among children and pregnant or lactating women,” he continues. Of the 600 daily trucks agreed upon in the plan, “only 75 have entered on average per day since the beginning of the year,” reports Martí.
According to COGAT, the Israeli military organization that controls access to Gaza, Israel meets the figure of 600 trucks, although it includes humanitarian aid and commercial goods. According to OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency, a large part of these last trucks carry non-essential products, such as cocoa cream, instant coffee and chocolates. “These are goods whose population, which depends 100% on humanitarian aid, cannot buy,” Martí clarifies.
