Why Did Hamas Violate the Latest Ceasefire?
- Mideast Journal Staff
- Oct 20
- 3 min read
Hamas has violated the latest US-brokered ceasefire. Hamas failed to return the bodies of the last slain hostages and on Sunday, Palestinian terror operatives attacked IDF soldiers in Rafah.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump publicly declared for the first time that Hamas violated the ceasefire deal after downplaying Israeli claims last week that Hamas violated the terms of the deal by failing to return all the hosages, living and deceased. US officials previously said Hamas was working on retrieving the bodies under complicated conditions in Gaza.
Why hasn’t Hamas returned the remaining slain hostages?
Since last Monday, the terror group Hamas released the last 20 living hostages, within 72 hours of Israel’s withdrawal from an agreed-upon line in Gaza, as part of the shaky ceasefire deal orchestrated by Trump, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and top White House adviser Jared Kushner.
However, Trump’s 20-point plan has not been fully implemented, with only two of the 20 clauses carried out so far. One clause saw that Israeli forces withdraw from the agreed-upon Yellow Line in Gaza, to prepare for the hostages’ release. A second clause saw that Israel release thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, in exchange for the hostages, living and deceased. Those Palestinian security prisoners released last week as part of the deal included hundreds of convicts: a Palestinian cop who joined an infamous lynching of two IDF reservists in 2000 during the beginning of the Second Intifada, a Gaza man who raped and murdered a 13-year-old boy, and others serving life sentences for bombings, murders and terror attacks.
Hamas has not returned 16 slain hostages, including 14 Israelis and two foreign nationals. While Hamas has claimed it does not know where they are in the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials say they do not believe the claim. According to Lazar Berman, diplomatic reporter at The Times of Israel, Hamas, “seems determined to show that it controls events on the ground,” and explains why the full ceasefire implementation is not happening.
Attacks on IDF soldiers in blatant violation of deal
Palestinain terror operatives set off violent attacks on two Israeli soldiers Sunday in Rafah, on the Israeli-held eastern side of the ceasefire line— a blatant violation of the ceasefire deal. Israel retaliated and carried out airstrikes with fighter jets and artillery shelling in Rafah to “remove threats.” Hamas has denied its operatives were involved. In another incident on Sunday, the IDF eliminated armed terror operatives after they crossed the Yellow Line, near nothern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya. The IDF has since announced, “in accordance with the directive of the political echelon, and after a series of significant strikes, the IDF has begun renewed enforcement of the ceasefire following its violation by the Hamas terror organization," trying to hold up a weak ceasefire deal.
The IDF had briefly halted aid deliveries to Gaza, but said it would resume the transfer of much needed aid by Monday.
Trump had said on Sunday that the ceasefire still remains in place despite the strikes in the last 24 hours. He told reporters aboard Air Force One that “we want to make sure it’s going to be very peaceful.”
Trump added that Hamas has been “quite rambunctious,” and “they’ve been doing some shooting,” suggesting that the violence might be the fault of “rebels” within the organization rather than its leadership.