Written by Dominick Skinner | 4 October 2025
After months of blood, rubble, and empty promises, the first hint of peace finally broke through the noise, and Israel answered it with bombs.
Minutes after Hamas publicly announced that it had accepted the U.S.-backed ceasefire framework, that it would negotiate a release the remaining Israeli hostages and step down from control of Gaza, Israeli jets were already bombing targets in Gaza City and Khan Younis. Families who had dared to believe the nightmare might be over found themselves running once more into streets already cratered from the last “ceasefire.”
This is how Israel negotiates peace, by bombing the people it claims to be liberating, as seen in the over 500 violations of the ceasefire with Lebanon.
The deal itself, brokered by Washington is undeniably flawed. It delivered the plausible deniability for Israel to continue their genocide when Hamas rejected it, a rejection that seemed almost inevitable under the terms offered. However, Hamas’ response indicated that they simply want the slaughter to end, even if it means that their organisation must hand over power in the Gaza Strip. Western outlets, like the BBC, had sowed the seeds for this rejection, running stories implying that it had already happened, seemingly prepared for what everyone thought was a certain rejection.
The rejection did not come, however. Whether the BBC’s coverage was a lie or not remains to be seen, however, they have had a consistent string of bad journalistic practices in their coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. While Hamas did have some issues, mainly that they want a full Israeli withdrawal from the Strip and a Palestinian-run leadership in the interim, they still agreed to the framework of peace promised by Trump. Other groups in the Strip have backed Hamas’ response too, including Islamic Jihad.
Hours after Hamas agreed to discuss the deal, the Israeli Defense Forces announced a “pause” in Gideon’s Chariot II, the planned full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City. The pause, they said, was part of a “reduction” in bombings. But reduction is a word that does not exist in the rubble. Israel has not said how much bombing counts as reduced, nor how many dead civilians would meet their definition of restraint. In practice, the reduction looks identical to what came before it, explosions echoing across the Strip, black smoke rolling through neighborhoods already flattened. It is not yet clear if the declaration that the remaining Gaza City residents are combatants will also be put on ice.
And this is the pattern. Israel signs ceasefires, announces pauses, and calls them proof of restraint while the bombs continue to fall. The January truce lasted two months before Netanyahu ordered what he called “the beginning” of a new campaign. The 2021 ceasefire was broken within days. In Lebanon, agreements were shredded before the ink had dried. There is no consistency except the consistency of betrayal.
For all the talk of security, all the speeches about defense, what Israel cannot defend is the reality that it bombs every chance at peace it is ever offered. Hamas agreed to step down, not a symbolic gesture, but an admission of defeat in the administrative sense, a willingness to give up power for the sake of saving lives. And yet Israel chose to keep killing.
Trump called on Israel to stop bombing “immediately,” Israel ignored him.
The world has seen this before: the moment of hope, the language of peace, followed by the whistling sound of incoming rockets. Every ceasefire becomes a countdown, every promise of calm a prelude to another strike.
Tonight, Gaza burns again, not because Hamas refused peace, but because Israel refused to let peace live long enough to take its first breath.