Months On, Gaza's Ceasefire Remains Half-Built and Deadly

The ceasefire that was meant to end the war in Gaza remains, months on, a promise only half-kept. A US-brokered agreement enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution late last year secured the release of all hostages and established a 'Board of Peace' as a transitional administration for the shattered enclave. Yet the guns have not fully fallen silent, and the machinery of recovery has barely begun to turn.

The human cost has continued to mount since the deal was signed. Gaza's health ministry says more than a thousand people have been killed and thousands more injured in the period since the October truce, and authorities in the enclave accuse Israel of thousands of violations through airstrikes, artillery and shootings. The ceasefire, in other words, exists on paper more securely than on the ground.

The political scaffolding envisioned by the agreement has been slow to materialise. Officials have not set a timeline to bring in the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to take over governance, and the international security force intended to underpin stability has not been deployed. Without those pieces, the transition remains stalled.

The scale of what lies ahead is staggering. A joint assessment by the UN, EU and World Bank has put Gaza's recovery needs at more than $71 billion, against a fraction of that in pledged reconstruction funds and roughly $3 billion in first-year humanitarian needs alone. Amid the rubble, basic services remain in collapse.

For Gaza's residents, the gap between the ceasefire's promise and their daily reality is measured in unclaimed bodies, ruined homes and aid that arrives too slowly. A deal exists; the peace it was meant to deliver, for now, does not.