The Gaza “ceasefire” marked its first anniversary on October 10, but more than 100 humanitarian and human rights organisations said it exists “in name only”. Islamic Relief noted that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a Palestinian in Gaza on average every 90 minutes since the ceasefire took effect. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the toll since the truce at 1,493 killed and 5,299 wounded as of October 12, up from 1,460 a week earlier; the cumulative death toll since October 2023 stood at 74,382.
In statements describing attacks, Israel’s military claimed several of those killed this week were Palestinian fighters. The Israeli military said two men killed near the Jordanian Field Hospital were Islamic Jihad operatives; Wafa identified one as a recently released former prisoner. It separately said a civil defence worker killed while responding to the wounded near Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza had been a Hamas sniper; Hamas rejected the claim, and it has not been independently verified.
Israeli forces have also continued pushing the so-called Yellow Line demarcating Israeli control further into residential Gaza City neighbourhoods this week, triggering fresh displacement. One year into the ceasefire, the Board of Peace – Gaza’s transitional oversight body – has failed to meet most of its central commitments: no international stabilisation force has deployed, aid trucks are entering at roughly a third of the agreed rate, and Israel now controls nearly two thirds of the Strip — well above the roughly 50 percent it was supposed to retain before further withdrawal and a future handover of control to Palestinians. The Palestinian olive harvest – traditionally a time of family and celebration – gathered pace as Israeli settlers and soldiers intensified efforts to disrupt it.
Harvesters were killed, attacked and blocked, while isolated families faced dayslong settler sieges. The attacks followed a familiar shape village to village, according to Wafa and field reports from local residents and activists: Israeli forces frequently blocked the harvest, too. Soldiers used drone-mounted loudspeakers to drive farmers out of Wadi Abwein and turned pickers away in several locations elsewhere.
Israeli settlers’ own chat groups reveal how they frame such attacks in reverse — through a messianic lens, casting Palestinian harvesters reaching their own land in Deir Abu Mash’al as attempting to “seize” the land, and the olive harvest itself as cover for Palestinians gathering “intelligence” rather than picking olives that families have harvested there for generations. Settlers have been documented repeatedly stealing olives from Palestinians’ lands since harvesting unofficially started late last month. Once again, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas postponed Palestinian legislative elections – this time to September, citing Israeli restrictions on election materials and observers entering Gaza and East Jerusalem, and ongoing settler violence.
Mustafa Barghouti, of the Palestinian National Initiative, said the decision reflects that “everything is concentrated in the hands of the executive authority”, with no parliament or independent judiciary to check it. In Israel, with high-stakes parliamentary elections scheduled for October 27, Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said his alliance – made up predominantly of Palestinian citizens of Israel – was prepared to support a coalition against current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from outside government. The support would be given in exchange for policy commitments, including a pathway to Palestinian statehood, The Times of Israel reported – a potential route to a majority that polls suggest neither bloc can reach without Arab party support.
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