Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza through the weekend after President Donald Trump announced a breakthrough on Hamas disarmament, killing at least nine Palestinians according to health officials, while Energy Minister Eli Cohen said there was no deal to halt attacks. [1][2] Cohen added that Israel already controls about 70 percent of the Strip and should take full control. [2]
Trump said Thursday that Hamas had agreed to disarm under a U.S.-backed effort to implement last year's Egypt ceasefire. On Friday his Board of Peace published a 15-point roadmap for the final steps. [1] By Sunday the roadmap had produced no operative instrument that stopped aircraft.
Hamas said it would hand over weapons for storage only after Israel halted operations and withdrew in line with last year's agreement. An Israeli official told Reuters there would be no withdrawal from current positions unless Hamas underwent "genuine disarmament." [1] Those two sequences do not meet.
Palestinian medics described separate strikes on apartments in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and the Khan Younis area. A man and his wife were killed in Deir al-Balah. A child was among the dead in Gaza City. Three people, including a child, were reported killed northwest of Khan Younis. [1][3] The Board of Peace paper did not appear in any of those rooms.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stayed silent through Monday's news cycle. Itamar Ben-Gvir called the plan unacceptable. Cohen spoke for the cabinet that matters on targeting. [2] Jared Kushner's reported assurance to Mohammed Dahlan that attacks would stop was walked back the same day it circulated. The diplomatic architecture is a press kit. The military reality is a yellow line that still moves.
The paper's earlier Gaza files carried deal claims as claims. Monday does not upgrade the claim. It timestamps it against a death toll and a minister who said the opposite of a halt. Last year's Egypt text is still the only instrument anyone can name. Everything since has been an American caption.
X treated the nine dead as the rebuttal. Mainstream outlets kept the breakthrough in the headline and the strikes in the second paragraph. [1] A reader who stopped at the first line missed the weekend. A reader who only saw the strike videos missed that Washington is still selling a 15-point sequence as if Israel had signed it.
The ceasefire that the Board of Peace claims to implement was signed last year in Egypt. Implementation has been a sequence of American announcements and Israeli operations that do not share a calendar. Thursday's breakthrough, Friday's 15 points, Saturday and Sunday's apartment strikes, Monday's ministerial rejection — that is a week, not a process. [1][3]
Cohen's 70 percent figure is a political map. It is also an operational claim: if Israel already holds most of the Strip, a halt is a choice, not a concession forced by Hamas remaining in the other 30. He said the choice should be full control. [2] That sentence cannot live inside a roadmap that sequences IDF withdrawal against a weapons handover. One of those documents is decorative.
Hamas's condition is equally rigid. Weapons go into storage after withdrawal, not before. [1] Mediators can write a point that pretends those verbs happen at once. Commanders cannot. The paper will not pretend a simultaneous sequence exists because a board numbered it.
Residential buildings in Gaza City and Deir al-Balah are not "clashes." They are apartments. Medics named a couple, a child, another child near Khan Younis. [1][3][4] If the breakthrough were operative, those nights would have been the test. They failed the test.
Netanyahu's silence is not strategic ambiguity that a generous reader should fill. In a coalition that includes Ben-Gvir, silence is permission for the minister who wants more ground, not for the American board that wants a signing ceremony. Washington can keep selling architecture. Jerusalem is selling remaining territory.
No withdrawal map was published. No weapons-storage site was named. No Israeli cabinet vote bound the IDF to the Board of Peace calendar. Those absences are the story, not a pending detail. The companion politics feature in this edition takes the stationery apart. This file is the body count that arrived while the ink was still wet.
Hospital supplies were also reported hit in earlier weekend strikes, a detail that never survives a breakthrough headline. [4] Aid groups will count that in the same ledger as the nine dead. The Board of Peace will not, unless a later point invents a clinic.
Monday's job is to refuse the caption. Breakthrough is a White House noun. Continued strikes are a completed record. Cohen's no-halt line is the Israeli verb. Keep all three in the same paragraph or you are doing the board's work for it.
-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem