‘Pervasive fear’ grips Gaza as Israeli attacks persist despite ceasefire

A drone strike killed a young woman and injured 15 others near Khan Younis, reported the Wafa news agency. Israel’s military carried out a spate of attacks in Gaza, continuing its bombardment despite the ceasefire that remains in place on paper, as Palestinian factions prepare to convene in Egypt to discuss the enclave’s future. In Friday morning’s attack, an Israeli drone killed a young woman and injured at least 15 others in the southern Khan Younis area, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency. Later in the day, another Israeli attack near Gaza City injured a child, Wafa reported. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the continuing attacks have perpetuated a “dark reality” in Gaza, and left Palestinians wondering about the status of the so-called ceasefire. “We see the overnight strikes, the drone attacks, the ongoing closure of crossings for people moving outside of Gaza for medical evacuation or for humanitarian aid,” said our reporter. “Just spending a few hours here … it’s easy to point to repeated incidents that result in injuries, death, forced displacement and a pervasive state of fear and panic.” The latest Israeli attacks followed the killing on Thursday of at least 11 people, including five members of the same family who were targeted in residential apartments, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence. Israel’s military said one person targeted and killed in northern Gaza on Thursday was a fighter, allegedly planning imminent attacks against Israeli forces and directing attacks in Israel. Palestinian factions head to Egypt for talks Despite a ceasefire technically in effect since October, Israel’s military has regularly attacked Gaza, over half of which is under Israeli military control in defiance of the ceasefire’s terms. Israeli attacks have killed at least 947 people and injured 2,935 since the ceasefire began, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The first phase of the ceasefire involved the release of the last Israeli captives held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel. A transition to the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to involve the disarmament of Hamas and a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli military, has been stalled for months. In a statement on Telegram on Friday, Hamas said some of its officials had arrived in Cairo for planned meetings with Egyptian officials and mediators this weekend to “finalise the implementation” of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. The Palestinian group added that it would also be discussing how to “halt the repeated Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and establish appropriate mechanisms for entering the second phase of the agreement”. Earlier, Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told Al Jazeera that the group would not surrender its weapons right now, but that it would commit to a future Palestinian police force, operating under a technocratic committee that administers Gaza, and being the only organisation to have weapons openly. “We are not talking about handing them over; we are talking about, at least, weapons not being visible except for the official weapons of the Palestinian police,” said Badran. “The details of this matter will be discussed within a national framework.”