In the eastern part of Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, getting to school takes more than waking up, getting dressed and packing a schoolbag. Children must first wait for the gunfire to stop. Only then can an adult hurry them westward to schools just a few hundred meters from their homes.
Faiqa Al-Sous, a 70-year-old retired teacher, describes how children in her neighborhood wait for brief periods of calm before venturing outside. She lives with her family an estimated 200 to 250 meters from the "Yellow Line" east of Al-Bureij. From her home, she can see the yellow concrete markers defining the line and hear tanks moving nearby. With drones overhead and gunfire continuing, even stepping outside has become a frightening decision.
The Yellow Line first appeared under the October 2025 ceasefire arrangements as an internal boundary marking the positions to which the Israeli military withdrew during the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the war. The ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025. The line separates areas in eastern Gaza that remain under Israeli military control from areas to the west where Palestinians are permitted to move.
One year after the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was announced and the agreement was signed in a festive scene that drew the world’s attention, Faiqa tells Athar she does not measure calm by the days that have passed since the deal. She measures it by the absence of drones and the end of gunfire.
A day when no quadcopters hover overhead and no gunshots are heard, she says, is “a holiday,” But even such a day does not bring a lasting sense of safety. Hours may pass without shooting, only for it to resume in the evening or after midnight.
"We haven't had a single peaceful day or night. Even on days when there's no shooting, we stay on guard," she says.
Her account comes a year after an agreement that was supposed to halt military operations, pave the way for a gradual Israeli withdrawal and allow residents to return to their lives. Instead, continued bombardment, gunfire and military deployments have kept danger present in the details of daily life.
Sharm El-Sheikh: A Deal Announced, a War That Never Stopped
On October 13, 2025, the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh hosted an international peace summit co-chaired by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and U.S. President Donald Trump, with leaders and representatives from dozens of countries attending.
During the summit, a ceremony was held to sign a document supporting the Gaza ceasefire agreement, which had taken effect on October 10, with the participation of Egypt, the United States, Qatar and Turkey. Trump presented the agreement as the end of the war, amid international expectations that Israeli forces would withdraw, humanitarian aid would enter Gaza, displaced residents would return and reconstruction would begin.
The agreement formed part of a U.S. plan calling for a suspension of military operations, including airstrikes and artillery shelling, and a freeze on front lines during the initial arrangements for an Israeli withdrawal. It also provided for the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, increased humanitarian assistance and subsequent arrangements for withdrawal, governance and reconstruction, some of which are tied to security and military conditions.
Yet the diplomatic ceremony in Sharm El-Sheikh stood in stark contrast to the reality Gazans faced in the months that followed.
According to Athar's analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), 14,907 events were recorded across the Palestinian territories between October 11, 2025, and the end of September 2026. The West Bank accounted for approximately 68.4% of these events, compared with 31.6% in the Gaza Strip.
Although the West Bank accounted for the larger share of recorded events, Gaza accounted for approximately 92.1% of the estimated fatalities associated with them, compared with 7.9% in the West Bank. ACLED recorded an estimated 2,060 fatalities across the Palestinian territories during the same period.
The events ACLED tracks include airstrikes, shelling, armed clashes and violence against civilians, as well as protests and other military and security developments. The monthly distribution shows that the war in Gaza continued throughout the months following the agreement.
In Gaza, ACLED recorded 1,758 incidents of shelling or artillery and missile attacks, followed by 1,496 airstrikes or drone attacks. The data also documented 526 incidents of looting or destruction of property, 475 direct attacks and 116 armed clashes. Together, these five categories accounted for 4,371 events, or approximately 92.8% of all events recorded in the Gaza Strip.
Ahed Farwana, secretary of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and a political analyst specializing in Israeli affairs, says the continued bombardment, targeted killings and destruction of buildings and facilities expose the gap between the political announcement of a ceasefire and the reality residents face on the ground.
Speaking to Athar, Farwana says Israeli military operations have not stopped since the agreement was announced. The continuing deaths, injuries and repeated displacement, he argues, have left the ceasefire an agreement that exists "only on paper."
In his analysis, military operations did not end after October 2025; their nature changed. Israel moved from the large-scale ground incursions seen in Gaza City and northern Gaza during operations such as "Gideon's Chariots" to what he describes as a "daily war of attrition" built on repeated bombardment and targeted attacks.
He says these operations are not confined to the front lines. They extend to displacement camps, buildings, facilities, vehicles and gatherings of residents in different parts of the Gaza Strip, and this shift, he argues, has allowed military operations to continue without ground offensives on the scale seen before.
Madar, the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies, defines “Gideon’s Chariots” as an operation that seeks to impose military control on the ground, allowing Israeli occupation forces to manage the movement of the population by creating buffer zones, likened to ghettos, where Palestinian civilians are concentrated, giving the army freedom of military action across the rest of the Strip.
Athar's analysis of ACLED data found an estimated 1,897 fatalities associated with the events recorded in Gaza. Airstrikes and drone attacks accounted for approximately 70.6% of these deaths, or 1,339 fatalities, followed by armed clashes and direct attacks.
The Gaza Health Ministry, meanwhile, reported 1,440 deaths between the start of the ceasefire and the end of September 2026, including 324 children and 140 women, as shown in the chart below.
From Al-Bureij to Beit Lahia: Life Under the Threat of Gunfire
In eastern Al-Bureij, the danger Al-Sous describes reaches beyond schools and markets into her own home. Living so close to Israeli military positions has led her family to avoid the rooms on the eastern side of the house, which she says are the most exposed to gunfire.
She no longer sleeps in her eastern bedroom. Sometimes she goes in only long enough to take clothes from the closet, then gets dressed in another room.
The family also stopped using the roof about three years ago and moved its water tanks downstairs. The solar panels remain on the roof, but the family cannot safely reach them to repair them if they break down.
When Al-Sous goes to the market, she takes detours through side streets and between houses, avoiding the main road, where she says Israeli tanks may appear nearby. While she is out, she calls her family to check on the situation and decide whether to head home or wait until the shooting stops.
In Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, Azhar Tanboura, who oversees community and youth initiatives at the municipality, faces similar risks as she works to restore basic services in areas where residents have returned.
Tanboura tells Athar that several municipal employees have come under fire while carrying out their duties, and some were wounded. A municipal vehicle that was reopening a street in the Beit Lahia Project area was also fired on by a drone, as the municipality tried to reopen roads and restore water, sewage and waste collection services.
These risks reach into her personal life as well. After her family's house was destroyed in the war, Tanboura returned to its ruins. The family leveled part of the rubble and pitched a tent on top of it, about 200 to 250 meters from the Yellow Line, by her estimate.
She says bullets have pierced the tent many times, prompting the family to buy armored metal doors and set them around it to protect the children from gunfire that could reach them while they sleep.
Their living conditions differ, but Al-Sous's and Tanboura's accounts converge on one point: both live close to the Yellow Line. Al-Sous tries to protect her family by avoiding the rooms facing military positions, while Tanboura shelters behind metal doors around a tent pitched on the ruins of her home.
But the distance between Tanboura's tent and the line has not stayed constant, she says. When the family first returned to Beit Lahia, the line was about one kilometer from where they live. Its markers then began to move gradually closer to residential areas.
She says Israeli forces told residents of one area to leave their shelters temporarily because of a military operation, but the tents were burned, and the Yellow Line markers were moved afterward, according to her account. She says these shifts have shrunk the space available to residents and left homes and farmland behind the line or close to military positions.
The Yellow Line: An Incomplete Withdrawal and a Shifting Boundary
The Yellow Line was not part of Gaza's known geographic boundaries before the October 2025 agreement. It emerged from the arrangements for redeploying Israeli forces set out in the agreement's first phase.
The agreement called for Israeli forces to withdraw to agreed lines shown on an attached map, suspend military operations and not return to areas they had withdrawn from, as long as Hamas abided by the agreement. The line was meant to be a temporary arrangement ahead of later phases of withdrawal.
But the first phase did not involve a full Israeli withdrawal, as Israeli forces remained in areas estimated at about 53% of the Strip’s territory, with further phases to follow under security and political arrangements tied to the U.S. plan to end the war.
On October 20, 2025, the Israeli military announced it had begun placing physical markers to delineate the line, consisting of concrete barriers topped with yellow-painted posts, 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high, spaced roughly 200 meters apart, with variations dictated by the terrain.
Residents' accounts, however, indicate that the markers have not stayed fixed in all areas. In the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, residents who spoke to Athar said Israeli forces moved the concrete markers toward residential areas in eastern Gaza. They estimated the markers had advanced about 300 meters near Mushtaha Street by July 2026, and were moved again in October 2026.
Using an interactive map published by Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Athar's reporter estimated the distance between the original route shown on the map and the markers' new position, as identified by residents, at about 414 meters toward residential areas.
Residents say the danger extends beyond the yellow markers. Drones continue to fly overhead and gunfire continues, making some streets and homes unsafe to reach, even outside the area of military deployment drawn on maps.
The residents’ accounts are consistent with the findings of journalistic investigations that relied on satellite imagery and on-the-ground testimony. A Reuters investigation, published on January 22, 2026, showed the yellow concrete markers being moved up to about 200 meters into the al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, alongside the demolition of at least 40 buildings. A BBC investigation, published on January 16, 2026, also documented the markers being moved deeper into the Strip in at least three areas.
Similarly, satellite images published by “Frames,” a project of the research group Forensic Architecture, reveal changes on the ground after the October 2025 agreement, including the construction of new military sites, the expansion of existing facilities, the building of berms and fortifications, land clearing, and the demolition of buildings.
Farwana argues that the Yellow and Orange Lines have become tools for reshaping Gaza's geographic and demographic reality by expanding military control, restricting Palestinians' movement and preventing them from returning to their homes and land.
He says the area under Israeli control has gradually expanded since the ceasefire, reaching about 70% of Gaza, by his estimate, confining more than two million Palestinians to a narrow strip along the coast.
He warns that the lack of clearly defined boundaries, and the shifting positions of these lines, increase the risks residents face. Anyone who approaches them can come under fire or shelling, he says, while strikes also reach displacement camps and nearby residential areas. He fears that boundaries described as temporary will become permanent as the Israeli military maintains its presence inside them.
The Orange Line is a demarcation line set by the Israeli military inside Gaza. It extends beyond the Yellow Line toward populated areas and defines an additional zone in which Israel imposes restrictions on movement and access, including a requirement that humanitarian organizations coordinate their movements with the Israeli military in advance.
Israeli authorities notified humanitarian organizations of the line on October 13, 2025. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), subsequent expansions of the line left about 64.9% of Gaza's territory subject to severe restrictions and more direct Israeli control by June 23, 2026.
The difference between the two lines is that the Yellow Line marks the limit of Israeli forces' deployment as set out in the October 2025 ceasefire arrangements, while the Orange Line represents a broader zone of access and movement restrictions, particularly for humanitarian operations.
In a report issued on September 24, 2026, the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process stated that the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on October 10, 2025, had ended large-scale hostilities but had not stopped the violence in Gaza. The report noted continued Israeli airstrikes, shelling, drone attacks and ground operations, along with rising Palestinian casualties. It also said that about two-thirds of the Gaza Strip remained either inaccessible to residents or subject to severe access restrictions, confining civilians to crowded and unsafe areas.
A year after the ceasefire took effect, the number of dead and wounded in Gaza kept rising. According to a statistical report issued by the Gaza Health Ministry on October 8, 2026, the number of deaths recorded since October 11, 2025, had risen to 1,471, up from 1,440 at the end of September, while recorded injuries reached 5,189.
Land Behind the Yellow Line: Farmers Cut Off From Their Fields
The effects of the military deployment have reached beyond residential areas to the farmland that many Beit Lahia residents depend on for their livelihoods. Tanboura says about 70% of the city's farmland now lies behind the Yellow Line, by her estimate, preventing owners from reaching it and resuming cultivation.
She says the municipality has helped reclaim about 50 dunams (roughly 12 acres) of accessible land and has begun producing some crops. That helped bring produce back to the markets and brought prices down after scarcity had weighed heavily on residents. But these efforts remain limited compared with the areas that cannot be reached.
Farwana links Israeli military control of farmland to the decline in Gaza's ability to produce its own food. He explains that Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Shuja'iyya, Zeitoun, Al-Tuffah and eastern Khan Younis were once a core part of Gaza's food basket.
He argues that the continued bulldozing of land and destruction of facilities and infrastructure make it harder to restore farming and deepen residents' dependence on aid. In his view, these measures are part of a policy aimed at making Gaza unlivable and pushing its people to leave.
The Dangerous Journey to School
Getting to school has been no safer than reaching farmland. In Beit Lahia, Tanboura says fear of gunfire has made some families hesitate to send their children to school, for fear they could be harmed on the way or inside classrooms.
Tanboura says her 12-year-old daughter, Mira, saw her classmate Ritaj killed after being struck by a bullet inside Abu Ubaida School, according to her account. She says Mira had trouble sleeping for days after the incident, and that the trauma also affected classmates who had lost a friend.
To help the children, Tanboura took part, through the municipality and in cooperation with other organizations, in organizing a recreational event with performances, games and music. But some children burst into tears as they remembered their classmate, asking how they could be happy after her death.
Tanboura says the effects of the war have reached even children's games: some now act out scenes of carrying the dead or waiting for food aid, while families try to get their children back into school and recover some of their normal lives.
Her account is consistent with a broader toll on children in the Strip. On August 6, 2026, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced that at least 300 Palestinian children had been killed in the 300 days following the October 2025 announcement of the ceasefire, an average of one child per day. The organization warned that hundreds of other children had been wounded, some of them seriously, as the violence continues.
Homes Under Fire
In eastern Al-Bureij, Al-Sous says bullets have entered her home on more than one occasion. In one incident, a bullet came in through the living-room door and hit the wall before ricocheting near her daughter, who was standing no more than about half a meter away. In another, two bullets pierced the window of the children's room and hit the wall while her son, who had just stepped out of the bathroom, was standing near the door of the room.
With the repeated gunfire, the way the family uses its home has changed. Al-Sous says they avoid the eastern rooms facing Israeli military positions and have not slept in them for three years, entering only to fetch belongings and leave quickly.
They have also stopped using the roof for fear of coming under fire, and anyone on the upper floors rushes downstairs when shooting begins, moving away from the eastern and northern sides. When Al-Sous goes to the market, she stays in contact with her family to find out whether shooting has started, and she calls again before heading back to decide which route to take, or to wait with relatives until things calm down.
Still, she does not see leaving the house as an easy option. The house holds several families, renting other housing would cost more than they can afford, and going back to tents would mean harsh living conditions. So the family stays in its home despite the constant fear.
In a joint statement published on Amnesty International's website on October 9, 2026, more than 100 organizations said the ceasefire in Gaza had been no more than an agreement in name, with Palestinians still being killed and wounded and restrictions still imposed on the entry of aid, equipment and reconstruction materials. The organizations said more than 1,400 Palestinians, including at least 327 children, had been killed in the year since the agreement. They also said the Israeli military had moved the Yellow Line deeper into the Gaza Strip, beyond the withdrawal line set out in the agreement, shrinking the space available to residents and increasing overcrowding.
Continued Bombardment Threatens Gaza’s Ambulance Services
Continuing military operations have also made essential services harder to access, particularly ambulance and emergency care, at a time when the health system faces a severe shortage of equipment and working vehicles.
Fares Afana, the official in charge of ambulance and emergency services in northern Gaza, describes the health situation as "extremely tragic and catastrophic," citing continued Israeli restrictions on the entry of medical equipment and supplies, ambulances and their spare parts.
Speaking to Athar, he says that after the ceasefire was announced in October 2025, northern Gaza had only one medical point and one ambulance to carry patients and the wounded to hospitals in Gaza City. That lasted more than seven months before additional medical points and field hospitals were set up, which eased the crisis somewhat without meeting residents' needs.
Afana says the ceasefire announcement did not change the nature of ambulance crews' work. They still receive more than 250 distress calls a day, including injuries from gunfire and shelling, particularly in the northern and eastern areas and displacement camps, as well as medical cases, childbirth, the needs of children and older people, and transfers of patients between hospitals.
According to Afana, more than 80% of the ambulances in the fleet he describes have been destroyed, and crews rely on worn-out vehicles, while about 5% of vehicles are out of service because of a shortage of simple spare parts, such as tires and batteries. He adds that other ambulances have been stuck on the Egyptian side of the border for more than two years, without permission to enter Gaza. He warns that continued restrictions could take more vehicles out of service, threatening crews' ability to respond to emergencies.
According to Afana, the repeated attacks are concentrated in the neighborhoods of Shuja'iyya, Al-Tuffah, Al-Sanafour and Al-Daraj, Jabalia refugee camp and the Beit Lahia Project area, as well as Halawa camp, which, together with the surrounding areas, has a population of more than 15,000. He explains that large parts of these areas lie behind what is known as the Yellow Line, within the zone of Israeli control, while the remaining residential communities are concentrated in the parts near the line, inside what is referred to as the Orange Zone, where residents face repeated gunfire and shelling.
He says Halawa camp comes under repeated fire that causes deaths and injuries, which has led crews to station an emergency point and an ambulance there around the clock. He also says gunfire from Israeli military vehicles, positions and quadcopter drones has reached the Al-Faluja area, west of Jabalia refugee camp.
Afana notes that in the month before he spoke, the area exposed to gunfire expanded to include Al-Tawam and Al-Karama, northwest of Gaza City, after an Israeli military crane was set up near the Al-Sudaniya coast, according to his account. He cites the killing of an elderly man while he was praying at Al-Fawz Mosque in Al-Tawam, and the wounding of two others, about two weeks before he spoke. He stresses that the danger is not limited to areas adjacent to the Yellow Line: some of the targeted areas, he estimates, are about 700 meters or more from military berms and lines of contact.
Ambulance crews themselves do not escape the danger. Ambulances have repeatedly come under fire from Israeli forces while carrying casualties or trying to reach the wounded. Afana links the deterioration of the ambulance system to growing risks to the lives of the wounded, especially those suffering severe bleeding who need urgent intervention. He explains that destroyed roads and worn-out vehicles delay crews' arrival, and that an ambulance can break down while carrying the wounded, forcing paramedics to give first aid inside it until a replacement vehicle arrives. He warns that the continued ban on bringing in spare parts and new ambulances threatens the system's ability to save the wounded and respond to emergencies.
Second Phase Stalled as Displaced Residents Await Return and Reconstruction
Farwana believes the continuing military operations, the restrictions on residents' movement and the delays in medical evacuations are linked to the stalled move to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, which was supposed to include the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the opening of crossings, the return of the displaced and the start of reconstruction.
He holds mediators and international actors partly responsible for the current situation, arguing that the absence of real international pressure encourages Israel to continue its operations and not carry out its commitments under the agreement.
He accuses Israel of using the issue of the Palestinian factions' weapons as a pretext to hold up the requirements of the agreement's second phase, which was announced as having begun in January 2026. Chief among them are the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Yellow Line and the start of Gaza's reconstruction, commitments he says have not been carried out so far.
He believes continued Israeli military control over large parts of Gaza makes the return of the displaced and the launch of reconstruction extremely difficult. He says the restrictions, by his account, are not limited to major reconstruction projects but extend to bringing in tents and the materials needed to repair damaged homes, which deprives residents of temporary solutions that could ease their suffering.
Farwana calls for documenting events on the ground, casualties and violations, and for informing the countries sponsoring the ceasefire agreement of the conditions residents live in, arguing that a political declaration ending the war is not enough as long as military operations continue.
Amid continued bombardment and declining international media attention to conditions in Gaza, Palestinian activists and journalists, joined by humanitarian workers and Arab and international supporters, launched a digital campaign on July 16, 2026, under the slogan "They Lied to You," in Arabic and English. The campaign sought to renew attention to the suffering of Gaza's residents and to counter the impression that the announcement of a ceasefire meant the end of what Gaza residents describe as genocide and a halt to the bombardment.
When Does the War End for Gaza's Residents?
Al-Sous measures the success of the ceasefire agreement by whether she can live with her family without fear of gunfire, or having to watch for drones before leaving the house. Despite what she lives through, she does not reject any effort to end the war. "We're like a drowning person clutching at a straw," she tells Athar. She explains that Gaza's residents have little left to hold on to beyond their own lives and those of their children, and that she hopes for an agreement that stops the bloodshed and gives people a chance to rebuild their lives.
In Beit Lahia, Tanboura's demands are much the same. She says announcing a ceasefire is not enough as long as residents fear going to their schools and their land, or as long as those providing basic services face danger while doing their jobs. What people are waiting for is the ability to stay in their homes, to provide water for their children and to move around their city without fear.
As for Al-Sous, who still lives with her family near the Yellow Line, she expects nothing more of the agreement than that it become a reality she can feel in her home and her neighborhood: a day when she no longer has to call her family before coming back from the market, or stay away from the rooms of her house for fear of bullets, or wait for the shooting to stop so the children can reach their schools.
Eastern Al-Bureij and Beit Lahia are geographically far apart, but residents in both places are asking the same question: What has changed in their lives a year after the agreement?
