Israel's Deadly Response Kills 91 in Gaza's Bloodiest Day Since Trump's Peace Deal
On Tuesday, October 28, that fragile hope shattered in a hail of airstrikes.
Israeli warplanes launched a devastating assault across Gaza, killing at least 91 Palestinians - including dozens of children - in what hospital officials described as the deadliest single day since the October 10 ceasefire began.
By Wednesday morning, the bombing had stopped, but the damage - both human and diplomatic - was done.
The question now is not whether the ceasefire will hold. It's whether it ever really existed at all.
The Trigger: A Body, a Soldier, and Disputed Facts
The Israeli strikes came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of killing a soldier and staging the discovery of a deceased hostage, ordering "immediate, powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip".
The accusations were explosive and specific. On Monday, Hamas returned partial remains to Israel that did not belong to any of the 13 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza; Israel identified them as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and recovered during an Israeli military operation in Gaza in November.
Then came the more incendiary claim: that terrorists fired anti-tank missiles and gunfire at IDF troops in the Rafah area, killing one Israeli soldier. Israel claimed this was a clear ceasefire violation that demanded immediate retaliation.
Hamas's response was unequivocal denial. The militant group stated it had "no knowledge of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area" and insisted it remained committed to the ceasefire. Hamas denounced what it called "criminal bombardment" by Israel that violated the ceasefire agreement.
The Red Cross, caught in the middle of the hostage remains controversy, issued a rare public criticism. The organization said it was "aware" of IDF-issued footage showing Hamas operatives staging the recovery of hostage remains - burying the body in the ground before calling in Red Cross teams and retrieving it when they were present - and noted its staff "were not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival".
Theatrics or not, the incident became Netanyahu's justification for what followed.
The Strikes: A Night of Fire
The bombing began Tuesday evening and continued through the night. Five people were killed in a house hit in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip; in Khan Younis, five more - including two children and a woman - died in another strike; at least three explosions were heard near Al Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza.
Displaced families, many living in tent camps after two years of war, bore the brunt of the assault. Videos circulating on social media showed survivors pulling children's bodies from the rubble, makeshift morgues overflowing, and mourners carrying small caskets through bombed-out streets.
By Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces announced it had "resumed adherence to the ceasefire in Gaza following a series of significant strikes in which dozens of terror targets and terrorists were attacked," adding that the IDF would "continue to enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to any violation".
The message was clear: Israel considers itself the arbiter of what constitutes a violation - and the enforcer of punishment.
Trump's Calculus: Backing Israel, Threatening Hamas
President Trump's response to the deadliest day in Gaza since his ceasefire was announced revealed the fragility of his peace framework.Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to South Korea, Trump said "So the Israelis hit back," and insisted that "Nothing's going to jeopardize" the ceasefire, repeating threats that Hamas would be "terminated".
Trump argued the strikes were "retribution" for the reported attack on Israeli troops, but maintained confidence the ceasefire would hold, stating: "You have to understand, Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave... if they're not good, they're going to be terminated. Their lives will be terminated. And they understand that."
The logic is striking: Israeli strikes killing 91 Palestinians - most of them civilians - do not jeopardize the ceasefire. Hamas allegedly attacking one IDF soldier does.
A US official confirmed that Israel notified the Trump administration of its decision to carry out strikes after Netanyahu ordered the move but before they took place, with the Prime Minister's Office stating: "The prime minister made the decision to carry out the strike, gave the order to the military to execute it and afterward informed the United States".
This wasn't consultation. It was notification.
The Ceasefire's Shaky Foundation
To understand how quickly this agreement collapsed, it's worth revisiting what Trump's "20-point plan" actually promised - and what it demanded.
The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, return of hostages, prisoner exchanges, demilitarization of Gaza, deployment of an international stabilization force, transitional governance by Palestinian technocrats under international supervision, large-scale reconstruction, and a conditional pathway toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Under the first phase, all living hostages were to be released in exchange for 2,000 Palestinian prisoners within 72 hours, and Israel would withdraw its forces to pre-designated lines within Gaza Strip. The ceasefire went into effect on October 10, with Hamas releasing 20 living hostages on October 13 and Israel beginning to release Palestinian prisoners.
But critical elements were left unresolved. As of October 25, Hamas had returned the remains of only 15 deceased hostages, while the remains of 13 others remained in its possession that it is obligated to return under the agreement. Hamas has stated that recovering bodies buried under Gaza's rubble "may take some time."
Israel has also continued to launch strikes across Gaza and kill people even after the October 10 ceasefire, with this week's assault not being the first violation - on October 19, Israel briefly resumed bombing Gaza before reaffirming the ceasefire the same day.
The pattern is unmistakable: this ceasefire exists more as aspiration than reality.
The Numbers Behind the "Peace"
As of October 22, 2025, over 71,200 people have been reported killed in the Gaza war - 69,236 Palestinians and 1,983 Israelis - according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The dead include 217 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 UNRWA employees.
Of the Palestinian dead, 20,179 are children. By early September 2025, children accounted for at least 30% of total casualties, with 2,596 children losing both parents and 53,724 losing one parent.
78% of Gaza's structures have been damaged or destroyed; only 14 of 36 hospitals are still functioning or partially functioning; just 1.5% of Gaza's cropland is available for cultivation.
This is the landscape onto which Trump has attempted to impose peace: a society bombed into near-obliteration, governed by a militant group that refuses to disarm, occupied by a military that shows no signs of fully withdrawing, and watched over by a US president whose primary enforcement mechanism is threatening Hamas with "termination."
The Real Violations
What makes Tuesday's strikes particularly damning is not just the death toll, but the pattern they reveal.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had sought to strike Gaza even before the latest attack on IDF troops, but the US objected. This suggests the Prime Minister was looking for a pretext, not responding to an unexpected crisis.
Following the Rafah attack, Netanyahu held a smaller security cabinet session during which he decided to renew airstrikes in Gaza and advance plans to expand the yellow line - the Israeli withdrawal line - moves which are now at the center of ongoing talks with the Trump administration on how far Israel should go.
In other words: Israel is using alleged Hamas violations not just to retaliate, but to renegotiate the terms of withdrawal it already agreed to.
Hamas, for its part, has not returned all deceased hostages' remains as promised. But its explanation - that bodies are buried under mountains of rubble from Israeli bombardment - is both verifiable and predictable. Gaza has been systematically demolished. Finding bodies takes time, assuming they can be found at all.
The asymmetry is stark: Hamas's failure to meet deadlines for returning bodies (many of which may be impossible to recover) is treated as equivalent to Israel launching strikes that kill nearly 100 people in a single night.
What "Ceasefire" Actually Means
The word "ceasefire" traditionally implies that firing ceases. But in Gaza's case, it has come to mean something more elastic: a reduction in violence, perhaps, or a pause with exceptions, or a framework that one side can enforce through bombardment when it decides the other has violated undefined terms.
Previous ceasefires between Israel and Hamas collapsed quickly - once in November 2023 and again in March 2025 - and experts continue to warn of hurdles despite broad international support for the latest effort.
The March 2025 collapse is particularly instructive. Fighting resumed with what sources described as an Israeli surprise attack, demonstrating that even when ceasefires are brokered, implementation depends entirely on whether both sides want them to succeed.
US Vice President JD Vance's assessment of the current ceasefire offers insight into how the Trump administration is framing success. Despite Israel continuing to launch strikes across Gaza and kill people, Vance said the ceasefire was going "better than expected".
By what metric? If the standard is "fewer people dying per day than during active war," then perhaps it's true. But that's setting the bar somewhere below ground level.
The Larger Failure
Trump's Gaza peace plan was always going to be difficult. It required Hamas to disarm and give up power - something the group has repeatedly refused to do. It required Israel to eventually withdraw from Gaza entirely - something Netanyahu has shown no genuine interest in doing. And it required Palestinian governance by "technocrats" acceptable to both sides while being supervised by a "Board of Peace" headed by Trump himself and featuring controversial figures like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The plan's governance structure has attracted criticism, with Blair being "widely reviled - especially in the Middle East - for deciding that Britain should join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003," and his think tank facing criticism over leaked plans to turn Gaza into a "Trump Riviera".
Even if all parties acted in perfect good faith - which they demonstrably are not - the plan's structural contradictions make long-term success nearly impossible.
But the immediate problem is simpler: you cannot have a ceasefire if one side believes it has the right to bomb the other whenever it claims a violation has occurred, while the international community shrugs and says the agreement is holding.
What Comes Next
The IDF has resumed adherence to the ceasefire as of Wednesday morning, but the precedent has been set. The next time Israel claims Hamas has violated terms - whether by failing to return remains quickly enough, by alleged attacks on troops, or by simply continuing to exist as an armed group - another round of strikes becomes possible.
Hamas, meanwhile, remains defiant. It has released living hostages but not all deceased remains. It has agreed to technocratic governance but not to disarming. And it continues to deny responsibility for attacks that Israel insists occurred.
Trump's threat that Hamas will be "terminated" if it doesn't behave rings hollow when Israel can kill 91 Palestinians in a night and the US president calls it justified retaliation that doesn't jeopardize the peace process.
The uncomfortable truth is that Tuesday's strikes have exposed what many observers already suspected: Trump's ceasefire is less a peace agreement and more a tactical pause - one that Israel can end at will, with American blessing, whenever it decides the other side has stepped out of line.
The Bottom Line
Ninety-one people died on Tuesday. Most were civilians. Many were children. They died in what the Israeli government calls enforcement of a ceasefire agreement. They died in what Hamas calls a blatant violation of that same agreement.
The Trump administration says the ceasefire is holding and nothing will jeopardize it. Meanwhile, morgues in Gaza overflow, and families bury children killed in strikes that officially never broke the peace.
This is the new normal in Gaza: a ceasefire in name, punctuated by massacres in practice, overseen by a US president who promises "termination" to one side while giving the other carte blanche to bomb at will.
If this is what peace looks like, war was at least more honest about what it was.
The question now is not whether the ceasefire will survive. It's whether anyone will still pretend it exists the next time the bombs fall.
Because in Gaza, they always do.
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