After seven days of truce, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has come to an end. Benjamin Netanyahu’s military forces announced early Friday morning that they were resuming attacks on the Gaza Strip. “Hamas violated the operational pause and also fired into Israeli territory. The Israel Defense Forces have resumed fighting against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” the Hebrew army reported in a statement.

Shortly before 6:00 a.m. local time (4:00 GMT), anti-aircraft sirens began to activate in Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip. “Following the initial report about the sirens at Kibbutz Holit, several launches were identified from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. The launches were not intercepted according to protocol,” an Army spokesperson said.

“Israel Defense Forces fighter jets are currently attacking Hamas terrorist targets in the Strip,” he added. Netanyahu’s executive pledged this Friday to achieve his goals in the war. The main ones are “freeing all hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israelis.”

The Israeli government added that the Palestinian Islamist group did not agree to release more hostages or all the women as agreed, “in violation of the terms of the ceasefire.”

For its part, the Gaza Ministry of the Interior, controlled by Hamas, stated that at first “Israeli aircraft are flying over the strip and their vehicles have opened fire in the northwest of the enclave.” According to Palestinian media, the Israeli attacks cover the north and south of the Palestinian enclave, including residential areas, and have already caused new injuries. In addition, Hamas militants confront Israeli ground forces on the Salah Al Din road, which served for the evacuation of displaced people from the north to the south of the strip.

Thursday was the seventh and final day of a truce negotiated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, through an agreement that included the release of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. In total, 105 hostages were released, including 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners, and 240 Palestinian prisoners were released, all of them women and minors. In the last few hours, the Red Cross transferred 19 of the latter from Israeli detention centers to Ramallah, capital of the West Bank.

The truce, which began on November 24, marked a pause in the war that broke out on October 7 after an attack by the armed wing of Hamas that included the launching of thousands of rockets towards Israel and the infiltration of some 3,000 militiamen who massacred about 1,200 people and kidnapped another 240 in Israeli villages near the Gaza Strip.

Since then, and until the day the truce began, Israel’s forces maintained a relentless offensive by air, land and sea on the Palestinian enclave that has left more than 15,000 dead, thousands more buried under the rubble, and almost two million displaced people who are experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis due to the collapse of hospitals and the shortage of housing, drinking water, food, medicine and electricity.

On Thursday, during an official visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israeli leaders to refrain from resuming the military offensive in the Gaza Strip unless he establishes a concrete plan to protect to Palestinian civilians.

The United States does not want a repetition in the south of the Palestinian enclave of “the massive loss of civilian life and displacement (of people), on the scale that occurred in the north,” Blinken said, explaining that Israel’s plan must include “the precise designation of areas in central and southern Gaza where civilians can be safe and out of the line of fire”, prevent massive internal displacement and damage to essential infrastructure such as hospitals, power generators, electricity providers water.

Qatar was working together with its regional and international partners to reach a permanent ceasefire, in the face of increasing international pressure to do so.