In Gaza, a ceasefire exists mostly on paper. Despite a US-brokered truce intended to halt more than two years of devastating war, Palestinians across the territory say Israeli strikes continue almost daily, killing civilians and leaving families too afraid to return to what remains of their homes. Many are still crowded into tent settlements, enduring squalid conditions as a broader American peace plan to formally end the conflict remains stuck in diplomatic limbo.

"Every day there is killing," one resident of Gaza told reporters, describing a pattern in which strikes persist even as officials in Washington, Jerusalem and the Gulf continue to describe the ceasefire as holding. The gap between the official narrative of a de-escalating conflict and the lived reality on the ground has become one of the defining features of the current moment in Gaza: a war that is nominally paused but that continues to extract a daily toll in blood.

A Ceasefire in Name Only

The ceasefire was meant to be the first step toward implementing a US-backed plan to end the war definitively, address Gaza's humanitarian catastrophe and lay the groundwork for post-conflict governance. Instead, it has become the latest in a long line of partial, unstable arrangements that have characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, agreements announced with fanfare but undermined by continued violence and unresolved political disputes.

This pattern is not new. Previous attempts at de-escalation, including the "road map for peace" introduced in the early 2000s and a series of short-lived truces between Israel and Hamas since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, have repeatedly collapsed under the weight of mutual distrust, violations on both sides, and a failure to address core grievances. In 2008, a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas broke down after Israeli raids killed Hamas members and Hamas responded with rocket fire, a cycle of escalation that preceded a devastating three-week Israeli offensive. Analysts and even some former Israeli military officials at the time argued that failing to use ceasefires to meaningfully improve conditions for Gaza's population made their collapse almost inevitable.

The current situation echoes that history. Despite the ceasefire's existence, the fundamental conditions that fuel the conflict, the blockade's lingering effects, the devastation of Gaza's infrastructure and the absence of a credible political horizon for Palestinians, remain largely unaddressed.

Life in the Tents

For displaced Palestinians, the stalled peace process is not an abstract diplomatic failure; it is the reason they remain in tents rather than homes. Hundreds of thousands of people across Gaza have been living in sprawling, overcrowded encampments for months, often lacking adequate access to clean water, sanitation, medical care and food. Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned that conditions in these settlements amount to a humanitarian crisis, with disease spreading in cramped quarters and winter weather compounding the misery of families who have already lost everything.

The scale of displacement and destruction in Gaza recalls, and in many assessments exceeds, the humanitarian emergencies that followed earlier rounds of conflict. Aid agencies that monitored Gaza during previous blockades found that the population was forced to survive on a fraction of the supplies it had previously relied upon, with shortages of fuel and spare parts crippling water treatment, sewage systems and hospitals. Those earlier crises were described by officials, including Israeli military figures, as self-defeating: using force and deprivation to pressure a civilian population only to leave the underlying political grievances to fester.

"You cannot just land blows and leave people in economic distress and expect everything to calm down," one retired Israeli general observed during an earlier Gaza crisis, a warning that continues to resonate as the current ceasefire falters.

Why the Peace Plan Is Stalled

The US-backed plan to end the war formally was meant to move beyond a temporary pause in fighting toward a durable resolution, addressing reconstruction, governance and security arrangements for Gaza. But as with previous American and international initiatives, implementation has lagged far behind the ambitions announced at its unveiling.

Diplomatic efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have historically foundered on a consistent set of obstacles: disagreements over Israeli military withdrawals, the status of territory, the treatment of militant groups like Hamas, and the question of who has the legitimacy and authority to negotiate on behalf of Palestinians. Previous plans have also been criticized for omitting or glossing over core issues, including the legal status of Israeli military presence in Palestinian territory and the fate of displaced populations, omissions that have historically undermined Palestinian confidence in negotiated settlements.

Today, with Gaza's governance structures shattered by war and its population scattered and in crisis, the challenges facing any peace plan are arguably even steeper than they were in past negotiating rounds. Without a clear mechanism to translate the ceasefire into genuine de-escalation, let alone a political settlement, Palestinians in Gaza are left in a kind of suspended state: no longer facing the full fury of war, but also with no real sense that peace, or even stability, has arrived.

For now, residents say, the daily rhythm of life in Gaza remains defined by uncertainty and fear, a ceasefire that exists more as a diplomatic designation than a lived reality, as strikes continue, tents fill with families who have nowhere else to go, and the broader promise of an American-brokered peace remains, for now, unfulfilled.