Despite a ceasefire meant to halt the bloodshed in Gaza, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry reports that more than 900 Palestinians have been killed since the start of this year alone, pushing the cumulative death toll since October 10 above 1,300, including 301 children. The tally underscores a troubling reality: even when the guns are formally silenced, the violence in Gaza has continued in ways that defy the promise of peace that ceasefires are supposed to deliver.

The figures, released by health authorities in the besieged territory, offer limited clarity on the precise circumstances of each death, but they signal that a ceasefire on paper has not translated into safety on the ground for ordinary Gazans. For a population already devastated by more than a year of war, hunger, displacement, and the collapse of basic infrastructure, the continued deaths represent a grim continuity rather than a clean break from the conflict that has defined life in the Strip since October 2023.

A Familiar Pattern of Devastation

The scale of destruction in Gaza echoes previous conflicts. During Israel's 2008-2009 offensive, a 22-day campaign of aerial bombardment and ground invasion left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead and around 5,000 injured, according to historical accounts of the conflict. That war destroyed 15 of Gaza's 27 hospitals, thousands of family farms, and left half a million people without running water. Amnesty International later confirmed Israel had used white phosphorus shells, including in an attack on a UN compound that destroyed emergency food and medical supplies awaiting distribution.

Then, as now, ceasefires proved fragile and did little to address the underlying conditions driving the conflict. The blockade that followed the 2008-2009 war continued for years afterward, with the Red Cross reporting lasting damage to Gaza's economy and chronic shortages of medical supplies. Israel justified the blockade as necessary to protect its citizens from rocket fire, a rationale that critics, including Israeli-American analyst Henry Siegman, dismissed at the time as a pretext for what he called "the strangulation of Gaza's population."

That history offers a sobering lens through which to view the current moment. A ceasefire, it seems, has rarely meant an end to Palestinian suffering in Gaza; it has more often meant a change in its form.

A Push for Expulsion

Against this backdrop, Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz has said his government is actively seeking the backing of former President Donald Trump for a plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza entirely. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Israeli news outlet Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Katz argued that "there is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration" and declared that Israel was "organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible."

"There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration," Katz said, adding that Israel is "prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible."

The proposal, which would involve the mass removal of Gaza's roughly two million residents, has been widely condemned by human rights organisations and legal experts as amounting to ethnic cleansing and a potential war crime under international law. Forcible transfer of a civilian population from occupied territory is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention, regardless of the stated justification.

Katz's comments suggest Israeli officials believe American political backing, particularly from Trump, could be decisive in shifting the regional and international balance in favour of such a plan. The strategy echoes a pattern noted by historians of the conflict: Israel has often calculated that opposition from the broader international community, including the United Nations and European governments, could be weathered so long as Washington's support held firm.

Echoes of Unresolved Grievances

The push for expulsion also revives long-standing Palestinian fears about the erasure of their claim to the land. Past peace initiatives, including the "road map" plan of the early 2000s and the unofficial Geneva Accords of 2003, foundered in part because they required Palestinians to relinquish the right of return for refugees in exchange for statehood and financial compensation, a demand the vast majority of Palestinians have never accepted. For many, the right of return remains, as historians have described it, "at the heart of the conflict."

Any plan to physically remove Gaza's population would go far beyond even those contentious historical proposals, foreclosing not just the right of return for refugees from 1948 or 1967, but the presence of Palestinians in Gaza itself. Rights groups warn that such a move would represent one of the most significant forced displacements in the modern history of the conflict.

As the death toll in Gaza continues to climb despite the ceasefire, and as Israeli officials openly court American support for removing Palestinians from the territory altogether, the events unfolding this year raise urgent questions about whether the international community will again allow a familiar cycle of bombardment, blockade, and potential expulsion to repeat itself with little consequence for those responsible.