Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan Condemn Israel’s Deadly Ceasefire Violations in Gaza
What Prompted the Condemnations?
On January 31, 2026, Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip that killed at least 32 Palestinians, among them women, children, and Hamas police personnel — one of the highest single-day tolls since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect in October 2025. The strikes hit residential areas, a displacement tent camp in Khan Younis, and the Sheikh Radwan police station in Gaza City, where Palestinian media reported around 16 dead, including officers and detainees; three more people were reported killed near an UNRWA school in the Nasser district of western Gaza City. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders, a weapons depot, and rocket-launching positions “in response to a violation of the ceasefire agreement” — the same justification it has invoked repeatedly while continuing to strike the besieged enclave.
How Did Qatar Respond to the Violations?
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned what it called repeated Israeli violations of the ceasefire, warning of “a dangerous escalation that will inflame the situation and undermine regional and international efforts aimed at consolidating the truce.” Doha, one of the deal’s mediators, urged Israel to comply fully with the agreement and called for maximum restraint to preserve the second phase of the plan and the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted in November 2025 to anchor the ceasefire framework.
What Was Jordan’s Reaction to the Breaches?
Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates described the airstrikes as a blatant breach of the ceasefire and a dangerous escalation. Ministry spokesperson Fouad Majali stressed the need for strict adherence to the agreement, including the immediate and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid, and called on the international community to fulfill its legal and moral responsibilities to ensure Israel’s compliance and to prevent the collapse of de-escalation efforts.
How Did Egypt Address the Situation?
Egypt, the other principal mediator, condemned the recurrent Israeli breaches that have killed scores of Palestinians, warning that such actions risk turning Gaza into a “tinderbox” and jeopardize efforts to stabilize the territory on both security and humanitarian fronts. Cairo’s foreign ministry appealed for maximum restraint and urged all parties to safeguard the truce, issuing its statement just a day before Israel was expected to reopen the Rafah Crossing for pedestrian traffic in both directions. (arabnews.com)
What Do the Numbers Show Since the Ceasefire?
The condemnations reflect a pattern, not an isolated incident. The ceasefire, which took effect on October 9–10, 2025 under U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan and was formalized at a Sharm El Sheikh signing on October 13, was violated almost from the outset. By late March 2026, roughly 689 Palestinians had been killed since the truce began, according to UN humanitarian figures; by mid-April that count had passed 750, per Gaza’s Health Ministry, against four Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian fighters over the same period. The two sides have traded blame, and the UN human rights office has also recorded killings of Palestinians by Hamas, but the overwhelming share of the post-ceasefire death toll has come from continued Israeli fire on a population with nowhere to flee.
The broader catastrophe dwarfs even those figures. Since the war began in October 2023, more than 72,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed — the Gaza Health Ministry published 72,004 named individuals on March 3, 2026, with the toll continuing to climb past 72,900 by June, including roughly 20,000 children. In January 2026, an Israeli military official was reported to have accepted, for the first time, the ministry’s finding that more than 71,000 Palestinians had been killed by direct Israeli fire. Numerous UN bodies, human rights organizations, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have concluded that Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide under international law, a determination that has fed legal proceedings before the International Court of Justice.
What About Humanitarian Access?
Aid commitments under the deal have gone largely unmet. From the ceasefire’s start through June 2026, only about 52,000 of an allotted 144,000 aid trucks — roughly 36 percent — had entered Gaza, with drivers describing prolonged Israeli inspections and reports that nutritious staples such as meat, dairy, and vegetables were blocked while snacks and soft drinks were waved through. The Rafah Crossing, the enclave’s only gateway not bordering Israel and a lifeline for medical evacuations, briefly partially reopened in early February 2026, only to be shut again on February 28 when wider regional hostilities erupted, once more cutting off the entry of humanitarian aid.
What Are the Next Steps for the International Community?
Hamas denounced the January 31 strikes as a blatant violation of the truce and has continued to resist U.S.-backed plans for post-war governance and the disarmament demanded under the deal’s second phase — sticking points that mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey have struggled to move forward in talks held in Cairo. For the regional governments doing the mediating, the central challenge remains forcing genuine compliance from a far stronger party that has repeatedly bombed Gaza under the banner of “retaliation” while the ceasefire nominally holds. The condemnations from Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt underscore both the fragility of the agreement and the widening gap between its written terms and the reality on the ground, where Palestinians continue to be killed and to go hungry months after the fighting was supposed to stop.
