Israel is violating all its ceasefire agreements and escalating on all fronts

Israel is using existing ceasefire agreements to establish new realities on the ground, projecting itself as the regional hegemon by launching attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

By Qassam Muaddi and Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau November 28, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/israel-is-violating-all-its-ceasefire-agreements-and-escalating-on-all-fronts/

The war that Israel allegedly fought on “seven fronts” a year ago is supposed to be over. But Israel is now escalating on all fronts to achieve what it could not during the war, launching strikes and military incursions across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day last Sunday as home demolitions have continued throughout the week; in Lebanon, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Hassan Ali Tabtabai; in the West Bank, the Israeli army has launched a wide-ranging military operation concentrated around the towns and villages of the northern Tubas governorate; and in Syria just this morning, Israel launched missile and artillery strikes in the southern Damascus countryside, killing 13 Syrians.

All of this takes place as Israel is nominally party to two ceasefires, respectively with Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel’s violation of both has become routine and has escalated significantly in recent weeks.

In Gaza, local sources tell Mondoweiss that a new status quo has emerged in which Israel continues to seize the opportunity to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza while claiming its actions are in response to an alleged “violation” on the part of Hamas. Israeli forces have also conducted dozens of demolitions of Palestinian buildings over the week, accompanied by shelling in eastern Gaza City, Rafah, and Khan Younis. Last Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day, and on the Tuesday before that, the Israeli army killed 33 Palestinians in a single night.

In all cases, the military either claims that Palestinian fighters trapped in Rafah and surrounded by Israeli forces allegedly violated the ceasefire, or it claims that Palestinian fighters approached the yellow line demarcating the area from which Israeli forces had withdrawn since the ceasefire came into effect last October.

But Israeli forces have been shooting at Palestinians near the yellow line indiscriminately, many of them trying to return to their homes in the area. The line remains invisible to most Gaza residents and can only be identified by the yellow concrete blocks Israeli forces have placed across various points, supposedly demarcating the ceasefire withdrawal borders, which effectively cut Gaza in half. The Israeli army also dropped leaflets over Palestinian encampments west of the yellow line, warning them that anyone who approaches the virtual border will expose themselves to danger.

Through these policies, the Israeli army is entrenching Gaza’s de facto division into two areas, one controlled by Hamas and the other controlled by the Israeli army. Even though this state of affairs is supposed to be temporary and linked to the “first phase” of the ceasefire, the deliberate ambiguity of the deal’s terms and the lack of an implementation mechanism make it easy for Israel to declare that Hamas is in violation of the terms — and hence refuse to withdraw further from Gaza. The effect this has had is to force almost all of the Strip’s population into less than half of its already overcrowded territory.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces have launched a wide-scale military operation in the northern West Bank concentrated around the so-called “pentagon of villages” — Tubas, Tammun, Aqaba, Tayasir, and Wadi al-Fara — which the Israeli intelligence establishment considers a “hotbed” of resistance activity. Ostensibly to root out resistance in the Tubas district, local residents told Mondoweiss that the real reason for the military invasion is to thin out the population in the area, laying the groundwork for land confiscation and settlement building.

In Lebanon, the international peacekeeping forces — UNIFIL — reported last week that Israeli forces had committed around 10,000 violations of the ceasefire deal with Lebanon, including 2,500 land incursions and 7,500 airspace violations, since entering into its ceasefire with Hezbollah a year ago in November 2024. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot also reported that the Israeli army has conducted 1,200 land raids into 21 Lebanese villages over the past year.

These violations escalated significantly over recent weeks, culminating in the strike that killed Hezbollah chief of staff Tabtabai on Sunday, who is considered the highest-ranking Hezbollah member to be targeted since the ceasefire began. Following the assassination, Israel put its forces near Lebanon’s border on alert, as Hezbollah officials insinuated the possibility of a response. This series of escalations now threatens to blow up the Lebanon ceasefire.

Using ceasefires to establish realities on the ground

Both ceasefire deals in Lebanon and Gaza were only made possible after long months of mediation, in which Hezbollah and Hamas each eventually accepted terms that allowed Israel to maintain forces in their territories, without any practical guarantees that the ceasefires would be sustainable.

Yet Israel is using these truces to establish new realities on the ground, entrenching its occupation of parts of Gaza and southern Lebanon while asserting its military dominance on the regional stage. This projection of control aims to impose Israel’s vision for a “new Middle East” and a new status quo that recognizes Israel as the uncontested hegemon.

This can be gleaned in Israel’s active escalation in Syria, where Israel has tried to counter the expansion of Turkey’s influence in the country.

Israeli forces continue to position themselves in Syrian territory while conducting land raids in cities such as Quneitra and its surroundings. Last Monday, official Syrian TV reported that Israeli forces “bulldozed extensive farming areas” in the Syrian village of Breiqa in the southern part of the country. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Syrian media outlets reported that Israeli fighter jets flew over several Syrian governorates, and on the following day, an Israeli force invaded the Syrian town of Beit Jinn. When the force was reportedly uncovered, clashes between the Israeli force and Syrians reportedly led to the injury of two Israeli soldiers. According to Syrian state TV, Israeli shelling and strikes led to the killing of 13 Syrians, including at least two children.

Israeli strikes across Syrian territory have continued to become more flagrant over recent weeks, while previous strikes in Damascus in July aimed to strengthen Druze separatist elements in Suwayda. The reality on the ground Israel hopes to create is one of regional fragmentation.

In Gaza, this is manifesting in the recently declared plan to build “alternative safe communities” that would make up a “new Gaza” in the part of the Strip under Israeli control, which appears to have received U.S. backing. Earlier in July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had stated that Israel would create a “humanitarian city” built over the flattened remains of Rafah, which was supposedly meant to house 600,000 Palestinians and would be used as a pathway for Palestinians to “voluntarily migrate” out of Gaza, a plan that was characterized by UN officials and human rights experts as a “concentration camp.”

In that same month, a Reuters report revealed that the U.S.-run and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — so-called “aid” sites meant to replace the UN’s aid distribution system, but where thousands of Palestinians were gunned down in what were described by Gazans as “death traps” — had drafted plans to create so-called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” meant to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The GHF was itself the “brainchild” of Israeli officials, the New York Times reported last May.

Now that plans for a “new Gaza” have surfaced as part of the Trump-backed ceasefire framework, new reports have begun to emerge that UG Solutions, the U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the GHF, is now recruiting for a new deployment in Gaza to run ten to 15 more aid sites during the ceasefire.

All these developments take place as Israel attempts to continue to advance its goals. In Lebanon and Syria, it is to establish itself as a regional hegemon, and in Gaza, it is to achieve during the ceasefire what it could not achieve during the war — the ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the rubric of “voluntary migration.”