On October 10, 2025, a ceasefire was supposed to have put an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

But two months on, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 500 times, killing at least 356 Palestinians, and sending the total death toll in Gaza above 70,000.

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his position clear, saying that the war “has not ended”.

Analysts say that while the rate of Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza has slowed since the ceasefire, the war, for all intents and purposes, has continued.

“If you break genocide down to its essence, it’s not only mass killing,” Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera.

“It is also destroying the population’s ability to exist together as a group, and that is being achieved by the mass destruction [of infrastructure], the killing, ethnic cleansing, and starvation,” he said.

Political theatre and spectacle

Analysts say that instead of coming as a reprieve for Palestinians, the ceasefire gave the international community an excuse to stop focusing on Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The US-backed ceasefire agreement was meant to stop Israeli attacks on Gaza and kick-start aid deliveries to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, where famine had been declared.

“At long last, we have peace in the Middle East,” US President Donald Trump declared from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where a Gaza peace summit was being held.

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But Israel continued attacking. It has also failed to allow the entry of the amount of aid it agreed to, destroyed more than 1,500 buildings, and expanded deeper into Gaza, cutting people off from their homes.

“It’s theatre because everyone was fed up with the genocide and keen for it to disappear and not solve it. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen,” Shehada said.

In the weeks since the ceasefire began, Gaza has flickered in and out of media headlines.

“The main difference, of course, is the reduced media coverage, which was one of the intended purposes of the so-called ceasefire,” Lebanese Palestinian researcher and writer Elia Ayoub told Al Jazeera.

“There is far less pressure on Israel today than there was until October 10, with no sign of accountability on the horizon.”

‘Israel’s genocide is not over’

The ongoing harm to Palestinians in Gaza has also been noted by Amnesty International, which released a legal analysis last week of what it called the “ongoing genocide in the Occupied Gaza Strip”.

“The world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.

The analysis cites the number of Palestinians killed since the ceasefire went into effect, Israel’s restriction of relief, humanitarian and medical supplies, and how Israel’s blockade and siege of Gaza led to a famine, and thus an increased vulnerability to illnesses.

“So far, there is no indication that Israel is taking serious measures to reverse the deadly impact of its crimes and no evidence that its intent has changed,” Callamard said.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said on October 1, before the ceasefire, that 100 people were dying in Gaza a day, mostly from Israeli military operations or shootings at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution points.

Since the ceasefire, people are still dying from direct military operations, albeit fewer per day, and the foundations of Palestinian society in Gaza are still lying in ruins.

“Israel is continuing its genocide in Gaza, but its pace is different; the destruction on the houses is continuing and the killing of Palestinians is continuing, and the Israeli yellow line of occupation in the Gaza Strip is part of the genocide,” defence analyst Hamze Attar told Al Jazeera.

“The genocide is not only about killing people, but about restricting people from going back to their homes and creating a new reality in the Gaza Strip.”

Simply genocide

One of the ceasefire’s main stipulations was for Hamas and other Palestinian groups to return the captives held in Gaza. Hamas has returned all living captives and all but two of the bodies of dead captives: an Israeli policeman named Ran Gvili and a Thai national named Sudthisak Rinthalak.

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One of the remaining bodies could be returned in the coming days, according to Israeli media. For months, Israel’s most fervent supporters claimed a return of the captives would end the war.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem previously said the group has shown its “commitment to fully complete the exchange process and its ongoing efforts to finalise it despite significant difficulties”.

As for Israel, it has released 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and returned the bodies of 345 more who died in its prisons. Many reportedly showed signs of torture, mutilation and execution. However, Israel has not eased its pressure on the people of Gaza.

“As soon as ceasefires go into effect, nobody bothers with details, which gives Israel a free hand to do what it wants,” Shehada said.

As for the United States, which helped pressure Israel into the deal, Shehada said Trump is more interested in the spectacle of peace than in “the dynamics on the ground”, adding that Israel violates the ceasefire systematically, making it difficult for mediators to keep up.

The end goal, he said, was still the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

In Gaza, as in Lebanon or in Syria, Israel has undermined peace agreements, analysts say. Netanyahu has claimed his goal is to destroy and dismantle Hamas, though analysts have repeatedly doubted his stated intentions.

“It confirms what we already knew: that the goal is not to defeat an armed enemy, Hamas, but to make sure that life itself cannot be sustained in Gaza in the long-term,” Ayoub said.

“It’s simply genocide.”