Glimpses of possible peace after 2 years of systematic, brutal war

LONDON — As Israel’s military prepared last month to launch its ground offensive into Gaza City, the Israel Defense Forces published a warning about al-Kawthar Tower, a residential high-rise in the city.

Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arab-language spokesperson, shared on social media a satellite photo with the building highlighted in red. Leave now, he said at about 10 a.m. local time, adding, “The defense army will attack the building soon due to the presence of Hamas terrorist infrastructure inside it or adjacent to it.”

By the time the afternoon began, an Israeli airstrike had reduced that building and another one-time residential high-rise like it to piles of rebar and concrete.

Those systematic warnings and strikes — which came weeks ahead of the second anniversary of the brutal conflict between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that launched a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,200 — were just two of many as Israel continued its campaign to “crush” Hamas, in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel, in the second year of the war, continued hunting militants throughout the Gaza Strip, proceeding at times in block-by-block sweeps of neighborhoods and buildings. Like the al-Kawthar Tower, many buildings and much infrastructure have been destroyed in the process. Hospitals, schools-turned-shelters and sprawling “tent cities” of displaced people have all been routinely attacked. The United Nations in March described the damage as “unprecedented,” saying at that time that some 51 million tons of rubble covered the enclave.

Many have died, including thousands of noncombatants, according to officials at government agencies run by Hamas. By Sunday, two days prior to the war’s second anniversary, the death toll in the strip had risen to 67,139, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said.

An average of 27 children have been killed each day over the past two years, the strip’s media office said on Monday.

A broadening conflict and Trump’s helping hand

A ceasefire deal came into effect a day before President Donald Trump took office in January. As the president’s second term began, he said he would seek to be a “peacemaker and unifier.” He said he wanted to measure success by the wars the U.S. ended and “perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

Trump has in months since pushed for a resolution to the war between Israel and Hamas. He hosted Netanyahu at the White House and dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Tel Aviv and Qatar to assist in negotiations.

But still, the sinews of the conflict have stretched wider in the last year. Although the military said its focus has remained on destroying Hamas in Gaza, the IDF also launched significant air, ground and sea campaigns into Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. As of the war’s second anniversary, Israeli troops are still occupying recently seized territory in Lebanon and Syria — plus conducting air and artillery strikes in both.

“Together, we pushed back our enemies’ plans of destruction,” Netanyahu said on social media on Saturday. “From Gaza to Rafah, from Beirut to Damascus, from Yemen to Tehran, together we have achieved great things.”

He added, “From victory to victory — we are changing the face of the Middle East together. Together we will continue to act to ensure the eternity of Israel.”

Israeli forces have used U.S.-provided weapons and intelligence throughout its recent regional conflicts. Trump in June ordered U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft to launch an attack on several key nuclear facilities in Iran — assisting Israel in an intense and broad airstrike and covert operations campaign it had already launched against Tehran. Trump in a speech after the strikes said, “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

Trump also told ABC News he thought the attacks had been “excellent” and suggested there was “more to come.”

Accusations of ‘genocide’ against Israel, UN commission says

Israel has, since the first months of the conflict, been accused of systematically killing noncombatants, including claims that its actions in Gaza amount to a genocide, according to an independent U.N. commission and the Palestinian Authority president.

Those claims continued to dog Israel in the second year of its conflict, as civilian casualties in Gaza climbed, mass hunger spread and the IDF repeatedly forced large numbers of Palestinians to relocate. As Israel opened aid routes in July, the IDF said in a statement that that there is “no starvation in Gaza.”

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, for example, passed a resolution in September saying Israel’s “policies and actions” in Gaza “meet the legal definition of genocide,” established by the U.N. in 1948, the organization said in a release.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement late last month, “Israel’s actions in Gaza should have long ago triggered the ‘duty to prevent’ under the Genocide Convention, but states have failed to act decisively.”

Israel has vociferously rejected all allegations of genocide, framing its critics as anti-Semitic or — in Netanyahu’s words — “useful idiots” in the service of both Hamas and Iran.

Those accusations continued into the summer and fall of this year, as another group, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global initiative monitoring hunger with the backing of governments, the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, warned that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding in Gaza.

“Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the IPC warning said. “Latest data thresholds have been reached for food consumption in the Gaza Strip, and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.”

Netanyahu’s office called that determination “an outright lie” and “a modern blood libel.”

International outrage built as the killing of civilians at or close to aid sites — including those organized by the U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — by Israeli forces happened on multiple occasions. The U.N. and other aid groups refused to collaborate with the GHF. U.N. experts said the group was an “utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law.”

The experts alleged an “entanglement of Israeli intelligence, U.S. contractors and ambiguous non-governmental entities” with the GHF.

The organization’s executive chairman told ABC News in June that he “fundamentally” disagrees “with the premise that our operation is somehow disproportionately imperiling people.”

The IDF repeatedly rejected claims that it had intentionally fired on hungry civilians. Israeli military and political officials, plus the GHF, blamed Hamas or other Palestinian actors for the violent and desperate scenes near the aid sites.

A peace deal takes shape under Trump

Since returning to office in January, Trump has twinned his push for a peace deal with apocalyptic threats against Hamas. The president has framed a possible ceasefire agreement as one part of a wider Middle East accord, and “something special” for the whole region.

The president has secured buy-in from key Arab and Muslim states, his efforts energized by his criticism of Israel’s audacious and unsuccessful effort to assassinate top Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya in an airstrike in the Qatari capital of Doha.

The 20-point peace plan presented by Trump and Netanyahu at the White House on Sept. 29 appears a far cry from his February “Gaza Riviera” redevelopment scheme, which he said would see the U.S. “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip, overseeing its reconstruction with Palestinians relocated outside of the strip.

The new proposal foresees a transfer of power to a technocratic Palestinian government backed by a temporary “International Stabilization Force,” manned by Arab and other international partners to oversee the security of Gaza. The new government would also be overseen by the “Board of Peace” transitional body, chaired by Trump with other members including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The IDF, though, would remain along the Gaza perimeter and in the southern Philadelphi frontier crossing, while retaining freedom of military action throughout the strip. Hamas leaders would be allowed to leave the strip, but the organization would have to fully disarm.

Hamas on Friday gave a positive initial response, signifying its readiness to free all hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners if “the field conditions for the exchange are met.”

But the group said more negotiations will be needed before it can agree to a full peace deal. This week, Hamas, Israeli and U.S. representatives will gather in Egypt’s Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh for further ceasefire talks.

Time running out for Hamas to respond to Trump’s Gaza peace plan deadline: ANALYSIS

In any settlement, those responsible for post-war Gaza face a daunting reconstruction task.

Entire towns have disappeared from Gaza over the past two years. The U.N. reported in September that 78% of Gaza Strip buildings had been partially or fully destroyed. An ABC News visual analysis of satellite imagery and more than 200 verified social media videos showed that 88% of Gaza’s schools are destroyed or damaged.

In Gaza City, where the al-Kawthar Tower and others were brought down last month, more than 50 such “terror towers” were destroyed before the ground invasion began, Israel said. Netanyahu in a statement, said those towers coming down was “just a start.”

“We brought down 50 terror towers in two days, and this is just the opening for the independent operation of the ground maneuver in Gaza City,” Netanyahu said as the Gaza City invasion began.

The U.N. warned in a statement that the operation to seize Gaza City would be “catastrophic” for civilians.

When Netanyahu spoke of the potential deal on Saturday, he again lauded the strong military action in the city, saying, “As a result of the intense military pressure we applied and the diplomatic pressure, Hamas was pressured into agreeing to the plan we presented.”

And U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has several times discussed the difficulties that lie ahead, even if a deal is made to pause or end the fighting.

He said last month that “when all is said and done, there is still a group called Hamas, which is an evil group that still has weapons and is terrorizing.” He added, “there is still the hard work ahead of, once this ends, of rebuilding Gaza in a way that provides people a quality of life that they all want.”

“Who’s going to do that?” Rubio added. “Who’s going to pay for it? And who’s going to be in charge of it?”