After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday instructed the country’s military to “carry out powerful strikes in Gaza,” the IDF followed in a Wednesday morning statement saying it has resumed the ceasefire in Gaza. The military indicated it had launched “series of significant strikes in which dozens of terror targets and terrorists were attacked” – the result of Hamas gunmen allegedly opening fire on its troops.
Israel says that during this ground attack by Hamas in Rafah, an Israeli reservists was killed. “The slain soldier was named as Master Sgt. (res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum, 37, a heavy machinery operator in the Gaza Division, from the West Bank settlement of Neria,” Times of Israel reports.
But Gaza health authorities said more than 100 Palestinians were killed in the fresh strikes Tuesday strikes, which have at this point abated. Israel announced at 10am (local) that the ceasefire is once again in effect.
Rob Geist Pinfold, lecturer in international security at King’s College London, articulated his view to Al Jazeera that the strikes were “more or less clearly coordinated with the United States.”
“Yes, Israel launched all of these strikes. Yes, this may feel like a breach of the ceasefire,” he said. “But it’s unlikely that this wasn’t agreed in advance with the Americans.” He says Washington would have been on board with retribution, albeit brief or temporary, given an Israeli soldier was killed despite the Trump-brokered ceasefire being on.
Pinfold described that US officials would “almost certainly be saying in private to the Israeli government: ‘OK, you have a right to respond but you also have a necessity to stop. We are not letting you collapse the deal.’” He conveyed that Israel’s government, “particularly Netanyahu, knows that for the time being at least this deal is too big to fail. He cannot be seen as being the leader that collapses the agreement.”
Indeed, President Donald Trump when asked about it said he backs Israel’s strikes, calling the move “retribution” for an assault on Israeli troops.
Trump said “Israel should hit back” after Israel said Hamas violated the ceasefire agreement, but still ultimately called for the ceasefire to hold. Before this Tuesday flare-up in fighting and strikes, it had held for a little over two weeks.
“Nothing’s going to jeopardize that,” Trump said in reference to the ceasefire. “You have to understand, Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave. They’re on the rough side, but they said they would be good. And if they’re good, they’re going to be happy, and if they’re not good, they’re going to be terminated. Their lives will be terminated. And they understand that.”
After nearly 12 hours of heavy bombing, the Israeli military announced it was reimposing the ceasefire as of 10 am local time (8 am GMT)https://t.co/IKo96ugLou pic.twitter.com/HZiR8Fvzvg
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 29, 2025
The US President added, “If we have to, we’ll take out Hamas very easily, and that’ll be the end of Hamas. We would rather not. We made a deal with them where they were going to behave, and they have to behave. If they don’t behave, they get taken out.”
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