A weeklong cease-fire in the Gaza Strip collapsed on Friday morning, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for the breakdown of a truce that had allowed for the exchange of hundreds of hostages and prisoners, and that had briefly raised hopes for a more lasting halt to the fighting.
The Israeli military said it had launched 200 strikes since the resumption of fighting, some of which the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, witnessed from a seat in an Israeli attack helicopter flying over Gaza.
“This morning we returned to hitting Hamas with full force,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “The results are impressive.”
“Hamas only understands force,” he added.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement that Israel was “committed to achieving the war aims — freeing our hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the residents of Israel.” For days, he and other Israeli leaders had sought to quash any notion of extending the truce indefinitely, despite growing international pressure, stating repeatedly that even if the pause continued for a few more days, Israel’s offensive would resume.
Among the areas targeted on Friday was Khan Younis, a city in the southern part of the territory, according to Gaza’s Interior Ministry.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in the south after Israel ordered civilians to flee the north, where the bombardment has been heaviest and where Israel has mounted a ground invasion. In their campaign to root out Hamas, which controls Gaza, Israeli forces are expected to turn their focus to the now-crowded south.
Hostilities resumed shortly before the truce — which was extended several times during the week — expired at 7 a.m. Friday. Israel said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza. By Friday evening, air-raid sirens were again blaring throughout central Israel, warning of possible incoming rockets in the greater Tel Aviv area.
Mediators from Qatar worked into the early hours Friday trying to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas so the pause in fighting could continue.
The cease-fire had been partly built around a formula of Hamas releasing at least 10 Israeli hostages per day, with Israel freeing three Palestinian prisoners for each hostage returned; nearly all in both groups were women or minors. Over the course of a week, 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners taken captive in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel were set free, as were 240 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
But as the number of women and children remaining captive in Gaza dwindled, leaving mainly men and Israeli soldiers as hostages, the talks became more fraught. Ultimately the two sides failed to overcome disagreements, including about how to define soldiers versus civilians and how many Palestinian prisoners Israel would release for its hostages, officials from Israel and Hamas said.
Speaking just before his departure from Dubai at the end of a two-day Middle East visit, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken blamed Hamas for the broken truce. He said it was “important to understand why the pause came to an end: It came to an end because of Hamas. Hamas reneged on commitments it made.”
Mr. Blinken, who had pressed the Israeli government to make greater efforts to protect civilians as it resumed the war, said he was already seeing signs that Israel was doing so. He cited Israel’s releasing public information about locations that would be largely spared from military attacks.
The Israeli military on Friday published an online map that it said would help Palestinian residents determine if they needed to “evacuate from specific places for their safety.”
But the map did not specify where people should go, and it was unclear whether Gazans would be able to gain access to the map, given that many do not have electricity or internet, and that cellular service has been unreliable in the bombarded enclave since the war began.
Gaza health officials swiftly began reporting casualties after the resumption of fighting. By evening the Gazan health authorities reported that 178 people had been killed and 578 wounded on Friday.
The halt in fighting had given Gaza’s 2.2 million people a brief reprieve from withering Israeli strikes. Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, in which about 1,200 people in Israel were killed and about 240 hostages kidnapped, the Israeli government says, Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 13,000 people, according to the Gazan health authorities.
“I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement. “The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a true humanitarian cease-fire.”
At least one proposal put forward by mediators to extend the truce had sought to follow the formula used over the last week, with the release of women and children held in Gaza in exchange for women and underage Palestinians from Israeli jails, in addition to an increase in aid for Gaza.
The sides gave differing accounts for why this had not worked.
Hamas said it considered some of the women on Israel’s list of 10 hostages proposed for release on Friday to be soldiers, meaning that the terms of exchange to free them would be different, Zaher Jabareen, a Hamas official who oversees prisoner issues, said in a phone interview.
Mr. Jabareen said Hamas had made three other proposals, all of which involved small numbers of Israelis in exchange for at least dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
One entailed Hamas trading what it said were the bodies of the mother and two young children from the Bibas family for a few dozen Palestinians detained by Israel since 2014, Mr. Jabareen said.
The plight of the Bibas family has caused great anguish in Israel. Hamas announced this week that Shiri Bibas, 32, and her children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, had been killed in Israeli airstrikes while captive in Gaza; the Israeli military has said it is seeking to verify that assertion.
Hamas also proposed exchanging the children’s father, Yarden Bibas, who it says is still alive, for a few dozen of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including some who have been there since the 1980s, Mr. Jabareen said.
Another Hamas proposal would have required both sides to release all captives over age 60, he said. He was not sure how many hostages in Gaza that was, he said, but described it as meaning about 130 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom Israel detained after Hamas’s surprise attack on Oct. 7.
Israel rejected all the offers, Mr. Jabareen said.
“It is clear that we are heading toward the continuation of the aggression and that there is no horizon for continuing with cease-fires and prisoner swaps,” he said.
A person with knowledge of the negotiations said that the final offer from Hamas included Mr. Bibas, the bodies of his wife and their two children, and six surviving women, children and elderly people. Israel rejected that offer because it wanted to secure the release of all living women and children who were hostages before negotiating for the others, the person said.
The Israeli military on Friday said that Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli who was captured during the attack on the Tribe of Nova rave in Re’im, had been found dead in Gaza. His remains were identified by medical and forensic officials on Wednesday, the military said in a statement.
Four other people thought to have been taken hostage from Nir Oz, one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7, were declared dead on Friday.
They “were considered hostages till today,” a spokeswoman for the kibbutz said, declining to comment further.
Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, Ben Hubbard from Istanbul and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco. Reporting was contributed by Michael Crowley, Aaron Boxerman, Sheera Frenkel, Victoria Kim, Iyad Abuheweila, Hwaida Saad and Johnatan Reiss.
