Who can force Israel to honour the Gaza ceasefire? A year on, the guarantors are demanding answers

A year-old ceasefire, and a question no guarantor can answer

On Sunday 15 November 2026, Al Jazeera’s Inside Story put the question plainly: who can force Israel to implement the Gaza ceasefire deal? The programme aired three days after an Israeli strike hit the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, and on the same day Haaretz published Israel’s own aid figures showing deliveries far below the volumes the deal promises. A studio debate became a live test of the agreement itself.

The ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025 under the plan put forward by United States President Donald Trump, sealed in the Sharm El-Sheikh Agreement and endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025), which also blessed the American-established Board of Peace. A year on, the fighting has not stopped. Gaza’s health officials count at least 1,600 Palestinians killed since the deal began; Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed. The first phase, a halt to the fighting, the release of hostages and prisoners, and a surge of aid, was due on signature. The surge never arrived at the promised scale, and the question the programme asked is now the question eighteen foreign ministers asked in writing on Saturday: who makes the deal real?

What Israel’s own figures show about the aid shortfall

The numbers now come from Israel itself. Haaretz reported on Sunday that COGAT data supplied to the United States-run Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat, verified by the United Nations, shows Israel short of its commitments for most of the past eight months. The deal provides for 4,200 trucks of aid and commercial goods a week, about 600 a day. In most months the number has amounted to roughly half the agreed target or less; about 4,000 trucks had entered in November. COGAT disputes the figures and has stopped publishing truck totals since the ceasefire began.

Gaza’s Government Media Office, reporting on 2 November, put the gap in starker terms: 77,657 trucks entered out of 232,800 expected since the deal began, 33.3 percent, with 3,777 of 18,600 expected in October and fuel at 247 of 1,550. The same office counts 5,989 ceasefire violations since the deal took effect, with 1,593 Palestinians killed, 5,748 injured and 217 detained; at Rafah, 14,821 travellers crossed against 40,000 expected.

The strike that forced the issue hit Nasser Hospital on Thursday 12 November: Reuters, carried by The Hindu, reported at least five killed, including the surgeon Rezik Abushira, and twenty wounded, the surgery department extensively damaged. The Israeli military said it had targeted Muhammad Abu Ismail, commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade. Two days later, the foreign ministers of eighteen Arab and Islamic countries condemned the strike as a violation of international humanitarian law and attacks on civilians sheltering in tents, and called on Israel to fulfil its obligations under the Sharm El-Sheikh Agreement, the Trump plan and Resolution 2803; and on the United States and the Board of Peace to intensify their efforts.

What would enforcement actually look like?

No source has yet described a mechanism that could compel compliance. The Board of Peace has no enforcement powers in the text of the deal, and Resolution 2803 endorses the plan without creating any. It is not known whether Washington intends to use its leverage, arms, diplomacy, political cover, to press Israel, or regards the current level of implementation as sufficient. The full scale of the aid gap is itself uncertain now that COGAT has stopped publishing totals, and the fate of the thirty-six disqualified humanitarian organisations and the thirteen permitted merchants is not publicly documented. Nor is it known when, or whether, the deal’s second phase will begin.

Winter is now the enforcement deadline

The argument about enforcement is no longer abstract: winter has arrived while the shelters have not. The World Health Organization warned on Friday 13 November that acute respiratory infections in Gaza are running 33,000 cases higher than at the same time last year; 11 percent of all medical consultations. Heavy rain has flooded tens of thousands of tents housing displaced Palestinians; nearly a million displaced people live in flood-exposed areas, 400,000 at extremely high risk, the WHO says. A nine-month-old baby, Kinan Ahmed Raqiq, died of cold on Thursday, the first such death of the winter; five people, including three children, were killed on 7 November when a sand bank collapsed onto tents in central Gaza. The WHO’s warning, and the flooding behind it, are set out in our earlier report.

That is why fifty-three countries and organisations, led by the United Kingdom, Qatar and Jordan, demanded on Friday the immediate entry of shelter, fuel, water, sanitation and health supplies; and why the ministers’ statement dwells on tents, caravans, mobile homes and medical supplies rather than the strike alone: the shortfall is now measured in exposure, infection and cold. COGAT says more than 93,000 tents and 8,600 trucks of winter supplies have entered since the winterisation plan began, a figure the aid agencies’ counts do not match. Every week the gap persists, the population squeezed into an ever smaller area pays in illness, and the deal’s credibility pays in doubt.

The guarantors have statements. They do not have leverage.

The structural problem is that the deal has guarantors, not enforcers. The United States wrote the plan, chairs the Board of Peace and alone holds the leverage, military aid, diplomatic cover, political capital, that could change Israel’s calculations. But Washington is also the deal’s author and public champion, and pressing its own ally in public would mean admitting the plan it declared a success is failing. Egypt and Qatar, the mediators, have influence with Hamas and the region, not the cabinet. Türkiye, which signed the ministers’ statement, has no seat at the enforcement table.

The ministers’ statement understands this: it threatens no consequences, it asks the United States and the Board of Peace to intensify their efforts, a request addressed to the only actor that could act, framed as a request because no one else can issue an order. The Board of Peace, for all its name, administers a transition; it commands no force and can impose no penalty. Until Washington decides the cost of non-compliance exceeds the cost of pressure, the deal will be implemented at the pace Israel chooses, and the ministers will keep writing statements.

A ceasefire that cannot be enforced rewrites every other negotiation

The first consequence is precedent. Every mediator watching Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, in the next conflict not yet begun, is learning what a guarantee from Washington is worth when the guarantor will not enforce it. A Security Council resolution endorsing a plan without enforcement machinery teaches every future signatory that the signature is the ceiling, not the floor. The second consequence is institutional: aid agencies are re-planning around restriction as permanent, not temporary. When only thirteen merchants may bring goods into Gaza and thirty-six organisations are disqualified, the market that emerges is narrow, volatile and expensive. Efforts to rebuild Gaza’s aid pipeline from the outside, such as Singapore’s new delivery network, now face the same bottleneck.

The third consequence falls inside Gaza itself. The territory’s population is being squeezed into an ever smaller area as the Israeli military shifts the Yellow Line, the demarcation drawn under the ceasefire; the WHO links that crowding directly to the surge in respiratory illness. A population that cannot move, cannot shelter and cannot be supplied will not wait for the second phase. It will survive the winter or it will not; and the difference will be measured in truck counts, not in statements.

Who moves first; Washington, or the eighteen?

The next test is arithmetical. The deal promises about 600 trucks a day; November runs at roughly half that or less, and the ministers now demand the full volume flow without further delay or additional conditions. Whether the daily count rises in the coming week will show whether the statement carried weight. The Rafah crossing is the second test: fewer than four in ten expected travellers have crossed since the deal began, and the crossing is the only route out for the sick and the wounded.

The third test is political, and it belongs to Washington. The Board of Peace can call for more aid, the United Nations can verify the shortfall, the European Union can add its voice. None of them can compel. The strikes have continued even as the diplomacy intensified, with Israel saying it targets regrouping Hamas commanders. Until the United States treats implementation as a condition rather than a hope, the question Al Jazeera asked on Sunday will keep returning with the same answer: no one can; yet.