AILSA CHANG, HOST:
One week ago, President Trump stood with world leaders in Egypt and declared, quote, "at long last, we have peace in the Middle East." His ceasefire plan brought the war in Gaza to a halt. But on Sunday, Palestinians across the territory awoke to the sound of airstrikes. Health officials in Gaza say at least 46 Palestinians were killed. Israel says it struck Hamas targets after two Israeli soldiers were killed in the south of Gaza. Well, joining us now with the latest is NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Hi, Aya.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: So what more can you tell us about what happened in the past 24, 48 hours in Gaza?
BATRAWY: Well, it began with Israel saying two of its soldiers were killed, one of them a mid-ranking officer, in Rafah. That's the southern stretch of Gaza where Israeli troops are positioned just across the border from Egypt. And it was the first attack of its kind on soldiers like this since the ceasefire came into effect October 11. Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire and immediately began launching airstrikes and fighter jets into the sky, bombing the territory from the south to the north.
A photo shows multiple gray plumes rising simultaneously over the southern city of Khan Yunis in Gaza. Targets included a school sheltering displaced people, a police station, homes, tents. But Hamas said it had not violated any part of the ceasefire agreement, that it had been fully committed to it. A Hamas official told NPR it was actually rogue militants who attacked the soldiers, and President Trump later told reporters, similarly, it was rebels behind that.
CHANG: Well, what's the situation today in Gaza? Like, have there been more airstrikes?
BATRAWY: The skies have been quiet of airstrikes today, but people are very unnerved by what happened, as you can imagine. Many thought that with the return of all remaining living Israeli hostages, that the Israeli bombs wouldn't return so soon again. But NPR also spoke to people in Gaza, like Ahmad Kassab, a carpenter who once worked in Israel, who said he actually expected this violence. He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking for any reason to restart the war and appease his far-right ministers, but that it's President Trump who's applying pressure on Israel to keep borders open for aid to enter Gaza and for Israel not to return to war.
AHMAD KASSAB: We have, like, suffered two years in this situation. We have been died in every way the world can imagine and not imagine.
BATRAWY: Also, you know, the attacks had halted the entry of both aid into Gaza and the movement of aid trucks within Gaza yesterday. So prices of basic goods immediately spiked. And I'll note here that while more aid has been entering Gaza under the ceasefire, it's not yet at the scale the U.N. was planning for. The World Food Programme says only two border crossings are open right now. So essentially, what is entering, they say, is still insufficient to address severe hunger in Gaza.
CHANG: Well, today, Steve Witkoff, the White House envoy, and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are in Israel, right? What are they trying to do on this visit?
BATRAWY: OK, so the first phase of this deal remains unfinished because Israel is pushing for the return of all the bodies of dead hostages in Gaza. It says there are 15 of those bodies still in Gaza. Hamas says there are 14 bodies with another one just returned this evening after being found. But Hamas says it needs heavy machinery and time to find all the bodies, with some of those buried under bombed tunnels and rubble. On the Palestinian side, meanwhile, families are searching for their missing ones among more than a hundred unidentified Palestinian corpses Israel was holding and has returned to Gaza as part of that first phase.
But what we have now is Witkoff and Kushner in Israel trying to discuss the next phase of the ceasefire - get it going - with, also, Vice President JD Vance visiting Israel tomorrow. Now this next phase, Ailsa, is not as clearly defined in Trump's plan as the first one, but it does call for an international stabilization force - that would be international troops on the ground in Gaza - to fill a security vacuum as Israeli troops begin to pull back more. And there are reports that there's actually a resolution being drafted now at the U.N. Security Council to give that force an international mandate.
CHANG: That is NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Thank you so much, Aya.
BATRAWY: Thank you, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
