The War After the War: In Gaza’s Rubble, The Real Battle for Survival Begins 

While the handover of an Israeli captive’s body under a ceasefire agreement captured headlines, the situation in Gaza reveals a conflict that has merely evolved, not ended, with the real crisis being the “war after the war”—a devastating and insidious battle for survival characterized by an estimated 10,000 Palestinians buried under rubble, the continued blocking of essential aid, and a fragile truce violated by attacks like the killing of 11 members of the Shaaban family, all while Israel transitions to a strategy of institutional destruction and creating a power vacuum that threatens to perpetuate violence and suffering, even as international inaction and diplomatic normalization efforts risk cementing these conditions.

The War After the War: In Gaza’s Rubble, The Real Battle for Survival Begins 

The handover of a body is not a victory. It is a tragedy, formalized. On October 17, 2025, the recovery and transfer of the remains of an Israeli captive by Hamas’s Qassam Brigades was a grim, procedural step within the fragile architecture of a ceasefire. For a moment, the world’s attention fixated on this single act, a sliver of closure in a conflict defined by its endless, agonizing lack of it. 

But to focus solely on this exchange is to miss the larger, more terrifying story unfolding in Gaza. The ceasefire has not ended the war; it has merely changed its battlefield. The thunder of airstrikes has been replaced by the silent, desperate scratching at mountains of rubble. The immediate fear of death has morphed into the slow, grinding anxiety of starvation, disease, and a future without foundation. 

The Unseen Massacre: 10,000 Souls Beneath the Rubble 

While the mechanics of the hostage deal played out, Gaza’s civil defence spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal, delivered a statistic so staggering it threatens to become just another number: approximately 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under the debris left by Israel’s intense war on the enclave. 

This figure is not abstract. It represents a city of the dead concealed within the ruins of the living. It is fathers, mothers, children, and grandparents, their final moments encased in concrete and twisted rebar. The work of recovery is Herculean, hampered by a lack of heavy equipment, fuel, and the ever-present danger of unexploded ordnance. Each body pulled from the wreckage is a posthumous testimony to the war’s indiscriminate ferocity, a quiet rebuttal to any narrative of a “precise” campaign. 

The psychological toll on the survivors is immeasurable. How does a society grieve when it cannot bury its dead? How does it heal when the very ground beneath its feet is a mass grave? This invisible massacre will haunt Gaza for generations, a spectral presence in a landscape already heavy with memory. 

The Zeitoun Massacre: A Ceasefire in Name Only? 

The fragility of the current truce was violently exposed by the attack in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. As reported by Basal, an Israeli strike targeted a car, killing 11 members of the Shaaban family—seven children and two women among them. 

Hamas was quick to condemn the strike, calling it a “premeditated intent to target defenceless civilians” and evidence that “the blood of our children and women remains a direct target for the Zionist killing machine.” 

Whether a deliberate attack or a catastrophic “miscalculation,” the Zeitoun massacre underscores a brutal truth: for civilians in Gaza, the difference between war and ceasefire can be terrifyingly thin. This event reveals the fundamental power imbalance at play. For one side, a ceasefire is a diplomatic process involving hostage exchanges and international mediation. For the other, it is a momentary, uncertain lull in a constant struggle for survival, where a single strike can erase an entire family line in an instant. 

The Institutional War: How Israel Plans to Fight Without Its Army 

As insightful analysis by Amal Abu Seif suggests, Israel’s strategic withdrawal of tanks and troops does not signal an end to hostilities. Instead, it marks a transition to a different, potentially more devastating form of warfare: the war of institutional destruction. 

In this new phase, the primary weapons are not bombs but bureaucracy; the main fronts are not neighbourhoods but the corridors of power and the basic pillars of society. The goal is to create conditions so intolerable that any semblance of normal life, let alone self-governance, becomes impossible. 

This strategy manifests in several key areas: 

• The Aid Blockade: Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to impede the delivery of humanitarian aid. By controlling the flow of food, medicine, and reconstruction materials, it maintains a stranglehold on Gaza’s recovery. This is not a passive act; it is an active tool of control, ensuring that survival remains precarious and that Gazans remain perpetually dependent on external aid. 

• The Creation of a Vacuum: By systematically destroying government buildings, police stations, and civil infrastructure, Israel has created a power vacuum. As Abu Seif warns, this vacuum is already being filled by emerging militias and criminal elements, exploiting the collapse of social order. This fragmentation serves to justify future Israeli military interventions under the pretext of “counter-terrorism,” creating a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. 

• The Health and Environmental Catastrophe: The destruction of hospitals, water treatment plants, and sanitation systems has unleashed a slow-moving disaster. The spread of disease, the lack of maternal care, and the psychological trauma of an entire population, especially children, constitute a form of warfare that leaves no visible craters but inflicts deep, lasting wounds. 

The Global Complicity: Diplomacy in the Shadow of Atrocity 

On the international stage, the responses to this ongoing crisis have been starkly divergent, revealing a world still deeply divided on how to address the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

In one corner, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan positioned himself as a potential mediator, stating his government was “working diligently to ensure that the agreement… is permanent and paves the way for lasting peace.” 

In another, former US President Donald Trump spoke of expanding the Abraham Accords, hoping to bring Saudi Arabia into the fold of normalization with Israel. This vision of a “New Middle East,” built on top-down diplomatic deals between governments, stands in stark contrast to the reality on the ground in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where the UN reports Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,001 Palestinians since October 2023. 

Most damning is the stance of the European Union. Agnes Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, issued a powerful condemnation, revealing that a crucial vote to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement—a trade deal that confers significant benefits—was dropped from the agenda following the ceasefire. Her argument is moral and legal: continuing business as usual with a state accused of genocide, apartheid, and unlawful occupation by leading human rights organizations is not just hypocritical; it is complicity. 

By failing to act, the EU and other powerful nations send a clear message: the rules-based order is selective, and geopolitical interests outweigh the principles of human rights and international law. 

Conclusion: The Long Shadow of the Rubble 

The handover of a single hostage’s body is a moment. The recovery of 10,000 from the rubble is an epoch. The current ceasefire, while a vital respite from the bombs, is not an end but an intermission in a longer, more complex tragedy. 

The real battle for Gaza’s future is now being waged in the ruined hospitals, the blocked aid corridors, the silent diplomatic chambers where accountability is shelved for expediency, and in the minds of a generation of children who have known little but fear and loss. 

Until the world addresses not just the violence of the war, but the violence of the peace that follows—a peace of rubble, hunger, and impunity—the cycle will not be broken. The war after the war may be quieter, but for the people of Gaza, it is no less deadly.