Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours have killed at least 14 Palestinians, including children. The attacks, launched under the pretext of responding to a “failed rocket launch” by Palestinian militants, targeted displaced families sheltering in tents and schools, as well as residential areas in Gaza City.

Palestinian medics reported that Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed 14 Palestinians in separate attacks. Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed it was striking a rocket launch site and “terror infrastructure” after detecting a rocket launched from the area of Gaza City that fell short and landed by a hospital inside the enclave. Israel branded the launch as a violation of the ceasefire by Hamas.

In a formulation supported by multiple Western outlets, the IDF asserted that these strikes were a legitimate response to a “failed projectile” launched by Palestinian militants, the same narrative that has been used to justify previous atrocities such as   the bombing of Gaza’s al‑Ahli hospital in 2023 and other attacks later exposed as Israeli war crimes.

A Palestinian militant source told Reuters and other wire services that the organization was still “checking” the allegation of a misfired rocket, underscoring that even on its own terms, Israel’s story remains unsubstantiated while the civilian death toll mounts.

One of the deadliest attacks took place in the western area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, where an Israeli air strike hit a tent sheltering displaced people. Medics said at least four people were killed and three others wounded in the tent, including children. With the families already having been driven from their homes by earlier bombardments, they were incinerated or blown to bits in what had been designated a “safe” area.

Gaza’s civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported that four people, including three children, were killed when a drone struck the tent shelter. These killings, occurring in makeshift camps where thousands have been forced to live on bare ground and plastic sheeting, are part of the ongoing deliberate campaign to make life in Gaza physically unlivable and to push the population to leave the area.

In northern Gaza, the IDF extended its onslaught to one of the last refuges for families who have nowhere left to go. Also on Thursday, medics reported that a man was killed in an Israeli strike on a school in Jabalia that was sheltering displaced families, again in flagrant violation of the supposed ceasefire and international humanitarian law.

Gaza’s civil defense agency confirmed that an 11‑year‑old girl was killed near the Jabalia refugee camp and that a strike on a school in the area killed another person. Israeli warplanes continued to hit civilian infrastructure that has been turned into makeshift shelters by months of continuous bombardment.

The killing of children in schools and camps—places marked precisely because they house those driven from their homes—exposes the fraudulent character of all claims that Israel is conducting “precision” strikes on military targets.

In Gaza City, fresh strikes hit the Zeitoun neighborhood, one of the most devastated areas in the enclave and a zone where hundreds of thousands have been confined west of the Israeli‑imposed “yellow line” under the US‑brokered truce. Medics and local officials reported that four people were killed in a separate strike in Zeitoun, adding to the toll of killings since the supposed ceasefire went into effect in October.

Al Jazeera and other outlets have documented repeated attacks on residential homes and warehouses in Zeitoun and other Gaza City districts, with Palestinian civil defense crews often forced to dig bodies from the rubble using rudimentary tools due to the destruction of heavy rescue equipment. These attacks are part of a systematic pattern that aims to depopulate entire neighborhoods, not isolated “responses” to any incident.

The latest killings violate the Trump‑brokered ceasefire and “peace plan” announced last October, which the White House presented as a 20‑point roadmap to end the war and reconstruct Gaza. According to the Council on Foreign Relations and UN reporting, Israel has carried out more than 100 shellings and shootings in Gaza, rejected over 100 humanitarian aid requests, and has continued to impose a crippling siege in the months since the agreement was proclaimed.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that at least 425 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,200 wounded in Israeli attacks since the truce supposedly took effect. This figure has been corroborated by international and independent outlets. The ongoing killings, combined with Israel’s systematic obstruction of food, fuel and shelter, constitute a continuing genocidal campaign carried out with full US approval, demonstrating that the “ceasefire” is a tactical device for management of public opinion while the war goes on.

As the latest crimes unfold in Gaza, the American and international media have increasingly focused on the US intervention in Venezuela and on the explosive political crisis triggered by the murder of an American citizen by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Wednesday. In Venezuela, the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by US forces is part of the same imperialist strategy of violence and conquest that has been driving the genocide in Gaza.

At home, protests have erupted across the United States after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed 37‑year‑old US citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, with demonstrations spreading from Minnesota to cities across the country. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have rushed to defend the ICE agents, blaming the victim, denouncing protesters as “domestic terrorists,” and exonerating the shooter in a manner that mirrors the justifications given for the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

The genocidal conditions imposed on Gaza are expressed most graphically in the plight of Palestinian infants and small children. Al Jazeera reports that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has warned of a surge in respiratory infections, skin diseases and other illnesses among Palestinians living in makeshift shelters, as Israel continues to block the entry of tents, tarps and temporary housing amid freezing winter temperatures.

MSF states that babies in Gaza are “suffering from severe cold” as displaced families endure torrential rain and strong winds in flimsy tent encampments and ruined buildings, with no heating, electricity or proper clothing. In December, a two‑week‑old infant, Mohammed Khalil Abu al‑Khair, froze to death in Gaza after Israel’s restrictions on shelter materials and aid turned the winter cold into a lethal weapon.

The Trump administration is now preparing to dress up the ongoing massacre with a new stage‑managed diplomatic façade. US officials have leaked that Trump will soon announce the formation of a so‑called “Gaza Board of Peace,” the body tasked under Washington’s plan with overseeing Gaza’s “reconstruction,” structuring its future administration and distributing international funds.

Trump has declared that he will personally lead this board, which is expected to comprise around 15 imperialist figures and their bourgeois nationalist partners, including representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. Reports indicate that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, notorious for his role in the carnage of the Iraq war, has been named as a founding member, while a former UN Middle East envoy has been designated as the board’s representative “on the ground” in Israel and Gaza.

Nikolay Mladenov, named to head Trump’s “Board of Peace,” is a right-wing Bulgarian politician and diplomat whose record is bound up with NATO’s wars in the Middle East and the “peace process” now being used to cover the genocide in Gaza. His record—from Bulgaria’s defense and foreign ministries, through the UN missions in Iraq and Palestine—has been in the service of imperialism and colonialism.

The purpose of this Board of Peace is not to end the suffering of the Palestinians but to create a technocratic façade for a regime in Gaza that will exclude Palestinians from any governing role and ensure that reconstruction funds are tied to the political and economic dictates of the Trump White House. The board’s purpose is to supervise the establishment of a “Palestinian technocratic government” and to police the enclave under the rubric of “stability,” while the underlying structures of occupation and siege remain unchanged.

The murderous strikes on tents, schools and homes in Khan Yunis, Jabalia and Zeitoun, the freezing to death of infants, and the daily toll of Palestinians killed under the so‑called ceasefire expose the situation in Gaza. It is an ongoing genocide carried out by Israel with the support of US and European imperialism. The Trump administration’s ceasefire, peace plan and Board of Peace are instruments of this policy, designed to deflect mass opposition and provide a diplomatic cover for ethnic cleansing that aims to drive Palestinians out of the occupied territories.