Travelling across the border into Gaza several months into the current ceasefire, it was hard to know what to expect. Though the fighting has officially stopped, the IDF remains in position along the yellow line, occupying much of the eastern edge of the strip, holding its ground when tested. The war is over, or at least on hold.
As soon as we entered, the mood felt quiet and controlled, where once it had been electric, tense and dangerous. Access remains rare. Journalists are still escorted, movements coordinated in advance, routes approved and confined. Entry points open and close with bureaucratic precision.
The crossing itself sits only a short drive from Israeli farming communities that were attacked on October 7, slightly west of Kisufim, and within sight of the dense urban sprawl of the central Gaza “camps”.
Behind me, Israeli fields stretch out in winter green under the hazy sunshine. Ahead, concrete barriers give way to sandy banks and the odd torn-down structure, surrounded by trees, grass, and nature all refusing to bow even to the fiercest effects of war. The rains and the warming weather have brought life and colour to the landscape.
Just beyond the fields, Palestinian neighbourhoods appear surprisingly intact, and densely inhabited. The geography compresses everything. On one side of the fence are recovering Israeli agriculture and kibbutzim scarred by invasion. On the other, the residue of war is slowly giving way to the resumption of regular life for a population denied protection or refuge by its own leaders.
The air carries a faint metallic tang, mixed with dust that settles into clothing and in the back of your throat. Drones hum in the air above us. Occasionally there is the sharp crack of gunfire, but none of the familiar artillery booms I had heard on previous trips to the area. There are no smoke columns rising into the sky. Instead, the soundscape is wind, birds, and the quiet mechanical hum of generators, the noise of a war no longer advancing but not yet finished.
The physical landscape is uneven and raw. Dirt tracks are carved through what were once fields and orchards, and freshly tarmacked roads lead between military sites. Earth berms and reinforced positions punctuate the horizon. Observation posts stand elevated above the surrounding terrain, their silhouettes rigid against the grey blue sky. It is all deceptively serene – like arriving at a party after almost everyone has left, and the music has stopped. The cleanup has started, but the furniture isn’t yet back in place, and the confetti of destruction is still around us in every direction.
IDF vehicle[Missing Credit]
The soldiers move with a measured calm. Helmets clipped, rifles slung low but within reach, radios murmuring at their shoulders. There is no visible urgency, yet no relaxation either. They speak in subdued tones, scanning as they walk, eyes tracing the horizon.
Months of high-intensity combat have given way to a posture of containment. While it is not peace, it is some sort of vigilance without spectacle.
Buildings nearest the eastern corridor bear the clearest marks of fighting. Some walls are blown open, with buildings exposed like cross-sections of private lives. Further west, things are still in one piece with markets open and shops working as usual.
Standing there, a few kilometres from Israeli towns that still carry the scars of October 2023, and only minutes from neighbourhoods in Gaza that have been battered throughout months of fighting, the fragility of the moment becomes palpable. The ceasefire has created space, but it has not dissolved the underlying fault lines. The strip feels suspended, neither fully at war nor fully at rest, held in a narrow band of controlled uncertainty.
At first it is hard to know why the IDF has brought me here, to witness this careful stalemate. There is little drama, less spectacle. Everything appears contained. Only gradually does the intention take shape. This is what they want seen: a border held, a strip monitored, a war paused but managed. This is the message: Order, control, deterrence without escalation.
LtC Nadav Shoshani, the official IDF international spokesman, has been dispatched to explain the situation. He makes that point without theatricality. Standing a short distance from the fluorescent yellow concrete blocks that mark the eastern corridor, dotted along the ruined landscape like tear-off perforation, he gestures not towards the ruins behind us but towards the quiet. The absence of rockets. The absence of massed forces. The absence of infiltration. This relative calm is not an accident, it is maintained.
Jonathan Sacerdoti (l) and LtC Nadav Shoshani[Missing Credit]
He speaks in measured terms about what he calls “persistent security control”.The IDF remains positioned along the line, conducting patrols, surveillance, and targeted actions where necessary. Hamas, he says, probes constantly. Small tests. Attempts to reassert presence in areas from which their fighters have withdrawn. Efforts to rebuild command chains disrupted during the war. Give them an inch and they’ll take 251 hostages. No one Hamas challenge to the ceasefire has yet been dramatic enough to shatter it outright. Not yet, at least. But they are sufficient to remind Israel that the underlying conflict has certainly not dissolved. Give them space, he suggests, and they reorganise. Allow ambiguity, and they exploit it. The lesson of October 7 hangs unspoken but unmistakable over the conversation. Deterrence cannot be assumed, it must be demonstrated. The spectacle of overwhelming force may have receded, but the posture of dominance remains deliberate. Patrol routes, observation points, engineering works, all signal that the eastern flank of Gaza is not an open arena but a controlled zone.
Yet control alone is not the full equation. As we speak, humanitarian convoys continue to enter. Diplomatic channels remain active. Washington’s influence is constant, sometimes quiet, sometimes public. LtC Shoshani acknowledges the reality without complaint.
Jonathan Sacerdoti in front of humanitarian supplies[Missing Credit]
Israel, he says, operates within an agreement it signed on to, which brings with it alliances and expectations. Military decisions reverberate far beyond the immediate battlefield.
He is equally clear that the surface calm obscures a persistent undercurrent. Sniper fire, sporadic and opportunistic, has not entirely disappeared. Tunnel shafts continue to be discovered and destroyed. Others are being newly reinforced.
Engineering units are still engaged in what he describes as the “denaturing” of subterranean networks, rendering passages unusable rather than merely sealed. Rafah, he notes, remains under tight control, crossings restricted and movement heavily regulated. And yet, I note, reports from reservists suggest attempts to excavate again, to rebuild segments of the underground lattice that defined Hamas’s operational depth. The confrontation, in other words, has shifted into the margins but has not disappeared. What looks static from a distance is, at closer range, a constant contest of pressure and counter-pressure.
This is the balance: to apply sustained pressure on Hamas infrastructure while avoiding the diplomatic rupture that a renewed full-scale kinetic operation might provoke; to project enough strength to deter escalation while limiting actions that could fracture support in key capitals; to reassure Israeli citizens that security is non-negotiable while signalling to allies that proportionality and restraint remain operative principles.
An Israeli soldier on lookout[Missing Credit]
This entire embed, with its calming theatre and unshakeable spokesman, is also part of that strategic calibration. It is the narrative front of a war that has shifted down a gear, but not truly ground to a halt. Too little force, and Hamas interprets hesitation.
Too much, and Israel risks strategic isolation. In between lies a narrow corridor where deterrence is visible, containment credible, and escalation avoided. It is a dynamic equilibrium, constantly adjusted. That balance could be broken any day, but the IDF is keen to show us now that it won’t have been their fault.
The ceasefire, then, is not a settlement. It is an interval. During that interval, Hamas tests the perimeter, politically and operationally. Israel responds in increments, sufficient to reassert boundaries without detonating the pause entirely. Each decision is weighed against multiple ledgers: security impact, diplomatic cost, domestic expectation, regional signalling. But jihadists are experts in patience. They will use any opportunity like this to survive, and slowly rebuild. They can wait, as long as they still exist.
Standing there, with the low hum of military presence and the distant Mediterranean breeze cutting through the dust, the complexity becomes tangible.
The calm is real, but it is engineered. The quiet is deliberate, but it is conditional. This is not the stillness of resolution. It is the stillness of vigilance, sustained by a calculation that must be constantly refined. In such an environment, misjudgement can change everything. The margin for error in either direction is thin, and the stakes are unforgiving.
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