They called it a ceasefire. Since the Gaza ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025, Gaza’s Health Ministry says 1,602 Palestinians have been killed and 5,794 wounded. That is the figure it gave on Wednesday, 4 November 2026. By Thursday the list was already longer. A ceasefire that kills more than 1,600 people in a year is not a ceasefire. It is a slower war with a nicer name.
And this week the dead were joined by an old ghost. On 2 November, the Balfour Declaration turned 109. The promise Britain made in 1917 still shapes every grave Gazans dig today.
Thursday, 5 November: Another Ordinary Day of the Gaza Ceasefire
Here is what one “ceasefire” day looked like, according to Al Jazeera and the Palestinian Information Center:
- At dawn, an Isr*eli drone fired two missiles at a tent sheltering displaced people west of az-Zawayda, near Deir el-Balah. It killed Abdul Rahim Walid Matar, 27. He was living in a tent. He died in a tent.
- In the Bureij refugee camp, Isr*eli fire killed a child. The Palestinian Information Center named him as 12-year-old Adnan al-Qarnawi.
- In Khan Younis, Isr*eli fire killed a woman outside the areas under Isr*eli military control and wounded two more people.
- More drone strikes hit a gathering in Deir el-Balah and people north-west of Gaza City, leaving several wounded, some critically.
Al Jazeera counted four dead that day. The Palestinian Information Center counted five. Either way, it was a Thursday. Nothing special. That is the point.
By Friday morning, the same pattern continued: heavy gunfire east of Gaza City, demolition blasts in the east of the city and in Khan Younis, a quadcopter opening fire over Tuffah, artillery in the south.
5,989 Gaza Ceasefire Violations and Counting
Gaza’s Government Media Office says Isr*el has committed 5,989 ceasefire violations since the truce began. In October alone it recorded 753: 346 shootings, 310 bombardments and 64 home demolitions.
Put those numbers next to each other. More than 750 violations in one month. Roughly 25 a day. Over the whole year, 1,602 people killed, an average of more than four every single day. Since October 2023, the Health Ministry’s total stands at 74,618 killed and 175,920 wounded. Rescue teams have also recovered 847 bodies from areas the Isr*eli army pulled back from, people who lay under rubble while leaders told the world the war was over.
Meanwhile families are facing a second winter in flimsy tents on the beach, a crisis we covered in Gaza Winter Crisis: Aid Cut for 500,000. When a missile is fired at a tent, it is not hitting a military target. It is hitting people who have already lost their homes.
The word “ceasefire” has done a lot of work for a lot of governments this past year. It let them stop paying attention. Headlines moved on. And the killing could carry on at a pace slow enough not to trend. As we argued in Gaza Still Bleeds, changing faces in Isr*el’s government has not changed this. The Gaza ceasefire exists on paper; on the ground, it does not.
Balfour at 109: Where It All Started
On 2 November 1917, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a short letter to Lord Rothschild. In it, the British government promised its support for “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Britain did not own Palestine. It had not even finished conquering it. The people who actually lived there, Muslim and Christian Arabs who made up around 90 percent of the population, had no say. Balfour did not even name them. The letter described them only as “existing non-Jewish communities”.
The same sentence carried a condition: “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights” of those communities. Notice what is missing. Political rights. National rights. The right to decide their own future. Britain never honoured even this thin protection. Not under the British Mandate, not in 1948, and certainly not in a Gaza tent in November 2026.
Britain Condemns the Fire It Helped Light
Here is the strange part. Britain has started using strong language. As international lawyer Victor Kattan points out in Middle East Eye, the UK government now describes settler violence in the West Bank as ethnic cleansing and has announced sanctions on settlements. Isr*el responded by ordering Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem to close.
Good. It should condemn it. But Britain still has not looked in the mirror. A detailed legal petition from the Britain Owes Palestine campaign, sent to UK ministers in September 2025, is still waiting for an answer. Kattan’s demand is simple: a formal apology from the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, followed by a real process on reparation. Britain has done this before. In 2013 it expressed regret to Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau uprising.
You cannot spend 109 years refusing to apologise for handing away someone else’s land and then expect to be taken seriously as the honest broker. Words about ethnic cleansing in the West Bank mean little while Gaza is still being bombed under a “ceasefire” and London still treats Balfour as a proud chapter in its history.
What a Real Gaza Ceasefire Would Look Like
A real Gaza ceasefire means the drones stop. It means no more strikes on tents, no more children shot in refugee camps, no more home demolitions dressed up as security operations. It means aid and medical treatment flowing in, not trickling. And it means the countries that signed off on this truce actually holding Isr*el to it, instead of counting violations and doing nothing.
For Britain, it means something more. It means admitting that the story did not start in 2023, or 1967, or 1948. It started with a letter in 1917, written by people who never had the right to make that promise.
One hundred and nine years later, Palestinians are still paying for it. And 1,602 of them have paid with their lives since the guns were supposed to fall silent.
What do you think? Should Britain formally apologise for the Balfour Declaration? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Al Jazeera, 5 Nov 2026 · Palestinian Information Center, 6 Nov 2026 · Middle East Eye, Victor Kattan, 5 Nov 2026 · WAFA, 2 Nov 2026