Gaza Envoy Warns Ceasefire Collapse Would Be 'a Point of No Return'

A senior official on the US-convened Board of Peace has criticised Israel's continuing air strikes on Gaza and the actions of Hamas, warning the UN Security Council that a collapse of last October's ceasefire would be "a point of no return" for the region.

Nickolay Mladenov was speaking after Israel rejected the 15-point roadmap for Hamas's disarmament announced by the Board of Peace last month.

Where the roadmap stalled

The sequencing is the dispute. Hamas has agreed to give up its weapons in exchange for a phased Israeli troop withdrawal. Israel insists the group must disarm fully before any pullout begins.

Neither position is new, and neither side can accept the other's ordering without surrendering the leverage that guarantees the rest of the deal. That is why a roadmap agreed by one party and rejected by the other has left the ceasefire technically alive and practically stalled.

The toll during the truce

At least 1,303 Palestinians, including 300 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the US-brokered ceasefire began, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers reliable. The Israeli military says four of its soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks over the same period.

Those numbers are the substance of Mladenov's warning. A ceasefire that both sides describe as holding has produced a four-figure death toll, and the mediating body's own envoy is now saying publicly that the arrangement cannot absorb much more before it breaks.