Click to expand Image A Palestinian boy walks inside a destroyed building in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 27, 2026. © 2026 Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images (Beirut) – Israeli forces continue to kill and wound civilians and deny sufficient food, aid, and water to Palestinians in Gaza one year after a ceasefire agreement took effect on October 10, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel’s acts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including forced displacement and extermination, have persisted throughout the ceasefire. Other countries should take immediate measures to protect civilians and ensure that rights-based reconstruction begins. The Board of Peace, authorized under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803, is tasked with assessing parties’ compliance with the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. Promises of humanitarian relief and the restoration of essential civilian infrastructure are central to the plan. Yet, a year on, aid volumes remain far below required levels, critical humanitarian access routes have been repeatedly obstructed, and reconstruction has not yet begun. Continuing Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,400 Palestinians and wounded 4,881 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, bringing the death toll since October 2023 to over 74,000, including over 21,000 children.“The outside world may be under a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal, but reality tells a very different story,” said Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “There is nothing normal about living in a tent under bombardment, without enough food or drinking water for your family.”With winter approaching, families living in an Israel-engineered shelter crisis face preventable deaths and suffering affecting key human rights such as the rights to housing, health, and education. Ninety-four percent of Gaza’s population lacks adequate shelter, the Palestine Shelter Cluster reported based on a survey of nearly 2,000 households across Gaza. Nearly two-thirds of housing units have been destroyed, and many of those still standing are damaged and unsafe. The survey showed that over half of the nearly 2,000 households are living in tents. In September 2026, a damaged building housing about 100 people collapsed, killing 21, including 12 children. Gaza’s education and health sectors remain shattered. The new academic year began last month with 93 percent of schools destroyed or damaged. The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded 56 attacks on health care in Gaza between January and August 2026, with just 35 of Gaza’s 57 hospitals and field hospitals partially functional and not one fully operational. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations report an increase in disease due to the living conditions in overcrowded camps and shelters, including poor waste management, sewage overflow, and rodent infestation.The risks of famine and acute food insecurity loom over Gaza, as the entry of humanitarian aid remains limited and inconsistent, and people in Gaza are unable to produce their own food due to Israeli forces’ widespread destruction of agricultural land and restrictions on fishing. In July, the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s foremost experts on food security, reported that 67 percent of the population—over 1.4 million people—are “expected to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity in July-December 2026.”According to the European Union and UN, the recovery and reconstruction needs in Gaza are estimated at US$71.4 billion over the next decade. On September 23, the Board of Peace presented a “6-Month Gaza Recovery Program” ready to begin “the moment funding and access allow,” but one year on, no recovery efforts have begun.Israel continues to move the “Yellow Line,” the stated limit of the physical presence of Israeli ground forces under the ceasefire, westward beyond its agreed boundaries as Israeli officials call the line Israel’s “new border.” The area within the Yellow Line now amounts to about 64 percent of the Gaza Strip, and Israeli forces are displacing Palestinians as the line moves while preventing residents from returning to their homes beyond the line, corralling Gaza’s 2.1 million people into an ever-shrinking strip of land.In June, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented that 196 Palestinians had been killed near the Yellow Line and its westward movement is swallowing up water points and health facilities, further restricting Palestinians’ access to key services. Alongside these actions, Israeli officials continue to openly declare a goal of ethnically cleansing Gaza. For example, in September, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proposed the “710 Disengagement Plan,” aiming to depopulate Gaza in seven years, and establishing a ministry of “voluntary emigration” for that purpose. According to Palestinian civil defense authorities, over 630 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble since November 2025, and they estimate that over 8,000 remain buried under the rubble. The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory warned in September 2026 that the large-scale removal of rubble in areas of Gaza under Israeli military control should not become a way to erase traces of atrocity crimes. Finding the remains of those lost under the rubble is essential so that families can know what happened to their loved ones, offer them dignified burial, and start a long process of recovery and remedy, Human Rights Watch said.As world leaders discuss the future of Gaza, it is essential for them to urgently address the rights of Palestinians to rebuild their lives in Gaza, categorically reject all Israeli propositions of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, and support all measures of accountability to put an end to the catastrophic situation for rights in Gaza.“Palestinians deserve a better future where their rights are respected and they can live in dignity, but none of this is possible unless the atrocities stop and justice and redress become a reality,” Sanbar said.