The White House said Israel gave the Trump administration advanced notice of a wave of airstrikes it launched across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing hundreds and threatening a fragile ceasefire in the process.
“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.
Israel said its surprise attack, the most significant since the ceasefire was agreed in January, was aimed at dozens of Hamas targets.
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The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the Israeli strikes across the Palestinian enclave killed at least 404 people.
“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Netanyahu said the militant group “repeatedly refused to release our hostages and rejected all offers it received from the U.S. presidential envoy, Steve Witkoff, and from the mediators.”
The Wall Street Journal, citing an Israeli official, reported that President Donald Trump gave Israel the go-ahead to restart its attacks.
The attacks fractured a drawdown in hostilities in a 17-month-long war that began with the ceasefire agreement and threatened a return to sustained fighting.
During the war, more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and roughly 70 percent of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed during heavy Israeli bombing campaigns, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. Israel says it has killed 20,000 militants.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, both sides have been involved in negotiations for the return of hostages who were taken during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, which led to the start of the war.
Negotiators were also working to secure a more lasting truce beyond the first phase of the agreement.
A group that represents the families of hostages held in Gaza slammed Israeli’s decision to resume fighting and claimed the government “chose to give up the hostages.”
“We are shocked, angry, and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas,” The Hostages Families Forum wrote in a post on social media.
“Families of kidnapped children have been begging for a while now for meetings with elected officials who are entrusted with the fate of their loved ones,” the group added, in a second post. “Now, it turns out that elected officials did not meet with them because they were planning to blow up the ceasefire, which could sacrifice their family members.”
In a statement, Hamas said Israel is “fully responsible for violating and overturning the agreement.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which is part of the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called for international intervention to stop the resumption of Israeli attacks, adding that it “affirms that political solutions are key to achieving calm, stopping the aggression, and restoring the political horizon for resolving the conflict.”
The United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for Palestine also called for a halt to fighting.
“This is unconscionable,” Muhannad Hadi said in a statement. “A ceasefire must be reinstated immediately.”
One of Netanyahu’s most important governing partners, the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, welcomed the attacks.
Smotrich had previously threatened to quit the prime minister’s coalition if fighting in Gaza did not resume.
Israel’s strikes on Gaza came after Trump ordered U.S. strikes on Houthi militant targets in Yemen in recent days.
The Iran-backed group has repeatedly launched attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, claiming their actions are in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
White House National Security Adviser Mike Walz told ABC News on Monday that the U.S. strikes on Yemen “took out” multiple Houthi leaders.
