The smoke rises above the Gaza Strip after an Israeli bombardment seen in a position near the Kfar Aza Kibbutz on October 7, 2025 in Kfar Aza, Israel.
Amir Levy | Getty Images News | Getty images
Israeli reservoirs, boats and jets beat Gaza games on Tuesday, giving no respite to the Palestinians on the anniversary of the Hamas attack which led to two years of war and highlighting the challenges of talks in Donald Trump to stop the conflict.
Israel continued with his offensive, residents said after Hamas and Israel began indirect negotiations on Monday in the Egyptian complex of Sharm El-Sheikh on sensitive issues such as the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas.
The talks in terms of American president are largely considered to be the most promising to date to end a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated Gaza since the attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel who killed 1,200 people.
Militant groups mark the birthday with a declaration
Residents of Khan Younis in southern Gaza and Gaza City in the North reported heavy bombing of tanks and planes at the start of hours on Tuesday, witnesses said. Israeli forces have struck several air, sea and soil districts, they said.
Gaza activists fired rockets across the border early Tuesday, triggering air raid sirens at Israel Kibbutz Haasara, and Israeli troops continued to attack armed men inside the enclave, the Israeli army said.
Marking the anniversary of the attack, an umbrella of Palestinian factions, notably Hamas, Islamic jihad and small militant groups have sworn “the choice of resistance is the only way and the only way to face the Zionist enemy”.
“No one has the right to give up the arms of the Palestinian people. This legitimate weapon … will be transmitted by Palestinian generations until their land and sacred sites are released,” said the declaration published in the name of the “factions of the Palestinian Resistance”.
People meet in the early hours of the Brandenburg Porte to read the names of the victims of the October 7, 2023 attack in Hamas in Israel on the second anniversary on October 07, 2025 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty images
The Israelis marking the second anniversary of the Hamas attack – in which 251 people were brought back to Gaza in hostages – gathered on some of the most affected sites of this day and on the so -called hostage of Tel Aviv.
“It’s like an open injury, the hostages, I cannot believe that it’s been two years and they are still not at home,” said Hilda Weitthal, 43. “I really hope that all the leaders will make a boost and that this war will end.”
In Gaza, Mohammed Dib, 49, expressed similar hopes at the conflict.
“We have lived in fear, horror, displacement and destruction for two years,” he said. “We hope, with these new negotiations, to reach a ceasefire and a final end of the war.”
Increasingly isolated Israel on the world scene
Israel negotiates from a position of strength. He responded to the 2023 attack by launching his offensive to eliminate Hamas to Gaza, while murdering the best leaders in Hamas outside the Strip and other groups supported by Iran such as Lebanon Hezbollah and weakening the Yemen Houthis.
He also killed the best Iranian military commanders and attacked Iranian nuclear installations during a 12-day war that was joined by the United States.
But the military assault of Israel on Gaza, which, according to local health authorities, killed more than 67,000 people and has flattened the tiny enclave, isolated the country on the world scene.
Some Western leaders have recognized the Palestinian state and pro-Palestinian demonstrations broke out in the world.
Israel and Hamas have both approved the global principles of Trump’s plan, under which the fighting would cease, the hostages are released and help pour into Gaza.
The plan also has the support of Arab and Western states. Trump called for negotiations to take place quickly to a final agreement, in what Washington is praised, because the closest parts have come at the end of the conflict.
Trump is looking for a major triumph of foreign policy
Trump has invested significant political capital in efforts to end the war.
Even if an agreement is triggered during talks in Egypt, major questions will persist, in particular which will govern Gaza and will rebuild it.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu excluded any role for Hamas, who seized Gaza in 2007 after defeating his rivals in a brief civil war.
Although Trump says that he wants an agreement quickly, an official informed the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he expected the series of talks that started on Monday would require at least a few days.
An official involved in the cease-fire planning and a Palestinian source said that the deadline for 72 hours of Trump for the return of hostages could be incompetence for dead hostages. Their leftovers may have to be located and recovered from dispersed sites.
The Israeli delegation includes managers of the Mossad and Shin Bet espionage agencies, the Netanyahu foreign policy advisor, Ophir Falk, and the hostage coordinator Gal Hirsch. The head negotiator of Israel, the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, was to join later this week, pending developments in the negotiations, according to three Israeli officials.
The delegation of Hamas is led by the exiled Gaza chief of the group, Khalil al-Hayya, who survived an Israeli air strike in the Qatari capital, a month ago.
The United States has sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s Special Envoy, the president’s son-in-law who has close ties to the Middle East, said the White House.
