An Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinians on May 10 in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Two of the dead were members of the Hamas police force, according to Reuters. The strike happened while a ceasefire — a temporary pause in fighting — was supposed to be in effect. This immediately raised a key question: did Israel violate the agreement?

Nuseirat is in central Gaza, an area that has been hit repeatedly with airstrikes since the conflict began on October 7, 2023. That day, Hamas-led groups attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, per the United Nations. Central Gaza's refugee camps have suffered the heaviest bombing throughout the war. In December 2023, two strikes on residential buildings nearby killed roughly 86 Palestinians, according to a UN report. Days earlier, another airstrike killed at least 60 people, per a Palestinian health official. Even a UN shelter was struck in October, killing at least six, per UN News.

The strike raises a basic legal question: Are Hamas police officers legitimate military targets? Israel says yes — it treats Hamas's police and government bodies as part of the military command structure, so they can be struck. Palestinian rights organizations and international groups say no — police who direct traffic and manage crowds do regular civilian work, not military work, and should be protected from attack.

During a ceasefire, this argument becomes practical. A ceasefire agreement is like a set of house rules — it says which actions are allowed and which are not. If the rules don't clearly spell out whether striking police is permitted, both sides can claim the other side broke the deal. Gaza's ceasefire agreements since late 2023 were never fully made public, and both Israel and Hamas have applied them inconsistently.

The bigger picture is a pattern. When a ceasefire begins, Israel sometimes carries out strikes it calls counterterrorism operations. Hamas then accuses Israel of breaking the deal. Mediators in Qatar, Egypt, and the United States try to keep things from falling apart completely. No clear mediator response to this May 10 strike was reported in available news.

What this incident reveals is a core problem. Central Gaza's camps — Nuseirat, Maghazi, Bureij — have been bombed repeatedly, even during periods when fighting was supposed to stop. Neither Israel nor Hamas appears to treat these areas as truly safe zones. When both sides disagree on what a ceasefire allows, that ceasefire breaks down.

Three deaths in this strike is small compared to earlier bombings in the same area. But the real issue is not the number. It is what this strike says about whether each side understands the ceasefire the same way. When two sides cannot agree on the rules of their own pause, the pause does not last.