On the dated record, yes, and for one half of the question the clearest source is Israel’s own: the COGAT Gaza Aid Data dashboard states that, on a directive from the political echelon, no aid entered the Gaza Strip between 2 March and 19 May 2025. Seven days into that stoppage, Israel’s energy minister ordered the Israel Electric Corporation to stop supplying Gaza, the Times of Israel reported. The complication is the baseline. Israeli supply had been cut after 7 October 2023 and partly restored in November 2024, to one desalination plant, so the March 2025 order removed that single restored line rather than a working grid supply. Under the later ceasefire, in force from 10 October 2025, the position changes again: the Security Council resolution that endorsed it creates a transitional administration, a stabilization force and a six-monthly report, and the single report filed under that duty quantifies violations as occurring “on a near daily basis” while publishing no total.
Key Findings
- Israel’s energy minister signed an order on 9 March 2025 for the immediate halt of Israel Electric Corporation supply to the Gaza Strip, as the Times of Israel and the Associated Press reported at the time.
- Israel’s own aid portal records a total stoppage of entry: the COGAT Gaza Aid Data dashboard states that “no aid entered the Gaza Strip between March 2 to May 19 2025,” eleven weeks on the portal’s own dates.
- COGAT records 1,778,363 metric tons of food entering Gaza between 10 October 2025 and 7 June 2026, its own count, with tonnage resting on self-declaration by humanitarian organisations and private providers rather than weighing at the crossings.
- Resolution 2803 (2025), adopted on 17 November 2025 by 13 votes to none with 2 abstentions, defines no violation and names no body to find one; the one report it requires, filed 15 May 2026, states that violations occur “on a near daily basis, some of which are serious” and gives no figure.
- 136,000 households in displacement sites, about 680,000 people and 38% of the 354,550 households the Site Management Cluster enumerated, had received no shelter assistance in the six months before its February to April 2026 fieldwork.
Has Israel halted electricity to Gaza during a ceasefire?
On 9 March 2025, 7 days into a halt on the entry of goods, Israel’s energy minister signed an order for the immediate halt of Israel Electric Corporation supply to the Gaza Strip, reported by the Times of Israel and the Associated Press at the time. The order fell inside the period of the agreement reached in January 2025, after its first phase, reported at 42 days, had run out with no second phase agreed.
Israel’s energy minister said at the time, as the Times of Israel reported, that Israel would “employ all the tools available” to bring the hostages home, which places the stated purpose of the order in the hostage negotiation rather than in the ceasefire’s own terms.
The order did not stand alone. A week earlier, on 2 March 2025, Israeli officials announced a halt to the entry of goods and aid, and that stoppage is recorded in Israel’s own operational data rather than only in press accounts. The two measures are separate instruments, signed by different offices and covering different things, and they are routinely merged into a single event. Keeping them apart matters for what each one establishes: the 2 March measure concerns the crossings, the 9 March measure concerns the grid.
Curtailing the supply is also not new to the war. Reuters reported in June 2017 that Israel reduced the power it supplied to Gaza amid pressure by the Palestinian Authority on Hamas, a dispute with no connection to any ceasefire. The line between Israel’s grid and Gaza has therefore been adjusted as a lever in more than one political dispute, by more than one party asking for it.
Is it said Israel reimposed a full siege during the ceasefire?
The COGAT Gaza Aid Data dashboard records 11 weeks without entry in 2025, which bears directly on the common claim that Israel reimposed a full siege on Gaza during the ceasefire. On the entry of goods, that is directionally right and the entering authority itself records it: the COGAT Gaza Aid Data dashboard states that, “According to the directive from the political echelon, no aid entered the Gaza Strip between March 2 to May 19 2025.”
That is the strongest single line available on the question, and it comes from the Israeli Ministry of Defense unit that operates the inspection and transfer points, not from a party contesting them. Eleven weeks of nil entry is recorded by the body that would have recorded the entries.
The reframe is the baseline, not the fact. Israeli electricity to Gaza was cut after 7 October 2023, and in November 2024 Israel announced it was renewing supply to a single desalination plant near Deir el-Balah, the Times of Israel reported. The order of 9 March 2025 cut that plant again. A siege reimposed implies a lifting in between, and on the electricity side the lifting was one line to one plant, restored for about four months.
The nil period also carries an arithmetic consequence that travels far beyond this question. Any cumulative entry total, or any daily average, computed across 2025 crosses eleven weeks in which the portal records nothing at all. A war-long daily average built from a cumulative figure without that period named will misstate every month it touches, in both directions: it understates the months when entry ran, and it hides the months when entry stopped.
Two further limits belong with the portal figure. It is a count of goods entry at crossings Israel controls, not a measure of what reached any household. And the dashboard states plainly that its totals do not include fuel, which is the input that determines whether a generator runs when the grid does not.
What was still connected when the March 2025 order came?
One line, to one desalination plant near Deir el-Balah, which the Times of Israel reported on 9 March 2025 served more than 600,000 Gaza residents through tankers or the networks of the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates. The energy minister’s office circulated a letter ordering the Israel Electric Corporation to stop selling electricity to Gaza.
That distinction is the whole difference between two sentences that sound alike. “Israel cut off Gaza’s electricity” describes the removal of a supply. “Israel cut the one restored line” describes the removal of a residue, after grid supply had ceased in October 2023 and a single connection had been renewed in November 2024. Both sentences are about the same order, and only the second matches the reporting of what the order covered.
The identity of the remaining load is what gave the order its immediate effect. A desalination plant converts electricity into drinking water, so a grid decision registered first as a water decision. The Associated Press reported the same day that the plant affected produced drinking water for part of the territory. Amnesty International, in March 2025, called the decision to cut supply to that plant cruel and unlawful, its own characterisation on its own criteria; that organisation issues findings rather than measurements, and the figure that can be checked here is the one the Times of Israel reported about what the order covered.
The structure of supply also sets a ceiling on what restoring the Israeli line could deliver. Before the war, Gaza’s electricity came from three channels: the Israeli grid, Gaza’s own generating plant, and fuel for that plant and for private generators. Restoring the first does not restore the other two, and what the second would now require is a separate published quantity, taken up below. Every megawatt figure in this subject belongs to one of those three channels, and the channels are not interchangeable.
Does the ceasefire instrument require Israel to supply electricity?
The endorsed instrument obliges the parties to implement the Comprehensive Plan “in its entirety,” and it was adopted on 17 November 2025 by 13 votes to none, with 2 abstentions, China and the Russian Federation abstaining, on the verbatim record of the Council’s 10046th meeting. Reading the resolution’s eleven operative paragraphs and the twenty points of Annex 1, no clause sets a quantity of electricity, names a supplier or fixes a restoration date.
What the text does set out is different in kind. Annex 1, point 3 is the cessation clause: “If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.” Operative paragraph 2 establishes the Board of Peace as “a transitional administration with international legal personality.” Paragraph 7 authorises a temporary International Stabilization Force to deploy and to “assist the BoP in monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire in Gaza.” Paragraph 8 authorises both until 31 December 2027, subject to further Council action.
The word “violation” appears nowhere in the instrument, in the operative paragraphs or in the annexed Plan. It defines no violation, sets no threshold, names no body to find one, and attaches no consequence to one. That is a property of the text rather than a finding about anyone’s conduct, and it is the reason what counts as a breach of this ceasefire cannot be settled from the instrument itself.
The annexed Plan is also worth reading for what it calls things. It never uses the word “ceasefire” at all, speaking instead of the war ending “immediately,” of operations being “suspended,” and of battle lines remaining “frozen.” The word enters the record only through the Council’s endorsement seven weeks later, in the operative paragraphs the Council itself wrote.
What does Israel’s own reporting record entering during the ceasefire?
COGAT, the Israeli Ministry of Defense unit that coordinates the crossings, records 1,778,363 metric tons of food entering Gaza between 10 October 2025 and 7 June 2026. That is a party’s own count on its own operational records, and COGAT states that its tonnage data rests on “the self-declaration of humanitarian organizations and private sector providers” rather than weighing at the crossings.
The same report sets that tonnage against the World Food Programme’s monthly food requirement benchmark and describes it as nearly threefold. Only the numerator in that ratio is COGAT’s. It also reports more than 70,000 cubic metres of water a day facilitated through external water lines and desalination facilities, excluding local wells, 18,000 tons of medical supplies and medicines since the ceasefire began, and a decline of approximately 72% in the Gaza food consumer price index between September 2025 and May 2026. The report does not identify the source of the price data.
How the counting works matters more than the totals. COGAT states that pallet numbers are counted and contents compared against coordination requests during security clearance, so the truck count is a physical tally the unit makes at its own crossing. The weight attached to each truck is declared by the shipper. A truck figure from this source is an operational count; a tonnage figure is a sum of declarations, and the second should not inherit the credibility of the first. Israel’s own published record is also the natural place to test claims about access to humanitarian aid, precisely because the entering party is the one publishing it.
What did UN briefings record about access after the ceasefire?
The office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the Security Council on 26 August 2026 that about two thirds of Gaza remained inaccessible or under severe access restriction, and identified restored electricity as critical to water and sanitation services. That is the office’s own characterisation on its own criteria, delivered in a briefing rather than in a published measurement, and it carries no underlying dataset with it.
Dated press reporting runs in the same direction on fuel. Reuters reported on 10 September 2026 that Gaza had been without grid electricity since the offensive began and that Israeli restrictions on fuel persisted despite the ceasefire agreed in October 2025, and that hospitals and homes in Gaza were struggling to keep generators running as oil shortages bit. Reuters attaches no megawatt or litre figure to that report.
Set beside COGAT’s own totals, these accounts do not contradict each other so much as count different objects. COGAT publishes what entered at crossings it operates, by truck and by declared tonnage, and its dashboard states that its totals exclude fuel entirely. A briefing about restricted access is a statement about movement inside the Strip and about what is refused, not about what was admitted. Neither quantity answers the other, and neither is a measure of what a household received.
The fuel exclusion is the sharpest instance. The input that keeps a generator running when the grid is down is precisely the input the entering party’s headline figures leave out of their totals, and it is the input the September 2026 reporting says remained restricted. A reader relying on the aid dashboard alone is reading a series that, by its own statement, is silent on the question of generators.
Which report does the resolution require, and what does it record?
Resolution 2803 (2025) requires 1 report every six months. Operative paragraph 10 “Requests the BoP provide a written report on progress related to the above to the UN Security Council every six months,” and the single report filed under it, dated 15 May 2026, states that “violations continue to occur on a near daily basis, some of which are serious.” It publishes no total, no rate and no attribution to a party.
The full passage is worth carrying, because it is the whole quantification the mandated reporter offers: “Seven months into the ceasefire, the guns have largely fallen silent across Gaza for the first time in two years. This is a remarkable achievement that must be preserved. Nevertheless, violations continue to occur on a near daily basis, some of which are serious, and their human consequences, civilians killed, families living in fear, and continued impediments to humanitarian access, cannot be minimized.” No number attaches to the civilians killed either.
That is the instrument working as drafted rather than a gap. Paragraph 10 requests a report on progress, not a compliance assessment, so the absence of a violations series is what a progress report produces. The body given the ceasefire monitoring mandate had also not arrived: the same report states at paragraphs 37 and 38 that International Stabilization Force “Preparations for deployment are well advanced,” that “Deployments are anticipated in phases,” and that “Efforts are ongoing in force generation and deployment,” seven months into the ceasefire. A Declaration of Founding Contributors was signed on 19 February 2026 by five Member States, Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco.
Day-to-day coordination sat elsewhere. The report records the Civil-Military Coordination Centre, established on 17 October 2025, as “the principal operational mechanism for this function during the reporting period, involving 50 partner nations and organizations.” Its commitment figure of 4,200 trucks a week is a commitment, not a delivery count. The Board of Peace is the transitional administration the resolution created, reporting on its own implementation and transmitted by one of the guarantors.
What condition is Gaza’s own power network in?
The Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment published jointly by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations in April 2026 puts damage to Gaza’s energy sector at US$565.3 million for October 2023 to October 2025, with over 90% of the infrastructure destroyed. It is an assessment estimate, combining remote sensing with ground-verified data, not an enumeration.
The same chapter sets the pre-war baseline the argument usually skips. Before the conflict, total demand was about 700 megawatts. The Gaza Power Plant averaged 70 megawatts against a nominal 140, and imports from the Israel Electric Corporation averaged 120 megawatts, so supply met less than 35% of demand and households received roughly eight hours of power a day. Solar installations had grown to 80 megawatts peak since 2020.
The damage runs through every channel of that supply. The assessment lists the distribution network, 73 of the 80 megawatts of solar capacity, equipment at the power plant, the high-voltage interconnection points for imports from Israel, and all seven warehouses of the distribution company. It puts losses from the prolonged outage at more than US$163.6 million, and it records that imports from Israel and fuel for the power plant were halted early in the conflict, leaving consumers reliant on limited rooftop solar and diesel generators. Its period closes in October 2025, the month the current ceasefire took effect, so it describes the condition the ceasefire inherited rather than anything since.
That is the point a supply argument tends to skip. Electricity reaches a household through a generating source, a transmission connection and a distribution network, and a decision about the second does nothing for the first or the third. Restoring a single feeder into a distribution system assessed as over 90% destroyed is not the same event as restoring service, and even the full pre-war import of 120 megawatts met a fraction of demand. The Council’s instrument fixes no quantity against which restoration could be measured, so there is no benchmark in the endorsed text to compare the assessment against.
What reaches households where displaced residents now live?
136,000 households, about 680,000 people and 38% of the 354,550 households the Site Management Cluster enumerated, had received no shelter assistance in the six months preceding its survey.
The Cluster verified every site on its master list with 165 enumerators across 116 neighbourhoods, fieldwork running 3 February to 19 April 2026, data extracted 16 May 2026.
The enumeration found 1,591 active sites accommodating an estimated 1,708,822 individuals. 83% of those sites are makeshift, meaning informal, open-air and tented; about 11% are collective centres in schools and public buildings. About 1.5 million residents were living in approximately 246,000 tents or tent-like shelters, an average of about six people per tent against a standard emergency tent designed for five, with about 59,000 shelters housing more than eight. 7,700 households, about 38,500 individuals, were sleeping outdoors with no shelter at all, a condition present in 19% of surveyed sites.
The counts carry their own limits, stated by the Cluster. Household numbers are derived, applying a standard household size of five where disaggregated data was unavailable, and the Cluster describes the 1,591 as “a social count: A measure of how many organised displaced communities were identified and reached rather than a census of discrete physical locations.” Sex- and age-disaggregated data exist for only 253 of the 1,591 sites.
On water, the most-quoted figure belongs to a smaller study than its reputation suggests. The estimate that 82% of families are water insecure originates with the WASH Cluster’s Light Touch Monitoring exercise in Gaza of 2 to 15 March 2026, a phone survey of 342 assessed households whose authors state its findings “cannot be considered representative of the population in Gaza.” Cited to the body that measured it, with its base named, it is a reading from 342 households and not a population share.
Methodology and limitations
This report draws on five kinds of record, each labelled where it appears. The primary instruments are Security Council resolution 2803 (2025) with the Comprehensive Plan at Annex 1, and the verbatim record of the Council’s 10046th meeting of 17 November 2025, which carries the recorded vote. A party’s own operational records are used for entry and supply: COGAT’s Humanitarian Situation Report During the Ceasefire and the Gaza Aid Data portal, both published by an Israeli Ministry of Defense unit and neither independently verified. The report mandated by the instrument is S/2026/418, filed by the Board of Peace on 15 May 2026, which is the transitional administration reporting on its own implementation and transmitted by one of the guarantors. Field measurement comes from the Site Management Cluster’s verification assessment and, for water, from the WASH Cluster. Dated events and the content of the March 2025 orders come from press reporting by Reuters and the Times of Israel, attributed to those outlets.
Several base and comparability limits govern the figures above. COGAT’s tonnages rest on supplier self-declaration while its truck counts are a tally made at inspection, and its published totals exclude fuel. Any cumulative or average entry figure spanning 2025 crosses the eleven-week period from 2 March to 19 May 2025 in which the same portal records no entry at all. The Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment’s damage estimate and its needs estimate measure different objects and are not summed. The Site Management Cluster derives household numbers using a standard size of five where disaggregated data was unavailable, and describes its site count as a social count rather than a census. The WASH Cluster’s 82% rests on 342 assessed households, which its authors state is not representative.
The UN Special Coordinator’s statement of 26 August 2026 is carried as that office’s characterisation, with no dataset published alongside it. On the ceasefire itself, the position established by the documents is that the instrument defines no violation, names no body to find one, and imposes a six-monthly progress reporting duty rather than a compliance duty; the force given the monitoring mandate had not deployed as of the one report filed.
Conclusion
On the March 2025 episode, the answer to whether Israel cut electricity and reimposed a siege during a ceasefire is plainly yes, and it comes from the acting party’s own files: an order halting Israel Electric Corporation supply on 9 March 2025, and eleven weeks in which the Israeli aid portal itself says nothing entered, from 2 March to 19 May 2025. What that order switched off was one line serving one desalination plant, restored only four months earlier, because grid supply had been cut after October 2023. Both things are true, and neither cancels the other.
Under the ceasefire in force since 10 October 2025 the picture is made of incompatible measurements rather than a single answer. Israel records 1,778,363 metric tons of food entering across eight months, on tonnages its suppliers declared and on totals that exclude fuel. The Special Coordinator’s office told the Council in August 2026 that two thirds of the Strip remained inaccessible or severely restricted. Reuters reported in September 2026 that fuel restrictions persisted. The assessment of what the network itself would need runs to US$71.4 billion. And 136,000 households in verified sites, 38% of those enumerated, had received no shelter assistance in six months.
What the endorsed instrument contributes to settling any of this is a transitional administration, a force that had not deployed, and one progress report whose entire quantification of breaches is the phrase “near daily basis.” No quantity of electricity is named in it; no supplier is named; no date is set; and the word violation appears in it nowhere.
Which leaves a reader with a particular kind of arithmetic. Every checkable number about what crossed into Gaza during this ceasefire was published by a party to it, and the one document the Council required counts nothing. How much of a ceasefire can be verified when its own instrument commissions no measurement of the thing people most want measured?
Frequently Asked Questions
Has Israel curtailed Gaza’s electricity supply before this war?
Yes. Reuters reported in June 2017 that Israel reduced the power it supplied to Gaza amid pressure by the Palestinian Authority on Hamas. That episode had no connection to any ceasefire, and it indicates that the grid connection has been adjusted as an instrument in disputes involving more than one party.
Why is fuel counted separately from aid trucks?
Because the publishing body separates them. The COGAT Gaza Aid Data dashboard states that its totals do not include fuel, and the portal’s underlying workbook keeps fuel on its own sheet, recording 335 fuel tanker-trucks and 598 gas tanker-trucks between 1 November 2023 and 31 May 2024. Any claim about generators therefore cannot be answered from the headline truck or tonnage figures.
When does the authority created by the ceasefire resolution expire?
Operative paragraph 8 of resolution 2803 (2025) decides that the Board of Peace and the international civil and security presences it authorises “shall remain authorized until Dec. 31, 2027, subject to further action by the Council.” The resolution prints the date in that abbreviated form.
Why do household counts for Gaza differ between reports?
Because they are derived on different extraction dates and by different arithmetic. The Site Management Cluster reports 354,550 households as at its 16 May 2026 extraction, applying a standard household size of five where disaggregated data was unavailable, and states that “As site information is frequently updated, figures may differ slightly from those presented in other SMC information products.”
Why do displacement totals of 1.7 million and 1.9 million both circulate?
They count different things. The Site Management Cluster’s 1,708,822 counts people in verified sites at a stated date. The 1.9 million figure relayed by UNICEF in July 2026 is a cumulative UN estimate from 2025 of people displaced at any point since October 2023, many of them several times. No publisher reconciles the two, and neither may be subtracted from the other.
What would rebuilding Gaza cost, on the published assessment?
The World Bank, European Union and United Nations assessment of April 2026 puts recovery and reconstruction needs at US$71.4 billion over the next decade, of which US$26.3 billion is required in the first eighteen months. Those are forward-looking estimates of cost, not a record of money spent or pledged.
Who signed up to the force given the ceasefire monitoring mandate?
Five Member States signed the Declaration of Founding Contributors to the International Stabilization Force on 19 February 2026: Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco. The Board of Peace’s report of 15 May 2026 records that a pre-deployment site survey by troop contributors was completed in late April 2026 and that force generation was ongoing.
Sources
- Board of Peace, 2026. Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025): Report of the Board of Peace through the Office of the High Representative for Gaza. UN document S/2026/418, 15 May 2026. Official record (a party’s own report on its own implementation).
- Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), 2026. Gaza Aid Data portal: Aid Data dashboard and the Humanitarian Aid workbook. Israeli Ministry of Defense. gaza-aid-data.gov.il. Official record (a party’s own operational count).
- Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), 2026. Humanitarian Situation Report During the Ceasefire, October 2025 to June 2026, published 9 July 2026. Israeli Ministry of Defense. gaza-aid-data.gov.il. Official record (a party’s own operational count).
- Reuters, 2017. Israel reduces power supply to Gaza as Abbas pressures Hamas. reuters.com. International press.
- Times of Israel, 2025. Israel announces halt to its supply of power to Gaza, in bid to pressure Hamas. 9 March 2025. Israeli press.
- Associated Press, 2025. Israel cuts off electricity supply to Gaza, affecting a desalination plant producing drinking water. 9 March 2025. International press.
- Reuters, 2026. Gaza’s hospitals and homes struggle to keep generators running as oil shortages bite, 10 September 2026. reuters.com. International press.
- Site Management Cluster in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 2026. Gaza Displacement Site Verification Assessment: Baseline Findings for May 2026 Humanitarian Planning and Coordination, published 22 June 2026. cccmcluster.org. Humanitarian coordination body, primary field enumeration.
- Times of Israel, 2025. Israel stops electricity supply to Gaza in bid to ratchet up pressure on Hamas. timesofisrael.com. International press.
- United Nations Security Council, 2025. Resolution 2803 (2025), endorsing the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, with the Plan as Annex 1. S/RES/2803 (2025), 17 November 2025. Primary instrument.
- United Nations Security Council, 2025. Verbatim record of the 10046th meeting, S/PV.10046, 17 November 2025. Official record (recorded vote).
- WASH Cluster, Gaza, 2026. Light Touch Monitoring, fieldwork 2 to 15 March 2026. Humanitarian coordination body, phone survey of 342 assessed households.
- World Bank, European Union and United Nations, 2026. Gaza Strip Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, April 2026. Joint intergovernmental assessment.