Intermittent attacks over the weekend disrupted the week-old ceasefire in Gaza, threatening to undermine President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The ceasefire appears to be holding for now, but the potential for violence remains. Even before the worst of the weekend fighting, Christian leaders at Family Research Council’s 2025 Pray Vote Stand Summit urged Christians to petition the sovereign Lord of Hosts to establish peace in the Middle East.
On Sunday, Gazan terrorists in the southern town of Rafah fired an anti-tank missile and small arms at Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in separate incidents, killing two soldiers and seriously wounding a third. The soldiers were dismantling terrorist infrastructure behind the yellow line, within Israel’s current zone of control under the terms of the current ceasefire.
In response to the ceasefire violations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nstructed the military to “act forcefully.” The IDF did just that, destroying Hamas weapons depots, firing posts, and six kilometers (nearly four miles) of underground tunnels with 120 bombs. The IDF also struck a group of terrorists approaching an IDF position near Beit Lahia, at the extreme northern end of the Gaza Strip. Hamas confirmed that Yahya al-Mabhouh, a field commander of its Qassam Brigades, was killed in the Sunday airstrikes.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer coordinated his response with American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who urged Israel to “respond proportionately but show restraint,” an unnamed U.S. official told Axios. “Nobody wants to go back to full-scale war. The Israelis want to show Hamas there are consequences, without ruining the peace agreement.” Israel gave the U.S. advance notification of the strikes.
Israel briefly closed the Gaza border to international aid convoys following the attacks but reopened it after concluding its retaliatory strikes.
On Sunday night, the IDF announced it had “begun the renewed enforcement of the cease-fire,” adding that it would “continue to enforce the ceasefire agreement and will respond forcefully to any violation of the agreement.”
For their part, Hamas leaders categorically denied having any knowledge of the ceasefire violations. “We reaffirm our full commitment to implement everything that was agreed upon, foremost of which is a ceasefire across all areas of the Gaza Strip,” the Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement. “We have no knowledge of any incidents or clashes taking place in the Rafah area, as these are red zones under the occupation’s control, and contact with the remaining groups of ours there has been cut off since the war resumed in March of this year.”
Vice President J.D. Vance interpreted this statement to mean that Hamas leaders do not enjoy complete control over their 40-some armed cells in Gaza. “Some of those cells will probably honor the ceasefire. Many of those cells, as we saw some evidence of today, will not,” he said. Additionally, other terrorist groups with only loose affinity with Hamas also operate out of Gaza, like Islamic Jihad.
Still other commentators warn, based on its other behavior, that Hamas is simply capable of bold deception. “Hamas is saying, ‘We don’t know where the bodies are.’ They are liars,” asserted Real Life Network’s Daniel Cohen at the 2025 Pray Vote Stand Summit, referring to the bodies of the deceased hostages which the terms of the ceasefire obligate Hamas to return to Israel. “They know exactly where those bodies are. And maybe they’ve been so brutalized that they can’t send them home.”
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann offered a similar assessment of the terrorist group’s actions and ends. “I don’t think they’re going to comply [with the 20-point peace plan]. I think they’ve made it clear. … They won’t return the corpses of the dead hostages. They refuse to demilitarize or deradicalize. So, I think we’ve been told what their position is,” she argued Friday on “Washington Watch.”
“It’s almost like we skip to the end of the agreement,” Bachmann proposed. “And President Trump promised Israel that if Hamas wouldn’t comply, they have the right to go in and to finish the war. … But … I think the administration is going to demand that Hamas be given chances.”
Following the weekend violence, President Trump told reporters on Air Force One, “We want to make sure that it’s going to be very peaceful with Hamas.” Despite reports out of Gaza that Hamas had been “quite rambunctious” — either by firing at Israeli troops or executing their fellow Palestinians — Trump suggested that these were the actions of “some rebels within,” while Hamas leaders were still committed to the ceasefire. “Either way, it’s going to be handled properly. It’s going to be handled toughly, but properly.”
Trump then struck a sharper tone at a Monday meeting with Australia’s anti-Israel Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “This is a very violent group of people, and they got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn’t be doing,” he insisted. “And if they keep doing it, then we’re going to go in and straighten it out — and it’ll happen very quickly and pretty violently, unfortunately — we are going to eradicate Hamas.”
With this remark, Trump reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. “From the very start of the agreement, Netanyahu was very clear that they are not going to compromise on the security of the nation. They’re not going to relive October the 7th,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “Nor should they,” Bachmann agreed.
Bachmann finds herself torn over the Gaza peace plan. On one hand, she said, she opposes it for “dividing the land of Israel … but that hasn’t happened yet; I don’t know if it will.” On the other hand, “we got all the living hostages back. We’re getting some of the deceased hostages back. We may get another eight or nine of those. But then I think the world is seeing this is who Hamas is … especially when we’re seeing Hamas killing their own people.”
According to news reports, since the ceasefire began Hamas has summarily executed at least 33 Gazans accused of collaborating with Israel.
“The international community is criticizing Israel for collateral damage, but yet saying nothing as Hamas is killing people, executing people on the streets,” observed Perkins. Bachmann attributed the media silence to anti-Semitism. “There’s a phrase that says, ‘No Jews, no news,’” she suggested. “So, if media organizations can slam Israel, that’s what they’ll do. But the bad guys are Hamas. So, does the media really want to show [what] bad guys that Hamas is?”
On Saturday, the U.S. State Department issued a notice that it had received “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.” It warned Hamas that “This planned attack against Palestinian civilians would constitute a direct and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement.”
Trump has touted the success of the Gaza ceasefire as a crowning achievement of his peace-focused foreign policy. Yet the extent of the ceasefire’s success remains undetermined while violence continues. Besides the exchange of fire on Sunday, there was also an incident on Friday in which Israel fired on a suspicious vehicle that crossed the demarcation line and ignored warning shots. On Monday, Israel shot at two more groups of militants who tried to cross the yellow line into Israel’s zone of control.
Besides the ongoing shooting in Gaza, Israel also faces ongoing attacks from Hamas’s terrorist ally in Yemen, the Houthis, whose military chief of staff died Thursday in an Israeli airstrike. “After what happened with Iran over the summer, after victory after victory after victory that God has given Israel — it’s amazing, from Hamas and Hezbollah, the beepers, and everything — the rockets are still flying,” encapsulated Cohen.
Thus, the type of peace wrought by the 20-point peace plan for Gaza is one in which terrorists keep shooting at Israel, and the IDF keeps responding with airstrikes.
“We’ve heard a lot about [peace] this week, [with] the [U.S.] president making a speech about eternal peace,” said FRC President Tony Perkins during a panel discussion at the Pray Vote Stand Summit. “But we know that peace in that region is temporal until the Prince of Peace comes to reign.”
“To understand these issues, you have to be spiritually minded and to be able to see,” he continued. “Unfortunately, there is not that depth of spiritual understanding in this administration as we had in the first Trump administration. And so, how do we compensate for that? We need to pray.
“The main thing for believers is to know your Bible,” Bachmann said during the same panel. “The scarlet thread of redemption runs through every bit of the Bible. And it’s tied to Israel … for the purpose of blessing all families on earth.”
Bachmann alluded to Genesis 12:3, in which God makes a promise to Abram that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Paul imbues the statement with New Testament significance in his letter to the Galatians, “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Galatians 3:8).
In Romans 9:3-5, Paul agonizes over his “kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.” He later adds that “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26).
“We need to pray for Israel. We need to pray for the United States,” Bachmann urged. “I believe the fact that the hostages came home — that, in fact, was an answer to prayer. That was a miracle.” As peace between Israel and Gaza teeters on the brink, Bachmann urged Christians to renew their prayers for peace, trusting that, as “the Proverbs says, that God turns the heart of the king whichever way he will [Proverbs 21:1].”
