Cease-fires in the Middle East look a lot like war anywhere else

In some of the deadliest attacks since the cease-fires went into effect, Israel said Wednesday it carried out a series of strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza after militants fired toward its troops. A day earlier it struck what it said was a Hamas training camp in Lebanon.

Hamas denied firing any shots in Gaza and said the location targeted in Lebanon wasn’t a training camp but an area crowded with civilians. More than two dozen people were killed in Gaza, and more than a dozen in Lebanon in the attacks, according to local health ministries, which don’t say how many were combatants. Israel said none of its troops were harmed in the Gaza incident.

Despite the strikes, neither side has declared the cease-fires dead. Instead, the truces are stumbling along as the tensions that caused a series of wars in the region after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel remain unresolved.

Israel has hoped to press its military advantage after battering Hamas and Hezbollah to force them to disarm and has asserted the freedom to attack them if they don’t. The militant groups, while deeply diminished, are working to rebuild their forces and authority.

Hamas sent its forces into the streets of Gaza immediately after the cease-fire took effect last month to attack rivals and reassert control over the enclave.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is rebuilding its armaments and battered ranks, according to people familiar with Israeli and Arab intelligence. Israel and the U.S. have expressed increasing frustration with its failure to disarm, raising the risk of an escalation of attacks.

Lebanon and Israel agreed last November to halt Israel’s two-month war against Hezbollah. Under the deal, Israel would end its strikes and withdraw its troops in exchange for the dismantling of Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon and the group’s eventual disarmament.

Lebanon’s government worked with support from Israeli intelligence to take apart much of Hezbollah’s presence in the south. But the effort stalled as it moved on to the broader disarmament of the group.

In Gaza, Hamas and Israel agreed to a deal brokered by President Trump that called for an end to fighting, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian detainees, increased aid deliveries and the disarmament of Hamas. Israel was to pull its troops out of Gaza as benchmarks were met, with an international force coming in to provide security and a new administration formed to take over governance from Hamas.

The unwillingness of either side to concede on key points has left both cease-fires stuck in their early stages.

Analysts said part of the issue is parties to the conflict see advantages in that halfway state—with Israel retaining the ability to attack when it wants, Hezbollah and Hamas delaying the question of disarmament, the U.S. able to tout deals it helped broker, and Arab governments putting off the time when they need to commit troops or money and potentially come into conflict with Arab militias.

“Israel is getting the best of two worlds," said Randa Slim, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University-based Foreign Policy Institute and an expert on conflict resolution. “It shut down its opponents’ firepower through these cease-fires, but at the same time has maintained its ability to attack and go after its opponents’ assets any time it wants to."

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has said the group is seeking to avoid another war with Israel and has avoided military responses to Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the truce.

Israel has maintained troop presence in a handful of strategic locations in southern Lebanon. Its drones frequently fly over Beirut, and it has struck Lebanon more than 1,000 times since the 2024 cease-fire. It has also begun the construction of a wall that encroaches on Lebanese territory, according to Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force.

The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the wall.

In Gaza, Israeli troops have pulled back from the heart of the enclave and now maintain control of just over half of the territory behind the so-called yellow line dividing the combatants.

Fighting has continued with occasional Israeli strikes and attacks by Palestinian militants against Israeli troops, but has been less frequent under heavy pressure from the U.S. The U.S. Central Command has set up a Civil-Military Coordination Center that oversees much of the aid delivery to Gaza and coordinates military activity with Israel.

“The retaliation yesterday was quite massive compared to the event," Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said of Israel’s response to the alleged shooting at its troops. Since Israel doesn’t have full freedom of operation as it does in Lebanon, it takes advantage of the opportunities it does have to inflict a major blow, Guterman said.

The strikes in Gaza have led to a mounting death toll, with about 280 Palestinians killed and hundreds more injured since the cease-fire went into effect, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.

Hamas’s popularity has increased in Gaza, as its security forces take on criminals. While many Gazans don’t like seeing the group reassert itself, they have welcomed a reduction in crime and looting.

Hamas has repeatedly said it won’t disarm without a withdrawal of Israeli troops and a clear path to a Palestinian state. Arab mediators say the militant group has told them if those conditions are met it would agree to dismantle its heavy weapons and stockpile them within Gaza under the supervision of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the West Bank. Hamas has told mediators its personnel should be able to keep small arms.

Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com, Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com