You're reading an excerpt from Al-Monitor Washington, where we break down the latest in US-Middle East diplomacy. To read the full newsletter, sign up here . WASHINGTON — A predictable winter emergency is laying bare the challenges facing President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, while an Israeli strike on a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip is testing the ceasefire it's tasked with implementing. On Thursday, the Israeli military struck the Nasser Hospital, killing six people and injuring at least 28 more, according to health officials in Gaza.
Israel said a Hamas operative was among the dead, which also included a 13-year-old boy and a surgeon, according to Palestinian health officials. The strike came as Palestinians displaced by the war for the third year in a row are living in tents that provide little protection from heavy rains and freezing temperatures. Families were left sleeping in rain-drenched bedding after the year’s first major storm battered Gaza on Nov. 6, flooding some 70,000 tents in a single weekend, according to local authorities.
Al-Monitor says the Israeli military struck Nasser Hospital, gives the toll with a 13-year-old boy and a surgeon among the dead, and attributes Israel's claim about a Hamas operative. One small choice softens the picture: it says the strike is "testing" the ceasefire, when its own reporting three days earlier said Israel had kept up nearly daily strikes despite the truce.
Drops what it reported before
Minor
“is testing the ceasefire it's tasked with implementing”
Why this matters
Al-Monitor says the hospital strike "is testing" the ceasefire, as though it were a single strain on a truce that has otherwise held.
The impression it gives
A reader may take the strike as an unusual break in a working ceasefire, a first test of it.
The context
Al-Monitor's own reporting three days earlier said Israel had kept up nearly daily strikes despite the truce. Its wire report the same day called the hospital strike the latest Israeli attack to undermine the ceasefire, and other coverage describes continued Israeli violations.