Inside a Gaza hospital ward, Sajida al-Baba watches her son Rajab relearn how to exist in a body reshaped by war. His life changed forever when an Israeli strike hit a school shelter in December 2024, killing relatives and burying him beneath rubble. Doctors amputated his right leg, treated a skull fracture, and removed shrapnel from the other limb. After three days in a coma, he woke into a different struggle — one that did not end with survival.

He cried from pain after repeated surgeries. Now he refuses to let others see his injury, asking his mother to cover his leg. Another survivor from the same area worked at a fuel station in Jabaliya. A first strike amputated his seven-year-old daughter’s hand. Months later, another attack during displacement to Rafah amputated both his legs. His wheelchair is unsuitable for the destroyed streets; each trip to physiotherapy requires others to carry him across debris.

According to the United Nations, approximately 6,000 Palestinians in Gaza are living with amputations — a quarter of them children. The injuries are the direct result of two years of Israeli bombardment that killed more than 72,000 people and injured over 171,000. Medical infrastructure across the Strip was systematically destroyed. Rehabilitation facilities, prosthetics, proper nutrition, and essential medications remain blocked or scarce.

Now Israel is threatening to make it worse. On February 16, Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs — a close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — announced that Hamas would have 60 days to disarm completely or face a renewed military campaign. Al Jazeera reported that Fuchs said the clock could start with the February 19 meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace, adding: “We will evaluate it. If it works, great. If not, then the IDF will have to complete the mission.” Fuchs claimed the two-month timeline was requested by the United States.

Hamas rejected the ultimatum. Senior official Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera he had received no formal notification from mediators and that the statements amounted to threats with no basis in ongoing negotiations. He said any move to restart the war would have “serious repercussions for the region” and that “the Palestinian people will not surrender.” Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal reinforced the position earlier in February, warning that stripping weapons from an occupied people would turn them into “an easy victim to be eliminated.”

Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli forces have killed more than 600 Palestinians and committed 1,520 documented violations, according to Gaza authorities. For the thousands living with amputations — people in the middle of surgeries, physical therapy, and psychological reconstruction — the 60-day deadline is not an abstraction. It is a clock placed over the most vulnerable people on earth.

The international community has not responded to the ultimatum with any urgency. The silence is itself a position.