It’s been nearly a year and a half since the first Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught against Israel. But we still don’t really know what Israel’s end-game strategy is for the Palestinian enclave.
Does Israel plan on re-occupying the territory, as it did from 1967 to 2005? Is the goal merely to force Hamas to release the rest of the hostages — 59 are still outstanding, including 24 who are believed to remain alive — and to disarm? Or is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinking bigger, perhaps by operationalizing President Donald Trump’s fantasy-land concept of turning the war-scarred Gaza into a Middle East vacation spot?
Israeli officials remain adamant about several points. First, Hamas can no longer govern Gaza as it has done over the last seventeen years. Second, the terrorist group must demobilize its fighters, hand over its weapons, and leave Gaza permanently. This is a demand Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar reiterated in an interview only this week. Third, according to Netanyahu’s government, military pressure is the only way Hamas will even consider freeing the remaining hostages. Finally, after the war, Gaza needs to be de-radicalized and fully de-militarized, ideally under international supervision with the participation of moderate Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. The Trump administration — or at least Tammy Bruce, the State Department’s chief spokeswoman — appears to sympathize with all of this.
Nobody, however, seems to be particularly bothered by the question of whether the goals outlined by Israeli officials are realistic — and even if they are, whether the costs and consequences to the state’s international reputation, not to mention the cost in actual lives, are worth it. The truth is that Israel has placed itself in the strange position of justifying the sacrifices of its own troops as well as the Palestinian population in Gaza as worth it in the end, even as the end remains hard to envision.
When Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, pressed Netanyahu into signing a three-phase ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas in January, there was at least hope that a war that had killed tens of thousands of people would finally be over in a few months. The first stage of the agreement went off with several hitches. But the fighting was paused for about seven weeks, hostages were traded for Palestinian prisoners, and humanitarian aid trucks streamed into Gaza to service a population that was desperately low on pretty much everything. Yet, enveloping the hope was the glum realization that when push came to shove, Netanyahu wasn’t enamored with the truce to begin with. Indeed, he only signed onto it because he wanted to avoid Trump’s wrath. Netanyahu would find a way to back out of the entire arrangement when the opportunity presented itself.
Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Netanyahu refused to hold talks on Phase 2, which required a permanent end to the war, and instead sought to extend Phase 1, which would allow him to get more hostages released without signing a long-term ceasefire. Hamas rejected this outright, and after several weeks of offers and counteroffers, Netanyahu gave the green light to resume fighting in mid-March. The Israeli Defense Forces have subsequently pummeled Gaza from the air, ordered a mass evacuation from Rafah, carved out deeper buffer zones along the Israel-Gaza border, and constructed another corridor to isolate Rafah from the rest of Gaza. Their idea is straightforward: by tightening the military squeeze, Hamas will have no choice but to yield to Israeli demands.
The problem is that this hope is based on a fundamental assumption: that Israel’s demands are reasonable enough for Hamas to accept. And if the answer is “no,” then it’s hard to see how any amount of coercion can accomplish what it aims to achieve. In that case, Israel must either reassess its original demands or double down on them, gambling that Hamas will eventually blink.
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Therein lies the problem with Netanyahu’s overall policy in Gaza: he is both unwilling to water down his demands and unable to use the full power and weight of the IDF to compel Hamas to do his will. Watering down his demands would mean Netanyahu admitting that his military-first strategy has failed. That would complicate his political position at a time when he’s just beginning to consolidate his ultra-right-wing coalition. The full-force option would mean banking on a forever war against an adversary in Hamas that, while certainly weakened, continues to recruit and is well-versed in fighting an insurgency.
Netanyahu’s first, second, and third priorities are staying in power. Ultimately, his Gaza policy will be based on this consideration. Whether that serves Israel’s security interests is another question altogether.