Unsurprisingly for a terrorist group, Hamas is seeking to leverage global concern over the humanitarian situation in Gaza to pressure Israel to make concessions toward a ceasefire agreement. But the dividing lines run deep. Israel wants the estimated 20 living Israeli hostages in Hamas custody returned. Hamas wants thousands of its fighters released from Israeli custody, and to dilute any final settlement that would strip the group of its power in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to return to military action to get Hamas to stop playing games. His problem? Israel has limited military means of destroying Hamas, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is growing.
Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance are emphasizing the urgent need for more aid to reach Gaza’s population, which is now suffering under a widespread food shortage. It is true that Hamas’s seizure and subsequent sale of United Nations food deliveries into Gaza is a big problem. But the even bigger problem is that the joint U.S.-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid effort to replace the U.N.-led effort is woefully inadequate. With far too few aid release depots, the GHF services are unreachable for many of the most starvation-vulnerable Palestinians — women and children — and subject to frequent stampedes and shootings. Hundreds have died. Thousands are slowly starving. Israel is being blamed around the world, and Hamas is loving it.
Let’s be clear, Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught against Israel and its continuing seizure of innocent Israelis is the ultimate cause of this crisis. And yes, Hamas and its supporters are faking some images of famine in Gaza. Still, Israel should be doing more to get aid into Gaza because the food crisis there is very real. The U.N. aid bureaucracy has many problems, but Israel has thrown up too many bureaucratic, logistical, and security-related complications to getting aid into Gaza.
More hawkish Israeli and pro-Israeli commentators continue to respond to what’s happening with their favored assertion that the only thing that needs to happen to end the civilian suffering is “for Hamas to release the hostages.” The insipid quality of this argument should be obvious. Namely, that fanatics do not care about innocent civilian life. Hamas not only disregards the well-being of Gazan civilians but deliberately exploits their suffering to shield its forces, fuel propaganda, and gain political leverage for future negotiations. A compromise with Hamas must thus be reached, or the group destroyed.
Again, however, just as Mao Zedong’s Communist zeal was unmoved by the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese civilians, Hamas will be unmoved by the growing misery of 2 million Palestinians. And as a democratic state bound to the rule of law and human morality, Israel cannot simply excuse the chaos in Gaza by demanding Hamas release the hostages. Those hostages are Hamas’s leverage. It will not surrender them without a deal it either wants or is forced to accept.
Israel’s additional problem is that it cannot force Hamas’s surrender via the annihilatory force the Second World War Allies prosecuted against the Axis powers. That’s relevant because Netanyahu now wants to renew high-intensity air strikes against Hamas forces. But that strategy would kill many more civilians, worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian situation, and almost certainly achieve only mediocre results against Hamas. The remaining terrorists are hiding amid high concentrations of civilians, or in the maze of tunnel networks below Gaza. While those tactics underline Hamas’s role as the source and culprit of Gaza’s misery, the Trump administration cannot support a sustained new Israeli air campaign in Gaza. The costs to civilians and, by association of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, U.S. moral and diplomatic credibility would far outweigh the tactical benefits of killing a few hundred more terrorists.
That leaves Israel with only one way to bring Hamas to its knees: a return to high-intensity ground force operations to clear Gazan streets, buildings, and tunnels of Hamas infrastructure and personnel. But there’s a catch. Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces don’t want to adopt this strategy. They know it would lead to dozens, if not hundreds, more IDF casualties. Netanyahu fears Israeli popular pushback as his governing coalition continues to weaken. Moreover, IDF infantry units are exhausted.
As the military correspondent for Israel’s Ynet news put it on Monday, “More and more soldiers are reporting that officers are threatening them, including through their parents, if they complain about their distress and extreme workload in the media. Company and battalion commanders demand that they stay silent, handling issues only within the unit.”
ATTACKS ON ELBRIDGE COLBY MISS THE MARK
Put simply, Israel has only bad options. I’d argue that the best path forward is for Israel to restore the flawed U.N. aid operation. Scaled food delivery is now urgent, even if Hamas will benefit from the U.N. system’s inadequacies. The IDF should simultaneously commence limited new ground operations against Hamas in Gaza, including in strongholds. And Israel’s Mossad intelligence service should start eliminating high-level Hamas officials who are negotiating out of Qatar. The key should be to build pressure on Hamas to return to the negotiating table.
But this pressure must be applied in a way that mitigates civilian harm, recognizes Israel’s limited battlefield options, and resolves the continuing decline in the Israeli and U.S. reputation around the world.