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The war in Gaza, now nearly two years old, is said to be at a crossroads, but is it really? Israel has recently achieved major geopolitical victories in the region, having pummeled Iran’s nuclear sites and air defenses, all but destroyed the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, witnessed the downfall of Assad’s regime in Syria, and decimated Hamas’ military in Gaza itself.
Under a different leader, this new strength might have paved the way for a durable ceasefire in Gaza, possibly a grand bargain with Saudi Arabia (and other regional powers that hadn’t already signed on to the Abraham Accords), and a restoration of Israel’s standing in the rest of the world.
But under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel keeps fighting—not only bombing civilian targets but shooting Gazan Palestinians while they’re lined up at food banks, many of them visibly starving, to the point that even several friends of Israel are charging its government with genocide (a word that many of them had resisted and, in some cases, rebutted until recently). And Hamas keeps fighting as well; its leaders have never cared about the fate of Gazan civilians, and Israel’s criminally excessive use of force is playing into their hands.
A recent article in the New York Times reported the many times Netanyahu has deliberately prolonged the war and evaded opportunities for peace in order to protect his own political power. Far-right-wing factions in his coalition government threatened to resign if he so much as considered a serious prolonged ceasefire; this would have sparked new elections, which he might have lost, which in turn would leave him vulnerable to pending criminal charges of corruption.
But this is an incomplete explanation for the continued fighting. The fact is, Israel and Hamas have vital interests in this war, and the peace proposals offered by each—whether or not sincerely—have threatened the interests of the other.
At various points in the war, Netanyahu offered or ceded to ceasefires and exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners—but he always insisted on Israel’s right to resume the fighting after all the hostages were freed. Hamas’ leaders have insisted that any such ceasefire be permanent; otherwise, they feared (correctly) that Israel would intensify its military campaign after the last hostage was released.
Another conflict of interest: Israel insists (quite rightly) that Hamas must disarm and be stripped of all political power as part of any peace plan; Hamas (understandably) wants to retain power.
These interests are both rational and irreconcilable, meaning that the war is likely to continue, unless one side is defeated or both sides are pressured to stop fighting. Netanyahu and his advisers want to see Hamas defeated; Hamas’ leaders hope that Israel’s brutality will build international support for boycotts and other forms of pressure against Israel.
Yes, Netanyahu’s desire to press on is, in part, political and personal. But Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem bureau chief for Bloomberg News (and one of the most experienced American reporters in the Middle East), says it’s a mistake to place the blame entirely on the prime minister. Bronner writes that not just Netanyahu but Israel’s entire government “believes deep in its bones that if it does not destroy and eliminate Hamas as a ruling military force in Gaza, that it will have failed its people.” This is seen as “an existential challenge.”
The shock of Hamas’ invasion on Oct. 7, 2023—an assault across Israel’s border that killed about 1,200 Jews, more than had been killed in a single day since the Holocaust—continues to traumatize many Israelis. As a percentage of the country’s population, it would be as if 45,000 Americans had been slaughtered in one fell swoop. Moreover, the killings were committed by an empowered militia that had vowed, as part of its charter, to kill or expel all Jews. The fact that Israel’s retaliation, even in the early stages of the war, triggered massive protests in the West—against not Hamas but Israel—only stiffened many Israelis’ sense of isolation and determination to fight on, outside opinion be damned.
Yet, at some point, the pangs of Oct. 7—even the memories of the Holocaust and the slogan “Never Again,” which legitimized the creation of Israel as a Jewish state back in 1948—cannot continue to justify Israel’s infliction of destruction in Gaza: the deaths of an estimated 60,000 Palestinians, 18,500 of them children, and the utter razing of so many homes, schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures. Yes, Hamas had appropriated many of these structures for its own use, but the level of wanton devastation has far surpassed the normal, often unavoidable levels of “collateral damage” inflicted in other military campaigns.
In his magisterial book Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (the vast span of that subtitle is chilling!), Israeli historian Benny Morris details the many “massacres” that have occurred over all those decades. The thing worth noting here is that these massacres—and Morris applies the word to acts of aggression and vengeance committed by both sides in their wars—resulted in the killing of dozens or hundreds of civilians. At their worst, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in southern Lebanon, about 1,200 civilians were killed over the course of 15 years.
In other words, the current war in Gaza has seen an unprecedented level of savagery. Yes, Hamas started it, but the Israel Defense Forces have upped it fiftyfold.
And now, with credible, thoroughly documented reports of famine, including many instances of Israeli troops shooting unarmed Palestinians as they line up at aid stations to receive food and medicine, the rationales or excuses for the IDF’s brutality are untenable. Even President Donald Trump, who has prodded Netanyahu to “finish” the war by whatever means necessary, has noticed the “real starvation” of Gazan children—he’s seen it on television; “you can’t fake that,” he says—though it remains to be seen whether he’ll do anything about it. (Asked Tuesday whether Israel should reoccupy Gaza, a step reportedly favored by Netanyahu, Trump replied, “That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”)
Still, Bloomberg’s Bronner thinks there may be something of a turning point in all this. Up till now, many Israelis could ignore the destruction their army has inflicted because TV news networks, as a matter of policy, haven’t shown it. Now, though, these stations have started to air footage of the situation in Gaza—and many Israelis are stunned. There has always been some domestic pressure to end the war, if just to bring home the remaining hostages who were taken Oct. 7. (Only about 20 are still thought to be alive.) Now the pressure may be growing.
Just how much, though, is hard to gauge. Polls show that a majority of Israelis want the war to end and the hostages returned. However, polls also show that a majority want Hamas to be completely destroyed or expelled. If the two outcomes are incompatible—if Hamas can’t be destroyed without intensifying the war and probably dooming the remaining hostages—it’s hard to know which outcome Israelis would prefer or sacrifice.
Another finding of Morris’ history is that all the Arab–Israeli wars, at least since 1948, have ended as a result of outside coercion—American pressure on Israel, Soviet pressure on the Arab states (during the Cold War), or U.N. pressure on both. The United States still has the means to press Israel; it provides much of its arms and intelligence, and now that Israel no longer faces the same threat it once did from Iran and its neighboring proxies, Washington could impose an arms embargo without endangering Israel’s security. A growing number of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as a growing percentage of the U.S. population, favor tightening the screws. But Trump doesn’t, at least not yet, and the GOP-controlled Congress seems eager to follow his lead.
Hamas has depended on Iran and Qatar for arms and other forms of aid. Iran is pretty much out of the picture, but Qatar could apply more pressure; it has done so, to the extent that it has compelled Hamas to take part in ceasefire negotiations (and, briefly, a couple of ceasefires). But its leverage seems limited as well.
One intriguing development: Last week, the 22-member Arab League publicly declared that there should not be a Palestinian state unless Hamas first disarms. This statement came just days after the leaders of Germany, France, and Britain expressed their support for a Palestinian state, as a means of forcing Israel to end (or at least tone down) the war. The Arab leaders—who have never cared for Hamas (or any other radical Palestinian organization) but who also, for domestic political reasons, can’t avidly disavow the group as long as they’re getting pummeled by Israeli bombs—seemed to be telling the Europeans: Don’t take this business of a Palestinian state too literally. If a Palestinian state were actually set up tomorrow, Hamas, even in its weakened condition, would be the only organization strong enough to be in charge; and the Arab League is saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Netanyahu could have been more adroit at playing the Arab and Palestinian powers off one another, and in this sense his political self-interest has damaged the security and reputation of his country. For some time, the Saudis have signaled a willingness to strike a grand bargain with Israel, including formal diplomatic recognition—if Israel agreed, in principle, to resume negotiations toward a two-state solution to the long-standing Israel-Palestinian conflict.
By objective measures, this should be a no-brainer, an outright win-win, for an Israeli prime minister: Israel gets the benefits of Saudi recognition (an achievement that would have enormous influence throughout the Arab and Muslim world) without allowing the actual creation of a Palestinian state. For many years before Oct. 7, Israel pretended to negotiate with Palestinian emissaries just to placate foreign allies, especially the U.S. But now Netanyahu refuses even to pay lip service to the idea of negotiations, because if he did so, his right-wing coalition partners would quit the government, new elections would be held, and he might lose.
There was a moment, maybe a month ago, when Netanyahu was riding high. Hezbollah’s leadership had been killed or severely injured by small bombs planted in cellphones and walkie-talkies; Iran’s nuclear facilities were blown up by Israeli and U.S. bombs, and its nuclear program, though not “obliterated” (as Trump initially claimed), was seriously set back, perhaps by years. The attack on Iran was overwhelmingly supported by the Israeli people; they lifted tangible threats that were either immediate (in the case of Hezbollah) or not quite tangible but existential (Iran’s nuclear program).
Netanyahu had a moment when he could have scuttled the pressure from his right-wing partners, formed a new government, taken real steps to end the war in Gaza, made a bold overture to the Saudi royal family (who were eager to accept such a move), and used all of these moves to reset relations with once friendly but increasingly disenchanted political parties in Europe and the United States.
He didn’t do any of this, and the only plausible reason is that he didn’t want to. Netanyahu isn’t just kowtowing to the right wing or protecting his political power; he believes the things he says about the need to wipe out Hamas, and according to Bronner and other reporters, many if not most Israeli Jews believe those things too. At least for now, as long as the notion of living side by side with Palestinians seems suicidal to them, the idea of a two-state solution is untenable. It may be that Israel’s own ultraviolence against Palestinians—in Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank—is responsible for their hatred toward Israel, but that doesn’t negate the problem or point to a plausible process toward peace.
Which leads back to the question: What can we do about it? It’s unclear, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Outside pressure has been the way these wars have been stopped in the past. Trump does have good relations with Netanyahu and with many Arab leaders. It would be nice if he had some experienced diplomats to exploit those relations to good ends.
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