Trapped in a death spiral, Netanyahu and Hamas commit to endless war

Almost two years after the war in Gaza began – after so much death, destruction and devastation – Benjamin Netanyahu does not have a plan to end the conflict. Instead, he has a plan to prolong and deepen it. In this, he is in lockstep with Hamas, the militant group that triggered the war with its monstrous October 7 attacks and fights on, unmoved by the suffering of the civilian population of Gaza. Two supposed enemies bound together in a fatal embrace, pursuing maximalist goals that keep leading to the same tragic destination: the continuation of the war.

The Israeli prime minister confirmed on Friday that he wants Israel to take full control of Gaza, extending beyond the three-quarters of the territory where it already dominates. Under a plan approved by Israel’s security cabinet after 10 hours of debate, its ground troops will move into Gaza City, an area they have avoided for most of the war. Netanyahu has so far provided little detail of how the operation will work. During a visit to an army facility this week, he said: “It is necessary to complete the defeat of the enemy in Gaza, to free all our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

If it sounds like you’ve heard this before, it’s because you have.

Throughout the war, Netanyahu has repeatedly spoken as if triumph was just around the corner. In February 2024, he said that “the intense phase of the fighting is weeks away from completion - not months, weeks away from completion”. Three months later, he said: “We will enter [the southern city of] Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there, with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.” Two months after that he told the US Congress: “Victory is in sight.” A year later, the war continues.

Will Netanyahu’s plan work this time, forcing Hamas into submission and securing the release of the remaining Israeli hostages? The length of Friday’s security cabinet debate points to how contested the answers to those questions are among Israel’s top decision-makers. Among the doubters are those with the most at stake, including the man tasked with implementing Netanyahu’s plan.

According to many well-sourced reports in the Israeli media, Eyal Zamir, the head of the Israeli Defence Forces, has warned Netanyahu that the full takeover of Gaza would endanger the lives of remaining hostages and exhaust Israel’s already fatigued troops, bogging them down in a quagmire they will struggle to escape. Tantamount to “walking into a trap” is how Zamir reportedly described the idea. He does not want this war to be Israel’s version of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. That is exactly the type of scenario Yahya Sinwar, the now-dead former leader of Hamas, seemed to have envisaged when he ordered the October 7 attacks.

As for the families of the remaining 50 hostages, 20 of whom are assumed to be still alive, they overwhelmingly believe that Netanyahu’s plan will lead to their loved ones’ deaths, not release. Rather than being saved in a heroic rescue operation, they fear they will be either killed in crossfire or executed by Hamas. “The decision of the cabinet to prolong the war will be a death sentence to those alive and will make it impossible to return those who have been murdered by Hamas and still are held in Gaza,” Lior Horev, a spokeswoman for the hostage families, said this week.

As for broader Israeli society, polls show around half the public believes Netanyahu has resisted a comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal for political reasons, namely to keep his far-right coalition in power and delay the outcome of an ongoing corruption trial.

Netanyahu has argued that escalation is needed because the war is going around in circles, with no sign of finishing off Hamas or releasing the hostages. His supporters also point out Hamas has acted as a spoiler in the most recent ceasefire talks, stymying efforts to secure a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 living hostages. Both are true.

Hamas’ leaders, it bears repeating, could have ended the war by releasing all the hostages, laying down their arms and relinquishing any claim to run Gaza. This would have required them to put the wellbeing of the Palestinian people ahead of their own messianic aims to achieve Israel’s demise, something they clearly have no intention of doing. Sinwar and most of Hamas’ pre-October 7 leaders in Gaza have been killed, and its military capabilities have been devastated, essentially reducing it to a guerilla fighting force. Yet, the terror group appears emboldened, digging in for more fighting rather than pushing for another ceasefire deal. Hamas insisted in a statement this week that it will not give up armed resistance until “the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital”. And senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad – who has safely ridden out the war in Qatar while Palestinian civilians were dying en masse – claimed credit for the global move to recognise Palestine, describing it as the “fruits of October 7” and saying “our weapons are a symbol of Palestinian dignity”.

Yet Hamas’ sins, as abhorrent as they are, do not erase Netanyahu’s failures. In January, Israel and Hamas entered a three-phase ceasefire agreement that Netanyahu broke before phase two began. In that stage, Israel was supposed to accept a permanent ceasefire while Hamas would release all the remaining living hostages. Backed by the Trump administration, Netanyahu instead tried to prolong phase one of the deal by demanding Hamas release more hostages in exchange for a continuation of the temporary truce. When Hamas refused, Netanyahu tried to inflict maximum pressure by blocking all aid entering Gaza and restarting the war with a series of ferocious air strikes.

That strategy has been a disaster. Another 12,000 Palestinians and around 50 Israeli troops have died in the subsequent months for no meaningful gains. Hamas has not surrendered, and has only released a single hostage (in a side deal with the Trump administration). As for the blockade on aid, it has produced only starvation in Gaza, made Israel an international pariah and accelerated the push by Western countries to recognise a Palestinian state.

The latest plan to conquer all of Gaza, beginning with the invasion of Gaza City, is clearly designed to force Hamas back to the negotiating table in a weakened position. Maybe it will work. You could hardly blame anyone for being sceptical, however, when Netanyahu’s previous gambit failed so badly and his constant promises of “total victory” remain unfulfilled. The contrast with Israel’s more limited, and strategically successful, recent wars against Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is striking.

As for a long-term plan for Gaza after the war, it remains a mirage. Netanyahu told Fox News: “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.” Again, scepticism is understandable when two of Netanyahu’s key far-right ministers - Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir - have repeatedly spoken of their intention to re-establish Israeli settlements in Gaza.

After 22 months of war, Palestinians and Israelis also deserve something more substantial than vague assurances that “Arab forces” will rule Gaza at some point in the future. Which Arab forces, and how, and when? Crucially, Netanyahu continues to refuse to accept a governing role for the only realistic Palestinian alternative to Hamas: the undoubtedly flawed but more moderate Fatah party, which controls parts of the West Bank. That suits Hamas just fine.

In the short term, as we await more detail on the next stage of the war, the only guaranteed outcome is more fighting and more death. Most Gazans, most Israelis and most of the world want the war to end, but Netanyahu and Hamas are willing to let it drag on with no end in sight.

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