By Alexandra Schwartzbrod

Three months after the Hamas massacre on October 7, Israeli leaders do not intend to put an end to military operations in Gaza. Despite the risk of extension to the Middle East and the vagueness of the follow-up to be given to the conflict, the war appears to be an opportunity for a particularly shaken Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel has been bombing Gaza relentlessly for almost three months, in retaliation for the massacre committed by Hamas on its soil on October 7, and there is no indication that this campaign will end soon. It will slow down or change its nature perhaps, but Israeli leaders, blind and deaf to the warnings of their own allies, do not intend to end it before... Before what? No one knows for the moment, probably even at the highest level of the IDF.

Eliminating the leaders of the military branch of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar and Mohamed Deif, the two instigators of the October 7 killings, is of course part of the war aims and the noise of weapons will not stop until they are not reached. But beyond? Will we have to wait until nothing remains of Gaza, neither on the surface nor underground? But then, with living conditions continuing to deteriorate in the enclave, what will become of the Palestinian civilians who have survived? Some far-right Israeli ministers could see themselves ousting them and replacing them with settlers – for the moment this is only a dream, or rather a nightmare, but for how long?

These questions are all the more dizzying since Benjamin Netanyahu is a Prime Minister on borrowed time. His responsibility for the security failures of October 7 is overwhelming and the Supreme Court has just undermined him by revoking the main measure of his judicial reform, the very one which was to give him full powers and allow him to escape a corruption trial. It's good news. The bad news is that war is its best ally because you cannot get rid of a leader, even a discredited one, while the cannons are thundering. Especially since the Israeli population, usually divided, is so traumatized by the Hamas attack that it continues to support the bombings on Gaza. This is why the end of the war is not for tomorrow despite the risks of extension of the conflict. This is neither in the interest of Netanyahu nor of Hamas, which does not care about the Palestinian deaths.