How Netanyahu got his Gaza war back

By Osama Al-Sharif

The Gaza ceasefire that Israel has now so devastatingly shattered was only ever a political convenience for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu: the incoming US president wanted it before taking office, and the Israeli prime minister obliged.

The fragile truce that began in January had nothing to do with halting the carnage in Gaza and little to do with bringing home Israeli captives held by Hamas, and Netanyahu was never going to honor it: as most Israelis now know, his sole concern has only ever been his own political survival.

Netanyahu has been under tremendous domestic pressure to set up an independent inquiry into the Oct. 7 attacks that would have established his culpability. Army top brass have already admitted responsibility and resigned. Close Netanyahu aides are engulfed in scandals revolving around foreign money being passed to Hamas in Gaza, allegedly with kickbacks. Nadav Argaman, head of the Shin Bet internal security service until October 2021, pointed the finger publicly at Netanyahu and threatened to divulge his darkest secrets.

Far-right cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit over the ceasefire deal, and another extremist partner, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to do the same if Israel embraced the second phase of the agreement that called for the end of the war and total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu was also rattled by direct negotiations between the US and Hamas for the handover of the one surviving American captive and the bodies of four others.

Then Netanyahu found a way to derail the talks on phase two of the truce: he proposed an extension of the first phase, whereby Hamas would release more captives without any concessions by Israel. When Hamas insisted on adherence to the original deal, Netanyahu — in a shameless act of defiance and arrogance — ordered a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza, followed by a wave of deadly airstrikes and further military operations on the ground: essentially a resumption of the war. The US sided with Israel and few Western countries offered any meaningful objections other than weasel words.

This is not about ending the war but killing as many Palestinians as possible to trigger displacement.

Osama Al-Sharif

So Netanyahu got his war back, but this time he has wider plans: a final solution, the permanent displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.

Israel was unnerved by the Arab embrace of a multibillion-dollar plan to reconstruct Gaza, replace Hamas with a civil administration of governing technocrats, and deploy observers — all without the forced displacement of Palestinians. The plan was adopted at an emergency Arab summit in Cairo and backed by key Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia.

The Arab proposal is a riposte to Trump’s absurd plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” while forcibly displacing two million Palestinians to other countries. Netanyahu now sees an opportunity to scuttle the Arab plan, which has gained widespread international backing, while paying lip service to Trump’s scenario. This is not about ending the war but killing as many Palestinians as possible to trigger displacement, and there are no limits to how far Netanyahu and his handpicked generals will go to achieve that end.

Ironically, the only hope now for Gaza could come from inside Israel itself. The families of the captives know that Netanyahu could have freed their loved ones months ago, but he didn’t. They know that Hamas was willing to stick to its part of the deal — it had no other option — but that was not to Netanyahu’s liking. Now a maelstrom is brewing in Israel, led by the families of the captives but also by those who see Netanyahu bent on creating authoritarian rule and endangering Israel’s democratic foundations.

For Netanyahu, the geopolitical gains made by Israel in the past 18 months are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enforce its hegemony across the region: the fate of a few Israeli captives and a couple of million Palestinians is an acceptable price for such a grandiose endeavor.