Gazans are trapped in a forever war designed around Netanyahu’s impossible aims

Truly, I lack the words to describe just how depressing the resumption of bombings in Gaza is. By now, you will probably have read several analyses explaining how inevitable this moment was, how it was baked into the terms of the ceasefire. That is true, but ultimately not true enough; the inevitability was baked in long before that.

It was baked into Israel’s stated aims in responding to the October 7 attacks, which were contradictory and unrealisable. A war fought on such pretexts has no way of ending. It is, in its very design, a forever war.

Israeli forces resumed airstrikes in Gaza after the first phase of the ceasefire reached its end. Credit: Getty Images

Specifically, Israel has always said that it wants to retrieve all its hostages, and eliminate Hamas. On the surface, these may appear to be allied goals, but they are not. The easiest way to retrieve hostages is to strike a deal with Hamas – much as happened in the past two months. But if you’re Hamas and Israel has said it will not stop until it eradicates you, what would returning those hostages ultimately get you? It can’t be a lasting peace because Israel has said that cannot happen until you’ve been destroyed.

And since we can safely assume Hamas doesn’t want to be destroyed, the whole logic of this approach – demanding Hamas release hostages while maintaining a policy that removes any incentive for it to do so – quickly falls apart. That leaves only the option remaining of bombing your way out of this contradiction. And here we are.

There are really only two possible versions of this theory. One, you successfully bomb Gaza until Hamas is eliminated, and presumably retrieve the hostages yourself. Or two, you bomb Gaza as a way of creating the incentive for Hamas to capitulate.

Here, the impossibilities and contradictions only compound. Israel has bombed Gaza relentlessly for some 16 months. In that time, it has retrieved very few hostages and quite evidently failed to destroy Hamas. It has reduced Hamas’ military capacity, but it’s far from clear it has reduced its numbers. US intelligence from January estimates that Hamas has, in fact, recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 members since Israel began its bombardment, effectively offsetting Hamas’ losses.

Nothing about this is a surprise. National armies, even very powerful ones, are terrible at eradicating terrorist groups that are comfortable fighting guerilla-style wars in dense urban settings. They tend to talk tough, then lose.

The moment Israeli officials began describing October 7 as “Israel’s 9/11” it was obvious that it would embark upon a similar folly to the United States, ensnaring it in intractable wars, which fail at their objectives at enormous human cost. That’s because they fail to understand that terrorist groups are not conventional armies that can simply be defeated militarily. Their recruitment depends hugely on the disproportionate reaction of their enemy.

So, what incentive does this latest round of bombing really create? Especially since, by Israel’s own lights, Hamas is an organisation that has no interest in peace, and whose leaders are prepared to put their own people in harm’s way – who even want a high civilian death toll because it de-legitimises Israel. In which case, how is bombing Gaza further doing anything other than giving Hamas what it wants? And by what reasoning is giving Hamas what it wants meant to encourage it to capitulate?

What, then, besides endless bombings, is the plan meant to be? Israel and the US insist that any peace deal ultimately requires Hamas to forfeit control of Gaza. That naturally raises the question of who would be in control, which naturally raises the answer of the Palestinian Authority, which controls much of the West Bank. It says it is prepared to support a two-state solution, and is at this point the only Palestinian alternative. And yet, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government outright refuses to countenance that it could replace Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated no genuine interest in a two-state solution.Credit: AP

This leaves Israel with no negotiation options. What we have instead is a war determined to continue until Hamas is removed from power, alongside a policy that sidelines any alternative group from taking over. A peace deal is therefore predicated on Hamas agreeing to disarm, and returning the remaining hostages – its only leverage – in the process.

That leaves no meaningful peace deal to be struck. Hamas refuses to disarm because that violates its ideology of resistance against Israel. But no less significantly – and often ignored – the Netanyahu government refuses any peace deal that gives Palestinians autonomy, whether Hamas is in charge or not.

Some of this is down to Netanyahu himself, who, frankly, has demonstrated no genuine interest in a two-state solution, and regards a Palestinian state simply as a threat to Israel by its existence. As he reiterated in a social media post in January, he demands “full Israeli security control of the entire area west of the Jordan River – and that is irreconcilable with a Palestinian state”. The following day he declared that his “insistence is what has prevented – over the years – the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel. As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to insist strongly on this.”

But it’s also down to his deeply compromised coalition government, reliant on far-right ministers who may not determine policy, but who make it politically impossible for him to agree to a lasting peace deal. They are clear in wanting Jewish settlements to return to Gaza, and for Palestinians to leave. They are the ones who, when Trump announced his plan to redevelop Gaza, which amounts to ethnic cleansing, enthusiastically supported it because it was basically their policy. These people keep Netanyahu in power. When you consider the government in that context, negotiating a peace deal, you soon see that Netanyahu himself simply has no reason to do so.

Amid this are the children either being killed or orphaned. The doctors being forced to amputate limbs without anaesthetic, the families living in rubble. The hostages yet to be returned. Depressing beyond articulacy because of the thought their intolerable suffering is serving no clear end. These people suffer because they have no power. And those with power see no incentive to end it.

Waleed Aly is a regular columnist.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.