• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• United States

August 14, 2025, 8:45 AM View Comments ()

The Israeli cabinet’s recent approval of a plan to take military control over all of Gaza left many observers puzzled because it made so little sense. The Israeli government claims that it needs to go in and “finish the job” of dismantling Hamas and freeing Israeli hostages. But even its most ardent defenders are struggling to explain how and why a group that has been decimated by 22 months of bombing and ground operations still poses a strategic threat to Israel, how an ideology and political movement can ever be eliminated with force, and why a further invasion and occupation is not more likely to lead to the hostages being killed—either by Hamas or the operation itself—than freed.

Even more puzzling is that the Israeli government is making the case for a further invasion of Gaza despite the likely monumental costs of such an operation. Sending large numbers of Israeli forces into Gaza City and beyond will almost certainly lead to many more months of conflict, kill and displace many more Palestinian civilians, and aggravate an already intolerable humanitarian situation. It will mean more suffering and deaths among the remaining Israeli hostages, cause further casualties among Israeli soldiers, require more costly call-ups of overworked reserve forces, exacerbate Israel’s image as a pariah state in the eyes of much of the world, further undermine Israeli relations with its Arab neighbors, and jeopardize the strategic relationship with the United States, where support for Israel is cratering.

Given this obvious imbalance between benefits and costs, it is unsurprising that so many of Israel’s international partners—virtually all the former heads of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad, the current IDF chief of staff, the leaders of Israel’s opposition parties (which now have a slight lead in the polls)—have come out against the new operation and that a majority of Israelis favor a cease-fire and hostage deal. Last week, a group of around 600 former officials from various Israeli national security and intelligence services wrote to U.S. President Donald Trump to help end the war in Gaza, on the basis that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel and that the IDF had already accomplished whatever objectives could be achieved with military force.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that after conquering Gaza he can turn over its security to an “Arab force” and to Palestinians that are neither from Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a fantasy. No Arab government is prepared to risk sending forces into Gaza in the absence of an agreement with Hamas, so long as Israel reserves the right to intervene militarily whenever it wants—unless at the invitation of a legitimate Palestinian entity. And Israel has spent the past two years doing virtually everything it can to weaken and delegitimize the PA—blocking its revenues and refusing to support international training of its forces for Gaza— which, for all its flaws, is the only Palestinian entity that recognizes and is willing to perform security cooperation with Israel. Israel’s claim to want to turn over Gaza to Palestinians thus only obscures the likely reality of long-term Israeli occupation.

With so little logic behind the plan, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is based less on strategic logic than on domestic political calculus. Netanyahu knows his minority government depends on the backing of extreme right parties—led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—who support not just Israeli occupation but also the displacement of Arabs and annexation of Gaza. Their departure from the coalition could provoke new elections that Netanyahu might lose, not only costing him the political power he has long cherished but also paving the way to the completion of his trial and potential conviction on corruption charges—a fate that staying in power has helped him avoid so far.

The prospects for preventing this impending catastrophe are limited. Some place their hopes in Israeli elections but, barring a cease-fire deal, there is little prospect for this government to fall anytime soon, and the next election is not required until late 2026, by which time a lot more damage will have been done.

Another path to avoid the worst would be for Hamas to cave under the threat of additional military pressure and agree to Israel’s cease-fire demands. This is why Israel wants its international partners to support it and blame them for taking pressure off of Hamas when they refuse. It is true that Hamas will only make concessions under pressure, but there is little sign that its fragmented leadership is prepared to meet Israel’s demands of full disarmament, deportation of its remaining leaders, and the creation of a “security perimeter” around Gaza. Nor is there any guarantee that Israel would actually be willing to take “yes” for an answer because that would mean ending the war, and perhaps Netanyahu’s coalition along with it.

At this point, the only real hope seems to be an intervention from the United States.  So far, Trump has blamed Hamas for the stalemate, said the question of occupation is “up to Israel,” and showed no interest in pressing Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza.  He inherited a cease-fire and hostage deal when he took office in January, but two months later, he gave Israel the green light to violate it and then supported the Israeli government as it cut off all food, water, and medicine to Gaza for more than two months—seriously aggravating an already catastrophic humanitarian situation and leading to widespread starvation and death.

But Trump is also uniquely capable of changing course. He must know that the longer the war goes on, the more it becomes his war, not former U.S. President Joe Biden’s. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Americans—including in Trump’s MAGA base—are beginning to oppose endless funding and military support for Israel.

Trump, moreover, has previously shown that he’s willing to distance himself from Israel when it is in the United States’ interest, whether by striking a cease-fire with the Houthis that did not include Israel, concluding a U.S.-only hostage deal with Hamas, lifting sanctions on Syria, or engaging in nuclear negotiations with Iran.

When Netanyahu wanted to continue bombing Iran after the United States sent its own airstrikes in June, Trump publicly—and angrily—demanded he stop, and Israel reluctantly complied. Trump could do something similar now, which would give Netanyahu a credible explanation for pulling back, help both leaders avoid a costly escalation , and save Israel from its own government—and that is to say nothing of saving innocent civilians in Gaza from even more pain and suffering.

It is fair to argue that the strategic threat that Hamas posed to Israel, justifying its initial military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks—Hamas’s military forces, command structure, rocket arsenal and factories, and terrorist leadership—has long been eliminated and that Biden himself should have pressured Israel to end the war sooner. But what is utterly clear is that the current threat that Hamas poses does not justify Israel’s planned response.

Netanyahu’s decision take all of Gaza could still be reversed with a deal, and it will take time to call up and prepare additional troops, so Trump has days—and even weeks—to act if he so chooses. Doing so successfully might not win Trump a Nobel Prize, but it would help him cultivate the image that he covets as an international peacemaker and prevent an indelible stain on his presidency.