Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly proclaimed that he will not end the war in Gaza before Israel achieves "absolute victory." Yet he has stubbornly refused to articulate the political goals of the fighting. Does this mean that Israel is conducting a war without a clearly defined strategy? If this war is not the extension of policy by other means, is it a war for its own sake, an absolute war, or a war of annihilation? Or is Israel refraining from publicly pronouncing its political goals because doing so would undermine its assertion of being legitimately engaged in self-defense?

Many observers argue that Netanyahu refuses to agree on a ceasefire and exchange of hostages for prisoners with Hamas because of his fear that the radical ministers to his right, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who support a permanent military occupation and eventual settlement of the Gaza Strip, would then topple his government. This could result in the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the fiasco of October 7, and to the resumption of Netanyahu's trial on charges of corruption, potentially ending his political career and landing him in prison. Hence Netanyahu's interest in continuing the war in Gaza and the offensive in Lebanon, at least until the United States elections – hoping for a re-elected Donald Trump to pull his chestnuts out of the fire – or even until the next Israeli elections, scheduled for October 2026.

However, these immediate concerns should not obscure the fact that Netanyahu does have a long-term strategy, which he has pursued throughout his long political career. Moreover, despite some crucial differences, this strategy has much in common with Zionist policies dating all the way back to the pre-state period. It is this strategy that propels the current crisis, and it is only by replacing it with a new political paradigm that we can hope to begin working toward an end to the hundred-years' war between Israel, the Palestinians, and their allies.

Ideological dogmatism and religious fanaticism

At the core of Netanyahu's worldview is the conviction that the entirety of Eretz Israel, the "Land of Israel," minimally defined as the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, belongs to the Jews; that the mission of the state is to realize the historic and moral right to this land by ongoing settlement and exploitation of political and military opportunities; and that the Palestinian population residing in this territory must accept Jewish-Israeli hegemony and, where possible, be persuaded or coerced to leave altogether.

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