Throughout the war in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly said that he just needs one more military maneuver to finally defeat Hamas.

In April last year, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel was merely “a step from victory” — as long as it captured Rafah, a city in southern Gaza. This March, with Rafah long decimated and Hamas still refusing to surrender, Mr. Netanyahu started a campaign that he promised would finally give Israel victory. When it did not, he launched an even broader operation in May that, three months later, has failed to dislodge Hamas’s battered remnants, while leaving many Palestinian civilians on the brink of starvation.

Now, Mr. Netanyahu is planning another major push after his cabinet voted on Friday to prepare to capture Gaza City, the main city in the enclave. That followed his announcement on Thursday that Israel would finally defeat Hamas by occupying all of Gaza and then handing it to “Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us.”

This latest endeavor, which may take weeks to begin, risks ending the same way as all his previous efforts: in a strategic dead-end, with Hamas still holding on by its fingertips, Israeli hostages still in Hamas’s grip, and Palestinian civilians trapped in a dystopian nightmare. Israel captured much of Gaza City in the first months of war, seizing some areas more than once, before relinquishing it all on the false assumption that Hamas had been defeated.

Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to expand the campaign yet again, despite intense international pressure to end the war, is even at odds with the views of Israel’s military leadership. The army is depleted after fighting what is already the longest high-intensity war in the country’s history. Fewer reservists, who form the bulk of Israel’s fighting force, are showing up for duty. The military’s stocks of munitions and spare parts are running down, officials say. And there has been a rise in deaths by suicide among discharged soldiers.

Once again, Mr. Netanyahu has prioritized his political needs by choosing to extend the war. Overriding top generals, some of whom say that Hamas has been damaged enough, the Israeli prime minister has given precedence to his far-right coalition allies, who say the war must continue until Hamas’s total destruction.