Israel has spent more than two years attacking Gaza in a genocidal war against the Palestinian enclave. Most homes and infrastructure have been destroyed, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the remaining Gaza residents face a harsh winter with inadequate food, medicine and shelter.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza, this week joined US President Donald Trump’s “peace commission” set up to oversee the reconstruction and governance of Gaza.
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This raises the question of what Netanyahu and Israel actually want from the Palestinian territories, whether they want to rebuild the territory or simply maintain the status quo.
Observers say Netanyahu has a difficult road ahead. With Israeli elections looming later this year, he must appear to the world and the Israeli public as supportive of U.S. ambitions in Gaza.
But he also needs to maintain a coalition government that relies in part on forces like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who not only opposes rebuilding Gaza but also opposes a ceasefire in the area, which as religious Zionists he and his allies see as a divine right to settle.
So far, things don’t seem to be going completely Prime Minister Netanyahu’s way. Despite Hamas’ refusal to disarm, he was unable to delay the second phase of President Trump’s three-phase ceasefire plan. Similarly, despite his opposition, Gaza’s Rafah crossing is scheduled to open in both directions next week, allowing people to enter and exit the enclave. Finally, his protests against Turkiye and Qatar joining the peace committee and potentially sending troops to Gaza as part of a proposed international stabilization force also appear to have been rejected by the US.
Payment and security
Domestically, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet remains divided over Gaza. Smotrich on Monday not only denounced the U.S. proposal as “bad for Israel,” but also called for the removal of the U.S. military base in southern Israel responsible for monitoring the ceasefire. Meanwhile, other members of Israel’s parliament, regardless of ideology, are primarily focused on the upcoming elections, with the sole purpose of energizing their own political base.
Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to insist on disarming Hamas, and Israeli forces are working to destroy territory along the entire border with Gaza, establishing a buffer zone deep within the coastal enclave.
Even if Hamas has not completely lost all its weapons, its power is weakening, and by pushing Palestinians further away from Israel’s borders, the Israeli government can project an image of security for its people.
The Israeli public, exhausted by more than two years of war, has largely relegated the consequences of Israel’s actions to the back pages of domestic media.
“The public is deeply divided on Gaza and the peace committee,” said Dalia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and pollster. “Although there is a small bloc that supports resettlement in Gaza, a large part of Israeli society is divided. People are generally driven entirely by the events of October 2023 and view Gaza with a mixture of fear and a need for security. They want Israel to remain in Gaza in some form, and they don’t trust outsiders to deal with it. At the same time, there is hope that U.S. involvement might be able to accomplish what two years of war could not.”
“But pretty much everyone starts at the same point: Anything is better than going back to war,” Scheindlin said.
“They have no strategy, everything is in disarray,” peace activist Gershon Baskin said, referring to Israeli leaders. “They are in election mode and are only talking to their own constituencies. I went to parliament yesterday and it’s like watching a madman in a madhouse. It’s a disaster.”
For many citizens, Palestinians remain invisible. “There are no borders. Israel has probably killed more than 100,000 people, and the vast majority of Israelis don’t know or care about what’s happening on the other side of the border. We even dispute the existence of borders. They are ours alone,” Baskin said. “I don’t even watch it on TV. All it shows is old clip-on loops. You can find images of Gaza on social media, but you have to go looking for them.”
“Most Israelis don’t.”
divided politics
Many Israeli leaders agree on one thing: there is no Palestinian state.
How that goal is achieved, or the details involved, and how Gaza fits into it all, is open to interpretation.
Regardless of the outcome of the U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire process, Israel will continue to coexist with the Gaza Strip, where it is accused of genocide. For now, analysts within Israel say there appears to be no geographically determined plan for coexistence, only a tacit suspicion that outside powers, in this case the United States, are incapable of truly determining how best to achieve it.
Even Israel’s commitment to the U.S. plan is in question, with Netanyahu, safely out of earshot of Trump and his team, labeling the second phase of the ceasefire as a “declaratory move” rather than a clear sign of progress as described by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Israeli lawmaker Ofer Kashif said: “The genocide hasn’t stopped. It’s still going on. It’s just moved from active to passive.” “Israel is not bombing Gaza like before, but now it is freezing and starving the people there. This is not happening in isolation. This is government policy.”
Many analysts, including political economist Seal Heber, questioned the Israeli leadership’s ability to plan long-term.
Heber said decisions such as attacks on Iran and Qatar were driven by domestic politics as well as overarching strategy. For example, the June attack on Iran coincided with a pending no-confidence motion, while the September attack on Qatar may have been an attempt to refocus public attention from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, he told Al Jazeera.
“There is no plan. Long-term planning is not the way the Israeli government works,” Heber told Al Jazeera. “Smotrich and others have a long-term plan – they want to settle Gaza and expel the Palestinians – but in real politics there are no plans. Everything is short-term.”
uncertain future
“I’m more optimistic than ever,” said Baskin, whose mediation between Israel and the PLO played a crucial role in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, referring to the U.S. decision to override Israel’s opposition to moving to a second phase before disarming Hamas. The peace committee decided to open the Qatar, Turkiye, and Rafah crossings.
Kashif didn’t have high expectations. “I have no faith in this peace commission at all,” he said, “and I think it’s the government’s policy right now to keep frustrating and delaying plans to form a stabilization force. They’re just going to let people die while that happens.”
“People accuse me of saying these things for politically cynical reasons, but of course that’s not true,” he said, adding, “I wish I didn’t have to say them at all.”
“That’s painful,” he continued, “and it’s painful for me, not just as a humanitarian and a socialist, but as a Jew.”
