Attachments
The renewed Israeli military campaign in Gaza, together with politicians’ statements, give insights into Israel’s intentions for the strip. In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts explain why these plans, if they proceed, portend more bloodshed and sow the seeds of further conflict down the road.
Where do things stand in Gaza?
On 18 March, Israel relaunched its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, breaking a 42-day ceasefire in the campaign that began after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israeli towns. The renewed assault involves aggressive tactics and vaulting ambition. Along with undercutting Hamas’s recovering military strength, Israeli leaders are seeking to take away the Islamist group’s capacity to govern Gaza, by targeting its top civilian administrators (the previous focus was on military and political leaders) and blowing up what remains of the enclave’s public infrastructure. The Israeli army is seizing vast tracts of Gaza, seemingly fragmenting the territory for the long haul. Its troops have surrounded and plan to raze almost all of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, occupying a swathe of land that cuts the strip off from the Egyptian border, ensuring that the only access will be via Israel.
Airstrikes and evacuation orders are forcing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents into cramped patches of coastline, turning most of the strip into “no-go zones”. Palestinian casualties have soared, with over 1,600 killed, a third of them children, since hostilities resumed – a number equal to all the Israelis who have died in the war’s eighteen months. The reported Palestinian death toll since the war began in October 2023 has now risen well past 50,000; the vast majority of the dead – even by Israel’s count – are civilians. Thousands more remain buried under rubble, and still more thousands have died from indirect causes, such as lack of medical treatment. Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe is rapidly mounting, exacerbated by the total siege Israel has imposed on the strip since 1 March, blocking all aid trucks from entering for the first time since the war’s early days.
The ceasefire brokered in January, largely by the U.S., with help from fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar, had won respite for Gaza’s Palestinians. The first phase in what was meant to be a multi-phase truce, it had largely stopped the shooting, freed 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and allowed a surge of relief supplies into the strip. It had also made provision for talks about a permanent ceasefire and the return, in further phases, of the 59 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. The trio of mediators are trying, but so far failing, to restore even a temporary truce.
Emboldened by U.S. backing, Israeli leaders appear determined to pursue their maximalist goals of destroying Hamas, restructuring Gaza’s military and security architecture, and consolidating control of the occupied territories. The plans include laying the groundwork for what Israeli politicians euphemistically describe as “voluntary emigration” – ie, the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Where the 2.2 million displaced would go is unresolved, as Israel’s neighbours insist that they will have no part in this scheme. Nevertheless, this possibility has seemed more real since early February, when U.S. President Donald Trump, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mused about relocating Gaza’s population while the U.S. builds a “Riviera in the Middle East” in the strip.
While Israel clearly is gathering momentum, it is also facing challenges. The hostages’ fate is once again in limbo. Much of Israeli society is apprehensive that the return to a shooting war puts the remaining hostages at risk. Many are also worried by Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken institutional checks on his government’s power – for example byattempting to fire both the attorney general and internal intelligence chief, positions seen as important balances to the executive because Israel does not have a written constitution. In a sign of swelling discontent, record numbers of reservists – the bulk of the army’s fighting strength – are not showing up for duty. Some are frustrated by repeated call-ups; others are vexed by the Netanyahu government’s determination to exempt religious Jews from military service; and still others are staying home because they oppose the war. But though it is noisy and increasing, such resistance remains too scattered as yet to keep the government from pressing ahead militarily.
What is Israel trying to achieve?
On 30 March, speaking to his cabinet, Prime Minister Netanyahu outlined his view of Israel’s Gaza endgame: “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see to the general security of the Gaza Strip and allow the realisation of the Trump plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding it and are ready to discuss it at any time”. Judging by these remarks, along with other statements and observations on the ground, Israel can be said to be pursuing three main objectives.
First, Israel insists on its original goals of destroying Hamas’s “military and governmental capacities” and releasing all remaining hostages held captive since 7 October 2023. Of late, those goals have been framed in terms of Hamas laying down all its weapons and its leaders going into exile. Israeli leaders argue that the group has been radically weakened and can be forced to surrender all the remaining hostages with fewer Israeli concessions than were stipulated in the January ceasefire deal. In pressing Hamas to cave in to Israel’s demands, their strategy is to block the supply of food, medicine and, indeed, all aid to Gaza’s population – a measure widely condemned as a form of collective punishment.
This strategy is not entirely new, but it has new elements. What has arguably changed in this phase is the fresh intensity of Israel’s methods, the scope and duration of the total siege, and a more explicit mission to render Gaza ungovernable. Another new element is that Israel appears to have received the Trump administration’s blessing to scrap the ceasefire that Washington itself negotiated in January, along with messaging that seems to signal a licence to finish the job by force. Implementation of the strategy is also bolstered by closer alignment between Israel’s military and political leadership. The military’s new chief of staff since March, Eyal Zamir, is less hesitant than his predecessor about the prospect of keeping troops inside the strip in the long term. His plans entailimposing a military administration and an Israeli-managed distribution chain for aid. Israeli security experts assert that Hamas keeps a grip on Gaza by systematically controlling aid flows and diverting resources. These claims remain unproven but serve to justify Israel’s contention that it must take charge of humanitarian assistance.
Secondly, Israel seeks to permanently restructure Gaza’s demography, geography and security architecture, irrespective of Hamas. Israel now directly controls at least 50 per cent of Gaza’s territory. Troops have expanded the buffer zone that rims the strip’s perimeter, concentrating civilians in small coastal areas around Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in the southern part of the strip, as well as around Gaza City in the north. Some 400,000 people are again displaced. These clusters are separated by the Netzarim corridor, an expanse running from east to west, which Israeli troops levelled during the war, abandoned under the ceasefire and then retook in late March. The UN reports that 69 per cent of Gaza is now a “no-go zone”, either held by Israel or subject to evacuation orders. The Israeli army is flattening other corridors, rendering the territory non-contiguous in a fashion similar to the West Bank. It is moving ahead with plans to demolish almost the entirety of Rafah, home to 200,000 residents before the war.Rafah abuts the Egyptian border. By seizing the city, Israel in effect gives itself full control of all that enters or exits the strip.
Israel’s far-right government is grasping what it sees as a historic opportunity to deepen its control of all the occupied territories – both Gaza and the West Bank.
Thirdly, Israel’s far-right government is grasping what it sees as a historic opportunity to deepen its control of all the occupied territories – both Gaza and the West Bank – and to deal a decisive blow to any plausible prospect for Palestinian self-determination. Notably, the renewed Israeli offensive was launched just two weeks after the Arab League, at a 4 March Cairo summit, endorsed a reconstruction plan for the strip predicated on the return of the Palestinian Authority to governance and the future establishment of a Palestinian state in both occupied territories – agendas that the Netanyahu government rejects outright.
The more extreme version of this vision foresees the ejection of some or all of Gaza’s people from the strip, an idea promoted by Israeli officials since the start of the war and which gained traction after President Trump echoed it. “Voluntary emigration” – a misnomer given that Palestinians would be fleeing places purposely rendered uninhabitable – has been couched by its advocates as a charitable act. Others say it would be better described as an act of ethnic cleansing. The advantages to Israel are clear: more territory and reduced local resistance, along with a sharp tipping of the demographic balance in Israel and the occupied territories to the advantage of Jewish Israelis and the disadvantage of Palestinians. (Jews are currently a slight minority among the 15 million people living under Israeli control.) But Crisis Group research suggests that many Israelis are sceptical that large-scale population transfer is practically possible.
As Israel pursues these objectives in Gaza, it is also conducting corresponding operations in the West Bank. As soon as the Gaza ceasefire took effect in January, Israel redeployed its forces to launch Operation Iron Wall. Ostensibly aimed at quashing Palestinian armed groups, the action has wreaked havoc across the West Bank, but especially on northern refugee camps, displacing over 40,000 of their residents. Israel has since announced that it is expanding its operation to the city of Nablus and to Balata refugee camp, the largest in the West Bank. Though on a smaller scale, the Israeli military is replicating the destructive methods witnessed in Gaza: dropping bombs and firing rockets as well as deploying tanks in heavily populated areas, tearing up roads and water systems, knocking down whole neighbourhoods and using deadly force to block residents from returning.
What about the hostages?
Israel claims it restarted the war to speed the release of the remaining hostages captured in October 2023. But it is negotiation rather than armed force that has won most hostages their freedom. The number of Israeli captives has dropped from 251 at the war’s outset to just 59 at present (some 24 of them are believed to be alive; the rest are bodies held by Hamas). Hamas has released some 150 hostages by the terms of ceasefires negotiated in November 2023 and January 2025. Israeli military rescue attempts have freed just eight. Some 4o hostages have been killedwhile in captivity since the war began, some by Hamas, some by Israeli fire.
During the 42-day ceasefire that began in January, Hamas returned 33 hostages. Since Israel broke the truce and killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, not a single hostage has been released. Via its Telegram channel, Hamas has repeatedly said Israel’s ramping-up of military pressure and the suffering inflicted on ordinary people in Gaza will not force it to give up more hostages. On the contrary, Israel’s signalling of intent to erase armed resistance, destroy Gaza and expel the population only makes Hamas more determined to hold onto its last bargaining chips.
How is Hamas responding to the war’s resumption?
In military terms, Hamas has responded by largely avoiding armed confrontation. Part of the reason may be its reduced stockpile of weapons, much of which Israel has destroyed, and the loss of capable fighters. Hamas has fired only a few of the remaining rockets in its arsenal at Israel, in an apparent attempt to undermine Israeli morale, but these have caused little physical damage. The group may also have decided to save its strength for a prolonged guerrilla war, as Israel slowly shrinks the area inhabited by Palestinians and sends its ground troops deeper into the strip. One way or the other, it remains massively outgunned.
In political terms, Hamas has kept channels open to negotiate with Israel, but the group has so far resisted Israel’s effort to restrict talks solely to the hostage issue. Instead, Hamas insists on sticking to the original phased ceasefire deal, which tied hostage releases to wider negotiations about the future of Gaza. Hamas is wary of surrendering its primary leverage, only to find Israel again on the attack and pressing for its destruction. Hamas officials have repeatedly made clear that they are ready to relinquish their rule of Gaza – a key Israeli demand – so long as a unified Palestinian administration takes over. To this end, the group supports the creation of a non-partisan, technocratic “community support committee” to run Gaza, a body which has been the subject of reconciliation talks with its rival Fatah and which was stipulated in the Arab League reconstruction plan for Gaza. But this proposal leaves open key questions about the group’s demilitarisation, which is a crucial point for Israel.
Hamas is mindful of the growing frustration among Palestinians in Gaza over the appalling sacrifices they have made in the war that it started.
At the same time, Hamas is mindful of the growing frustration among Palestinians in Gaza over the appalling sacrifices they have made in the war that it started. It has met sporadic, apparently spontaneous protests in the strip – some of which featured explicitly anti-Hamas slogans – with a mix of repression and rhetoric, targeting organisers for reprisal (including execution, in one case) but seeking to rally the public at large with appeals to patriotic steadfastness.
The group’s challenges may be growing. Palestinians report that since the war resumed, Hamas officials have been increasingly absent from public duties, including policing, partly due to the chaos under fire but also in fear of Israel’s explicit targeting of structures of governance. Press reports suggest that the group faces increasing difficulty paying salaries. As Hamas’s capacity to govern erodes, the resulting criminality and disorder in populated areas, combined with the rapidly shrinking stockpiles of aid, could create a downward spiral, making it harder for Hamas to keep its remaining influence over the strip’s increasingly desperate residents.
How are civilians in Gaza affected?
The renewed offensive has thrust Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians into another, perhaps even worse waking nightmare. Despite violations, the January ceasefire had offered desperately needed rest from Israeli attacks, with the aid inflow alleviating hunger and residents returning to their wrecked homes after months of repeated displacement. Since Israel imposed its total siege on 1 March, however, food, water and medicine have rapidly grown scarce; prices have soared, for some items by multiples of ten or more. Scores of bakeries and kitchens opened by aid agencies have been forced to close, and half the population is now reliant on a single daily meal provided by aid agencies – whose supplies are running out. Another half now make do with just 6l of water a day, less than a single flush of a high-efficiency toilet, for drinking, washing and cooking. Tens of thousands of patients suffering kidney failure, diabetes, hypertension and other chronic conditions are left untreated. Malnutrition is rising quickly.
Palestinians in Gaza describe this round of war as particularly terrifying. In the past month, Israel has targeted UN and Red Cross/Red Crescent staff, as well as schools packed with refugees and the few functioning hospitals. The UN reportsthat in these few weeks, Israeli strikes have hit refugee tents in supposedly “safe” areas at least 23 times; in at least 36 documented strikes, all the casualties were women and children.
Is an endgame close?
Maybe. Certainly, Israel’s military advantages are increasingly formidable. Attrition has eroded Hamas’s capacity to fight. Israeli officials claim that the Islamist group has lost 18-20,000 fighters – more than half of its force at the start of the war – and 80 per cent of its heavier weapons such as rockets. Such figures are impossible to verify, as Israel’s characterisation of a “Hamas operative” is very broad. Moreover, the fighters have been replaced because Hamas has managed to recruit thousands more. Israel estimates that the group now has 40,000 combatants, around the same number as at the war’s outset. But it remains diminished, as the new fighters are inferior in training and equipment.
Against this backdrop, Israel’s leaders seem convinced that Hamas has been damaged enough for the army to swoop in for the kill. Despite vocal dissent in Israel over the hostages, the government still has the capacity and will to fight on, bolstered by U.S. backing and diplomatic cover. Moreover, even if it falls short of its goals of destroying Hamas and recovering the hostages, Israel holds out hope of achieving its larger plans for depopulating Gaza. Israeli officials, including the prime minister, are actively promoting “voluntary emigration”, with reports that the government has tried to persuade other countries (thus far, with no success) to receive refugees from the strip. In the meantime, the army is carving out more “buffer zones” and building installations throughout Gaza. It plans to create a “humanitarian islands” model in which it will directly oversee aid distribution via vetted local agents.
It is no mystery to the Israeli public that the goals of freeing hostages and destroying Hamas are in conflict.
To be sure, a number of factors could act as brakes on Israel’s ambitions. It is no mystery to the Israeli public that the goals of freeing hostages and destroying Hamas are in conflict, and while Netanyahu seems intent on ploughing through domestic resistance in pursuit of the latter, the hostages’ advocates could yet ratchet up political pressure in a way that causes him to rethink. Dissent from within the armed forcescould also become an increasingly significant issue – particularly if it becomes clear that soldiers are really meant to reoccupy Gaza completely. Indeed, it is not clear that Israel’s army, reliant on reservists to fill its ranks, can sustain the kind of control of 2.2 million civilians in Gaza that its current military tactics suggest. By one Israeli estimate, occupying Gaza would require long-term deployment of four divisions and cost Israeli taxpayers around $7 billion a year, assuming that other countries bear all the humanitarian and reconstruction expenses. Already, news reports suggest, only 50 per cent of reservists are answering the army’s summons (compared to 120 per cent at the war’s outset). Hundreds have voiced opposition to continuing a war that they see as serving political motives, not national security.
Hamas can also affect calculations. In Gaza, the group has been holding back its fighters for now. But if Israel makes a final push into populated areas, it may throw everything it has into increasing Israeli casualties.
Who has leverage to stop the war, and are they using it?
The U.S. holds the most cards. It was Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff who forced the ceasefire on Netanyahu, but also the Trump administration whose backing encouraged Israel to scupper the truce. But precisely because Trump has showered this Israeli government with weapons, strategic protection (by means such as U.S. air raids clobbering Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles at Israel) and diplomatic cover, the president also has the power to influence its policy. It is apparent that there is daylight between the U.S. and Israel on certain issues, for instance Iran and, apparently, Gaza to an extent. While Trump is aligned with Israel’s objectives, he has made clear that he wants to see results. He may even want to have something in place by the time he travels to Saudi Arabia in May. During Netanyahu’s visit to the White House in early April, Trump said: “I’d like to see the war stop, and I think the war will stop at some point. That won’t be in the too distant future”. So far, however, there is no sign that he is going to turn this vaguely expressed preference into a forceful policy.
Whatever leverage Arab states have, they do not appear willing to use it in ways that might jeopardise their ties with Israel and the U.S. But they do still wield diplomatic clout. The Gaza reconstruction plan drafted by Egypt, and unanimously approved by Arab leaders on 4 March, is an incomplete sketch. But it does provide a sensible countering vision to open-ended Israeli reoccupation of Gaza, and it could be a useful framework for wider peace in the region. Yet aside from endorsing the plan and opposing the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, the Arab states have shown precious little unity when it comes to practical steps to end the war.
As for Europe, despite being the biggest trading partner of Israel and the biggest provider of aid to the Palestinians, it has signally failed to influence the course of the Gaza conflict. Efforts to hold Israel accountable for clear infringements of international law have been stymied by infighting between Israel’s friends and critics among European states. The prolonged Ukraine crisis, and now the challenge of managing relations with an erratic and confrontational Trump administration, have crowded out Gaza along with a host of other vital issues.
What is the best way forward?
Despite various flaws that Crisis Group has previously noted, the parameters of the January ceasefire agreement, itself the product of months of negotiation, remain the most feasible framework for a truce. Restoring a similarly broad-based agreement – not just a hostage swap and a brief pause in fighting but a roadmap toward ending the war – is therefore paramount. The U.S. should throw its weight behind this project and encourage Middle Eastern and European governments to do the same.
Yet a ceasefire alone is not enough. In terms of moving beyond a truce, the Arab plan offers some promise. It has several shortcomings and ambiguities, particularly regarding Hamas’s status as a military actor with a residual arsenal. Some movement by Hamas on disarmament might help; one suggestion is that it match its leaders’ private hints at openness to decommissioning offensive weapons, such as rockets, with a public offer to do so. Those issues will need to be addressed. But the plan nevertheless offers a mechanism for articulating a political horizon and for mobilising resources to rebuild Gaza and restore mutual security. The U.S. has sniped at the plan but shied away from rejecting it outright. The Trump administrationwould do well to give it another look. Ideally, the U.S. would work with Egyptian and Qatari mediators to deal with the hard issues the plan skirts, using the leverage they collectively have with both sides to develop a plausible alternative to the Israeli endgame scenario – one that gives the Palestinians the horizon they deserve and the region the stability it needs.