Israel has renewed its attacks on Gaza. Experts say it's because Netanyahu has goals of his own
Margaret Evans | CBC News | Posted: March 22, 2025 8:00 AM | Last Updated: March 22
Israeli PM’s political survival, desire to fully annex the West Bank, could be at play
If the death toll from this week's resumption of Israeli airstrikes has left any doubt that Israel has returned to war in Gaza — including more than 130 Palestinian children killed in a single day, according to UNICEF — then new evacuation orders for Gazans and the return of Israeli ground troops to the strip should be proof enough.
Whether anyone should be surprised is another matter.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently said he won't end the war until there is a definitive end to Hamas, even though regional analysts say that's nigh impossible.
And Israeli pundits have long insisted that Netanyahu sees the war's prolongation as his best chance at political survival given an ongoing corruption trial and his own coalition government's dependence on hardline Jewish nationalists who want the war to continue.
"The real reason for resuming war is to satiate the annexationist war-lust of the far right, and win the prime minister more time in power," wrote Esther Solomon, editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, on Thursday.
It certainly prompted the quick return to the cabinet of Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultra-nationalist settler leader who resigned his post when Netanyahu agreed to the January ceasefire deal that foresaw the staggered release of Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinians from Israeli jails.
"This is the correct, moral and most justified move, in order to destroy the terror organization Hamas and return our hostages," Ben-Gvir said earlier this week after Netanyahu's cabinet re-appointed him as Israel's National Security Minister.
But many Israelis, including supporters and family members of the hostages, don't agree, and have been demonstrating against Netanyahu's decision to resume the war, saying it puts the hostages' lives at risk. It's pressure the Israeli prime minister has resisted over the course of the past year.
"What is going to be happening is that the hostages are going to get killed and the government of Israel is sacrificing the hostages in favour of Netanyahu's own political survival," said Gershon Baskin, a well-known Israeli political activist who backs a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
"If we want to get the hostages home — which should be the primary objective of any Israeli government, which it is not — it requires us to end the war and to withdraw from Gaza."
Phases of the ceasefire
The war was sparked after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel border communities, which killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 others captive, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with a military campaign in which more than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials. Thousands more are feared still buried and uncounted under the rubble.
The now-defunct ceasefire — which came into effect on Jan. 19 and lasted for 42 days — saw the release of 25 hostages held by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the bodies of eight others in exchange for some 1,800 Palestinians in Israeli jails.
The pause also offered traumatized Gazans the prospect of sleeping without fear, a chance to find and bury their dead, and the likelihood of more humanitarian aid reaching the stricken territory.
A second phase was framed around the release of all the remaining living hostages (it is believed there are 24) and the negotiation of a permanent ceasefire. A third would have seen the bodies of all hostages returned and talks convened on the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israel's demand for an extension of the first phase and its refusal to start the second broke the terms of the deal but was given strong backing from U.S. President Donald Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
In a television address on Tuesday, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the breakdown and said further negotiations would take place "under fire" until all of Israel's war aims were met, including the return of hostages and the defeat of Hamas.
WATCH | Israel retains the 'right to return to combat', Netanyahu says:
Hussein Ibish, senior resident of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, believes Netanyahu knows very well that it will be impossible to eradicate Hamas.
"Hamas will fight and die and that's what they do. They're going to recruit more fighters. They're going to lose more fighters," he said in an interview with CBC News.
But he agrees with those who say Netanyahu wants to prolong the war — and takes it a step further by suggesting it's not in Netanyahu's interest to see Hamas completely eradicated.
'Drag on indefinitely'
"I think [Netanyahu and his government] do want to leave Hamas in quasi-power. They want to, you know, have a sort of war drag on indefinitely."
If Hamas were to disappear from the scene, it would potentially offer a stronger hand to Hamas's Fatah rivals in charge of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, he says.
"They consider Fatah to be more dangerous than Hamas because the [goal of Netanyahu's government] is the annexation of the West Bank," he said.
Far-right Israeli ministers like Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich have made no secret of their belief that the West Bank — which they refer to as Judea and Samaria — is theirs by biblical right.
And so the weaker the PA, the better for Israel, says Ibish.
It's not the first time Netanyahu has been accused of using Hamas to undermine the PA and block the prospect of Palestinian statehood. It's been widely reported that Netanyahu has been for years allowing cash flows into Gaza to help strengthen Hamas at the PA's expense, despite Israel's decades-old blockade of Gaza.
Trump's impact
Gershon Baskin — who gives credit to Trump and Witkoff for getting Israel and Hamas to phase one of the ceasefire deal — says Washington's support for Israel's efforts to change the terms will make it much harder to achieve another break in the fighting.
"What [Trump] has done is given the green light to Netanyahu and his government to renew the war in Gaza, which is really horrific," he said.
Israel re-imposed a ban on humanitarian aid from entering Gaza two weeks before it resumed its military operations in Gaza.
Ibish says Trump's engagement in the region — including his widely denounced musings over displacing millions of Palestinians to make way for a Gazan Riviera — has never really been about ending the war in Gaza.
"I think he's got bigger fish to fry in the Middle East, especially a potential nuclear deal with Iran. And if he does strike one, he's going to infuriate the Israeli right and their conservative evangelical American friends and right-wing Jewish groups in the U.S."
U.S. support for any potential Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank might go some way to softening that blow, he suggests.
Israeli settlements established on territory occupied in the 1967 war are considered illegal under international law and seen by many as one of the biggest obstacles to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
During Trump's first presidency, his administration declared the settlements were "no longer inconsistent with international law." One of the first acts of his second was to roll back sanctions against violent Israeli settlers imposed by his predecessor Joe Biden.
Baskin says the Iranian nuclear issue is a diversion away from what he calls the central question of Israel's existential existence.
"The Palestinian issue needs to be our focus, but Netanyahu has managed to divert the attention of the Israeli public from the issue of the Palestinians and their rights to the Iranian question already for two decades."