By Yaakov Kornreich
The U.S. and Israel are blaming new Hamas demands for concessions for the collapse last week of talks on an American-proposed 60-day Gaza ceasefire deal. As a result, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu are now consulting with one another to reassess their joint approach to ending the war in Gaza that was started by the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
According to a Jerusalem Post report, while Israel is considering issuing an ultimatum to Hamas to accept the ceasefire deal that is now on the table including another partial hostage release, “or face the consequences,” some Trump White House officials are said to be pushing for a comprehensive deal that would free all of the remaining hostages in return for a permanent end to the fighting in Gaza, even though Trump has acknowledged that any such proposal that leaves Hamas in place will be very hard for Israel to accept.
When the U.S. negotiating team withdrew from the indirect talks with Hamas in Doha, Qatar, on July 24, Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, said it was because the latest response from Hamas showed “a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
“While the mediators have made a great effort,” Witkoff continued, “Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith. We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.
“It is a shame that Hamas has acted in this selfish way. We are resolute in seeking an end to this conflict and a permanent peace in Gaza,” Witkoff concluded in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Similarly, President Trump said last week, soon after the talks collapsed, he believes that “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die.”
Trump claimed that he had anticipated such a deadlock as the Gaza negotiations approached the end stage. “I said this was going to happen,” he told reporters. “We got a lot of hostages out. But when you get down to the last 10 or 20, I don’t think Hamas is going to make a deal because that means they have no protection. And basically, that’s what happened.
“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they [Hamas] know what happens after you get the final hostages, and, because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal,” the president said.
TRUMP GIVES ISRAEL ANOTHER GREEN LIGHT TO FINISH OFF HAMAS
“I think what’s going to happen [now] is they [Hamas] are going to be hunted down,” Trump continued, effectively giving Israel another green light to end the war in Gaza on its terms.
“It got to a point where [Israel is] going to have to finish the job,” the president said. “They’re going to have to fight, and they’re going to have to clean it up. . . [and] get rid of it.”
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a longtime supporter of Israel and President Trump, said in an interview with NBC News that he is also skeptical that a satisfactory Gaza peace deal with Hamas can be reached at this point.
“I think President Trump has come to believe, and I certainly have come to believe, there’s no way you’re going to negotiate an end to this war with Hamas,” Graham said.
He predicted that, “They [Israel is] going to do in Gaza what we did in Tokyo and Berlin [at the end of World War II], take the place by force and start over again, presenting a better future for the Palestinians, hopefully [by] having the Arab [states] take over the West Bank and Gaza.”
In comments to reporters several days later on Sunday in Scotland, where he was finalizing a tariff agreement with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union, Trump said, “The time has come to bring [all] the hostages home. There are 20 living hostages [left]. . . [and] there are many [Israeli] parents who want their loved ones’ remains returned. Israel will have to make a decision. I know what I would do, but I’m not sure I should say it.”
The next day, during a televised meeting in Scotland between Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the British leader said that he agrees that Hamas must not be permitted to play any part in a future Palestinian state.
During that meeting, Trump revealed that both Israel and the U.S. know where Hamas has been hiding some of the hostages in Gaza, but explained that they “don’t want to go riding roughshod over that area because that would mean those hostages would be killed.
“Now there are some people that would say, well, that’s the price you pay [when fighting a war],” Trump continued. “But we don’t want to say that. And I don’t think the people of Israel want to say that [giving up on the return of the hostages] either.”
TRUMP FEARS THAT THE REMAINING HOSTAGES ARE IN “DEEP TROUBLE”
Trump also said that he and Netanyahu have been discussing “various plans” to free the hostages, including the option of further expanding Israel’s military operation in Gaza if talks with Hamas do not advance. The president also noted that, “Hamas has become very difficult to deal with in the last couple of days because they don’t want to give up these last 20 [hostages], because they think as long as they have them, they have protection.
“But I don’t think it’s going to work that way,” Trump added, and then commented darkly that the hostages are now in “deep trouble.”
Trump said that his top priority right now is getting enough food to the people of Gaza to end the current humanitarian crisis, and especially to “get the [starving] children fed,” even though Hamas has been stealing much of it.
The president also said that he wants Israel to set up new “food centers” in Gaza where “the people can walk in, and no boundaries.”
Despite the problems with current food distribution system in Gaza, Trump and his chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, continue to support Netanyahu’s insistence upon another temporary ceasefire agreement, rejecting a Hamas offer to release all of the remaining hostages, alive and dead, in one batch, in exchange for a U.S.-guaranteed Israeli agreement to a permanent end to the war that would leave Hamas still in control of Gaza.
But after months of painstaking negotiations trying to secure a 60-day ceasefire and the release of roughly half of the hostages, the talks broke down over a long list of new Hamas conditions aimed at preventing Israel from resuming the fighting after the 60-day truce expires without a permanent new peace deal in hand.
Nevertheless, Israel and the U.S. still appear to agree on how to deal with Hamas. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement declaring that he and Witkoff believe that “Hamas is the obstacle to a hostage release deal. Together with our U.S. allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home, end Hamas’ terror rule, and secure lasting peace for Israel and our region.”
The next morning, Netanyahu convened a meeting with members of the small security cabinet, including the defense minister and senior military officials, in order to discuss, “What’s comes next?” in the war in Gaza. But an Israeli official admitted to the Times of Israel that, so far, neither the U.S. nor Israel has come up with a strategy for the final defeat of Hamas that would not put the lives of the surviving hostages at grave risk. Highlighting the problem, a Hamas spokesman announced that the fighters guarding the hostages had been ordered once again to kill them immediately should the IDF try to launch a rescue attempt.
THE CONTINUITY OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
Trump is still giving Netanyahu and the IDF a free hand to end Hamas control over Gaza, while at the same time trying to find a way to arrange the return of the remaining 50 hostages, alive and dead. But Hamas leaders appear to be much more afraid of angering the volatile American president than of anything further that Israel could do to them.
For example, even before he was inaugurated for his second term as president in January, Trump was instrumental in getting Hamas to agree to a ceasefire deal, which resulted in the release of 25 more Israelis and 5 Thai workers who were kidnapped by Hamas in its October 7, 2023, attack.
This March, Trump continued to support Israel when it refused to engage in negotiations for a permanent end to the war in Gaza that would have left Hamas intact and in place. Instead, Israel launched a new offensive designed to break the back of Hamas’ presence by occupying 75% of Gaza’s territory.
At the same time, Israel cut off the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza for the next three months, claiming that enough aid had already been delivered during the January ceasefire to sustain the civilian population, but that most of it had been seized by Hamas.
In late May, when Israel allowed the deliveries of aid to resume after signs of serious food shortages in Gaza began to appear, it partnered with the United States to set up a new Gaza aid distribution organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in an effort to keep the new aid deliveries out of the hands of Hamas.
Specifically, Israel refused to allow UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency created to provide social services for the Palestinians, to resume the management of the aid distribution in Gaza because of evidence that some of UNRWA’s members directly participated in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Currently, Israel is denying U.N. accusations that since aid deliveries to Gaza resumed in May, it has blocked the entry of a sufficient quantity of food and aid shipments to prevent starvation. In support of that claim, Israel points to hundreds of truckloads of aid that are waiting inside the Gaza border for the U.N.’s partner agencies to pick up and distribute to Gaza civilians.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce also defended the GHF last week, noting that it was designed to “remove the power of Hamas to use [humanitarian] aid and food as a weapon itself to control people” in Gaza.
In an interview with CNN, Bruce predicted that despite the current stalemate in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, the efforts by Trump and Witkoff to finish the deal would eventually succeed.
“We’ve tried,” the State Department spokeswoman said. “The world has watched this. What the options are — clearly, there are many tools in President Trump’s tool chest, many options that Special Envoy Witkoff has. They are very smart, adept individuals who know the players. And I expect that we’ll have some success.”
FIXING THE PROBLEM WITH DISTRIBUTING AID IN GAZA
GHF has established four food and aid distribution points inside Gaza. Three of them are clustered in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, and not far from the 25% of Gaza along the Mediterranean coast, which has been declared a safe “humanitarian” zone by Israel for the civilian population. According to a GHF spokesman, the organization has been distributing boxes, each containing enough food to feed a family of six for four days. The boxes typically include flour, pasta, sugar, rice, potatoes, onions, cooking oil, beans, tuna, tea, and cookies.
But it soon became clear that Hamas was interfering with GHF’s efforts to distribute the aid to Gaza’s civilian population by instigating near-daily shooting incidents.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Hamas-organized riots while trying to collect humanitarian aid from one of the four GHF distribution points across Gaza. In addition, hundreds of members of roving gangs have been killed trying to intercept and loot truck convoys carrying the aid through Gaza. Furthermore, the mainstream media reports on the situation have been based upon Hamas propaganda, which blames these deaths on the Israeli troops who have been trying to provide security for the GHF aid convoys and at the aid distribution points.
According to the IDF, the Israeli soldiers at the distribution points and accompanying the convoys mostly fired warning shots, and only when their own safety was threatened by the approaching Hamas-organized mobs and looting gangs.
ISRAEL IS LOSING THE PUBLIC RELATIONS WAR WITH HAMAS
President Trump has said that he was disturbed to see the “terrible” news pictures from Gaza showing starving children, people stealing food and money meant to buy food, as well as daily reports of civilians being killed at aid delivery stations. “It’s a mess. The whole place [Gaza] is a mess,” the president said.
In addition, 28 countries, including European nations, Canada, and Japan, issued a joint statement saying that Israel’s new “aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability, and deprives Gazans of human dignity.” In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that the statement from 28 countries was “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas.”
But in this case, Yonah Jeremy Bob writes in a Jerusalem Post analysis, “the brutal truth is that the IDF admits there is a dangerous food situation in Gaza, even if short of the claimed mass starvation, and an awful public relations situation there. . . because of several [controversial] Israeli policies” which were adopted by the government despite warnings from senior members of Israel’s defense establishment. These include the Israeli decision to cut off all humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza from March until May, launching an IDF offensive to take direct control of 75% of Gaza’s territory, and establishing a new aid distribution system through the GHF, at a time when food supplies in Gaza were already scarce. The government’s goal was to replace the existing distribution system that was being run by international aid groups for the benefit of Hamas, in an effort, according to Bob, “to break Hamas’ political control over the Palestinian civilian population.”
WHY NETANYAHU VETOED A GHF PILOT PROGRAM LAST YEAR
Another part of the current problem is that Israel and the U.S. put the new GHF aid distribution system into operation without any previous effort to test its practicality. Bob notes that back in early 2024, both the previous IDF chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, and the former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, had proposed to test a new Hamas-free aid distribution system with a pilot program in a small area of northern Gaza. However, Halevi and Gallant were overruled at the time by Netanyahu and some of his right-wing cabinet ministers, who were opposed to any effort to work out a new post-war aid distribution system for Gaza before Hamas had been completely crushed. Some of those right-wing ministers hope that Israel will eventually remove the Palestinian population of Gaza entirely, and replace it with Israelis who would return to rebuild the Gush Katif Jewish communities that were abandoned during Ariel Sharon’s 2005 Gaza disengagement.
Halevi and Gallant had also suggested dealing with the problem of food and humanitarian aid distribution by turning the civil management of Gaza over to a combination of Egypt (which had ruled Gaza between 1948 and 1967), the United Arab Emirates, and, at least, a token presence by the Palestinian Authority.
But that idea was never tried. Instead, Netanyahu replaced Israel’s military leadership with General Eyal Zamir as the new IDF chief of staff and Israel Katz as the new defense minister. Their goal was to push Hamas to release the remaining hostages and give up their control over Gaza by having the IDF take over 75% of Gaza’s territory and distribute humanitarian aid. But the failure of the GHF to distribute the renewed flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians safely and effectively has undermined the new Israeli strategy.
ISRAEL WAS FORCED TO BACKTRACK
As a result, Israel has now been forced to ease the restrictions it placed on the resumed deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza that were designed to prevent Hamas from using it to retain control over the civilian population. To ease the specter raised by United Nations officials of starvation threatening thousands of malnourished Palestinian children, Israel is also conducting internationally sponsored parachute air drops by Israeli air force planes of parcels containing flour, sugar, and canned food over the civilian-populated 25% of Gaza.
Israel has also begun to implement localized daily ceasefire periods, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., within that 25%, during which Gaza’s civilians will be able to travel in safety to and from the aid distribution points. Israel also agreed to clear daily secure truck routes within Gaza to transport aid from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Trying to put the best possible face on the situation, Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu said that Israel must continue to allow deliveries of the minimum amount of humanitarian supplies needed in Gaza in order to achieve its main war goals of dismantling Hamas and securing the release of all the hostages.
But another Israeli official admitted to the Jerusalem Post that these measures were a response to a serious public relations failure. He said that because “Israel failed to counter the false starvation narrative [in Gaza, it] was forced to take these measures to relieve international pressure.”
The accusation that Israeli troops have been randomly shooting at Gaza civilians seeking food parcels for their families is contrary to the well-established practice by the IDF, in all of its military operations in Gaza over the years, of going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. These include the routine practice of giving civilians advance warning of an imminent attack on their homes using text messages or a warning “knock” on their roof.
Historically, the IDF has been diligent in conducting investigations of complaints that its soldiers inappropriately opened fire on civilians, publicizing the results of those investigations, and disciplining its soldiers found to have violated the rules of engagement.
Nevertheless, Israel has come under intense pressure from its supporters in the U.S. House and Senate as well as the Trump White House over the media reports of civilians being shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at the Gaza aid distribution points. According to a Jerusalem Post report, they have been telling Israeli officials, “We don’t believe the claims of widespread famine in Gaza, but you must take concrete steps to allow aid in.”
AN ISRAELI SOLDIER’S VIEW OF THE CHAOS IN GAZA
One of the problems that Israel has encountered in trying to refute the charges that its soldiers were directly responsible for the recent shooting deaths of civilians at aid distribution points in Gaza is that access to such sites in Gaza by independent reporters has been very limited. That is why the Jerusalem Post published an extensive Media Line interview with an active-duty Israeli soldier, identified only as “Y,” when he returned to his home in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, after serving several tours of duty totaling more than 300 days in Gaza since the October 7 attack.
Referring to what he witnessed during his deployments in Gaza, Y said, “I’m not saying everything always goes right — we [soldiers] are people, and people make mistakes. But where I was, I didn’t see what the [kinds of situations the] news is claiming. I saw something very different.”
He then described his experiences guarding one of the humanitarian corridors for the delivery of aid to Gaza civilians, as well as one of the three GHF distribution sites in southern Gaza. “This was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” said Y. “It was disgusting. You see people fight each other over food. Trampling, throwing sand, stealing. It’s chaos. We’re not trained for that. We’re infantry. We’re supposed to fight terrorists, not manage riots.”
He also described what he saw every day as thousands of Gaza civilians poured into the compound where his GHF distribution site was located. “It’s the size of a football field, surrounded by sand berms [barriers] and barbed wire. People arrive on foot, in cars, on motorcycles, or on horses. They carry sacks. There are no lines. No supervision. It’s a stampede. They push, they stab, they throw sand at each other. Sometimes they trample the weak. We [the Israeli soldiers] tried to bring some order, but the system collapsed from the start. . .
“The site was supposed to have minimal friction. Instead, it became a magnet for chaos. People beat each other, shoved kids aside, filled bags with sugar and rice, then sprinted out while gangs waited to rob them,” Y continued.
He also described several occasions when he saw people trying to loot the aid by first hiding themselves in the crowd, and then attempting to breach the sand barriers surrounding the distribution site in groups. Y also said that such attempts were carefully timed by the looting gangs to avoid observation by the Israeli drones that were flying overhead. “It wasn’t spontaneous,” Y insisted.
He also said that even if a civilian managed to get a parcel of aid from one of the distribution sites in Gaza, he was likely to be attacked outside the compound by Hamas terrorists or criminal gangs who wait there to rob those who manage to secure food. “They take it from civilians and resell it. We’ve arrested people doing it. Some are Hamas. Some are just opportunists. But it’s organized. It’s how Hamas keeps people dependent.”
STARVATION AND GENOCIDE IN GAZA ARE HAMAS MYTHS
Y also said that while he was in Gaza, he saw “no one collapsing from hunger. That’s a blood libel. If there’s malnutrition in Gaza, it’s because Hamas wants it. They have the food, and they block [its distribution]. They want the [news] photos of skinny children. That’s their weapon.”
Nevertheless, the current food shortage in Gaza has been seized upon by pro-Palestinian activists such as Brown University professor Omer Bartov. In a New York Times op-ed published on July 15, Bartov accused Israel of trying to commit genocide against the citizens of Gaza to avenge Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Urban warfare expert John Spencer refutes Bartov’s accusation in a JNS-syndicated op-ed column. Based upon what he saw during his four visits to Gaza since the October 7 attack as an embedded observer with the IDF, as well his interviews with Israeli leaders and dozens of Israeli commanders and soldiers on the front lines, Spencer concludes that, while “what is happening in Gaza is tragic. . . it is not genocide, and it is not illegal.”
According to Spencer, the internationally accepted laws of war “require that military operations distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, that force be proportional to the objective, and that commanders take all feasible precautions to protect civilian life. I have watched the IDF do exactly that. I have seen restraint, humanitarian aid, and deliberate compliance with legal standards, often at tactical cost. . . [as well as Israeli] soldiers taking real risks to avoid harming civilians” in Gaza.”
ISRAEL KEEPING THE DOOR OPEN FOR A CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
Even though the negotiations with Hamas in Doha collapsed last week, Israel is keeping its lines of communication open with the Egyptian and Qatari mediators who were conducting the indirect talks with Hamas leaders. Meanwhile, Witkoff was meeting with senior Qatari officials on the Italian island of Sardinia to discuss the next stage of their peacemaking efforts.
Egypt and Qatar issued an optimistic joint statement asserting that their mediation efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza were continuing. They claimed that the U.S. and Israel had merely recalled their negotiators “to hold consultations before resuming dialogue [with Hamas],” possibly as soon as next week, according to an Egyptian media report, and that such a delay was “normal in the context of these complex negotiations.”
The mediators claimed that before Hamas made its unacceptable demands for new concessions from Israel, encouraging progress was being made on the issues that were holding up agreement on the temporary 60-day ceasefire that Witkoff had originally proposed back in May during the previous two weeks of intense negotiations.
The mediators also said that Hamas had dropped its original demand for a permanent ceasefire and accepted the promise of a U.S. guarantee to extend the 60-day truce for another 60 days when it expires if more time was needed to discuss political and security arrangements in Gaza after the war is over. Hamas also told them that it was open to laying down its arms and storing them under international supervision when a long-term ceasefire is in effect.
Egypt had also asked Israel to respect any deal that the other parties to the talks might reach with some of the Hamas leaders to leave Gaza for a life in safe exile in some foreign country.
One of the sticking points that caused the ceasefire talks to break down was a late Hamas demand for the release of many more Palestinian security prisoners than originally envisioned in exchange for the release of 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 dead hostages.
Another unresolved issue in the talks was the width of the buffer zone that the Israeli military would occupy in the Philadelphi corridor running along the border between southern Gaza and Egypt to prevent the smuggling of replacement arms to Hamas.
HAMAS HAS LESS OF AN INCENTIVE TO AGREE TO A DEAL NOW
But according to the Jerusalem Post analysis, even though the remaining differences between the Israeli and Hamas positions on the American ceasefire proposal appear to be resolvable, the Israeli reaction to the public relations disaster over aid distribution in Gaza has significantly reduced the incentives for Hamas to agree to the ceasefire deal, even on its terms.
No doubt, many of the surviving Hamas fighters have already disappeared into the civilian Palestinian population occupying the 25% of Gaza which Israel has declared to be a safe humanitarian area, in which those fighters will be free to roam about during the daily ceasefire periods. It is also clear that, despite the GHF effort, Hamas is still in effective control of the distribution of much of the aid now entering Gaza.
Hamas is also now clearly winning the international public relations war with Israel for support in the diplomatic community, due to the wide acceptance of accusations that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza’s population and is responsible for the shooting deaths of civilians seeking food for their families at the GHF distribution sites.
ISRAELI SOLDIERS ARE NOW MORE EXPOSED TO HAMAS ATTACKS
In addition, Israel’s soldiers are much more exposed because they are now occupying 75% of Gaza territory. As a result, Hamas’ surviving fighters, who have been hiding in their remaining tunnels or blending into the civilian population, have become more effective in their use of booby-traps in Gaza’s remaining buildings and deadly IED explosives against Israeli armored vehicles. That is reflected in the grim statistics showing that 459 Israelis have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and that IDF soldiers are now being killed and injured at one of the highest daily rates since the war began.
As the commander of an IDF tank battalion, identified as Lieutenant Colonel Alef, explained the nature of the war in Gaza today to Emanuel Fabian, a Times of Israel reporter, “This is what fighting a Hamas battalion looks like. There’s a certain number of operatives tasked with defending an area. Sometimes, they will come out of tunnels to attack if they have the opportunity. However, you mainly find yourself fighting against the [deadly] infrastructure that they have prepared,” in Gaza’s ruins.
According to Times of Israel reporter Fabian, that is why the IDF “is methodically demolishing nearly every single structure in the areas [of Gaza] it is operating in.”
These are the reasons why Hamas now has less reason to give up its remaining hostages. They are being used as human shields to protect Hamas’ surviving leaders against further Israeli attacks, and they are providing Hamas with most of its leverage in the negotiations with Israel. Their reluctance is also reflected in the delaying tactics Hamas has adopted in the most recent round of negotiations, as well as its demands for new concessions from Israel, including a drastic increase in the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for the return of only half of the surviving hostages.
According to an Israel Hayom report, the Hamas negotiators only raised the issue of increasing the number of Palestinians to be released after two weeks of refusing to discuss it during the Doha talks.
WHY ARAB MEDIATORS WERE ANGERED AT HAMAS
In addition, the Hamas demand that Israel release live terrorists to secure the remains of dead Israeli hostages so infuriated one of the Egyptian mediators that he launched a shouting match that interrupted the talks for several minutes.
The same report said that the Egyptians accused the Hamas representatives of a callous disregard for the welfare of the starving civilians in Gaza and being concerned only for their own survival. It also quoted an unnamed Palestinian who accused the Hamas leaders of being “prepared to fight [Israel] to the last drop of Gaza’s children’s blood while they sit in [luxurious] villas in Qatar and Turkey.”
Another unnamed Arab participant in the ceasefire negotiations said, according to Israel Hayom, “Hamas’ leadership is behaving as if it’s still October 8, holding hundreds of hostages and controlling the entire Gaza Strip — not in the current reality where it controls almost nothing, tens of thousands of Palestinians are dead, [Gaza’s] cities are in ruins, and the displaced [civilians] are starving.”
By contrast, the Jerusalem Post reports, in response to growing pressure from Trump to get a 60-day ceasefire deal done, the Israeli negotiating team in Doha, led by Gal Hirsch, and with the full backing of Netanyahu, “showed a real willingness to compromise. . . exhausting every avenue to secure the release of the hostages,” as well as demonstrating “extraordinary flexibility” in the face of steadily escalating, unreasonable Hamas demands.
LOOKING FOR AN END-GAME STRATEGY
That is why Trump, as well as the Egyptian and Qatari mediators, are not blaming Israel for the current breakdown in the negotiations. Instead, they have all recognized the need to get tougher in demanding that Hamas agree to retire under a reasonable peace agreement, in order to halt the long-running humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza for which it is responsible in the first place, and end the war on Israel that it deliberately started with its October 7 attack.
As for Netanyahu, with the end of this summer’s Knesset session Sunday, he now has three months free of worries about the stability of his crumbling right-wing coalition. During that time, he and Trump will try to find a way to finally eliminate Hamas and secure the return the remaining 50 hostages, both alive and dead.
After years of successful delay and evasion, Netanyahu has finally run out of political room for maneuver. He must find a way to finally end the war in Gaza. Only this will satisfy the demands of most Israelis who have grown tired of living under constant threat of missile attack and reports of the death of more young soldiers in Gaza. They yearn for the peace and security that they had come to take for granted before Hamas attacked and upset the comfortable assumptions and way of life they had known. Meanwhile, they are looking forward with a mixture of hope and trepidation to the consequences of the multi-front war in which Israel, with much siyatta diShamaya, soundly defeated its most dangerous regional enemies, and now is almost in sight of final victory.
