Last week, the Israeli Air Force restarted intense strikes on the Gaza Strip, ending a two-month cease-fire that some had hoped would evolve into a more stable truce. Israeli troops have slowly begun to recapture ground just inside Gaza’s borders.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the cease-fire collapsed and what might happen next.
Why has fighting restarted?
It’s mainly because Israel and Hamas have incompatible visions of how this war ends. Israel wants Hamas to relinquish power, and Hamas wants to retain control of Gaza.
The sides were able to gloss over that fundamental difference in January, when they agreed to a weekslong truce in which Hamas released more than 30 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. But by March, Hamas wouldn’t release more hostages until Israel upheld its earlier pledge to hold talks over a permanent truce.
Israel refused. To break the deadlock, Israel broke the cease-fire — seemingly with President Trump’s blessing. In early March, Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” if more hostages weren’t freed. After his call went unheeded, the Israeli strikes began.
Officials say the military is focused on killing senior Hamas administrators who were not previously viewed as high-priority targets, signaling to Hamas that Israel will not allow the group to retain control of Gaza. On the first night of strikes, for example, Israel killed Essam Daalis, who was considered Gaza’s de facto prime minister. If Hamas still won’t back down, Israel is planning a major invasion of large areas that it relinquished earlier in the war.
The reaction
Palestinians are uniformly horrified at the new bloodshed, which has brought the overall death toll in the territory to more than 50,000, according to the Gazan health ministry. Many Palestinians had only just returned to their homes after months of displacement and now have been forced to flee once more.
The Israeli public’s response has been mixed. Some on the Israeli right have cheered the war’s resumption. They see it as another chance to occupy Gaza and defeat Hamas. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right lawmaker who quit the government in protest over the earlier cease-fire, quickly rejoined the ruling coalition, praising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reviving the war.
Other Israelis were shocked. Hamas still holds roughly 60 Israelis, some of whom are dead, and the renewed fighting places their lives at greater risk.
Netanyahu’s reprieve
In the short term, hostilities help the prime minister. Ben-Gvir’s return shores up the government’s ranks in Parliament before a vital vote on a new national budget. If the budget doesn’t pass, the government will collapse, forcing a snap election.
The long-term effect is less clear. To his critics, Netanyahu is increasingly acting in his own interest rather than in the national one — returning to war against the wishes of the hostages’ families, for instance. He has also attempted to expand his power by firing Israel’s domestic intelligence chief and its attorney general.
Both are powerful gatekeepers. They oversee investigations into Netanyahu and his aides. The moves to consolidate power will likely prompt widespread protests, strikes and business shutdowns if he proceeds further.
What chance for calm?
For now, a renewed truce is unlikely. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Mideast envoy, has proposed that Hamas release several more hostages in exchange for several weeks of calm. But Hamas says it won’t free anyone unless Israel starts talks about an end to the war. And Israel has drawn up plans to re-invade large parts of Gaza if Hamas refuses to back down.
Analysts reckon that the Trump administration could force Netanyahu back to the negotiating table, just as Witkoff did in January to secure the cease-fire deal. In recent days, Witkoff worried about the hostages, saying in an interview with Tucker Carlson that Netanyahu’s revival of the war “goes up against public opinion, mostly because public opinion there wants those hostages home.”
But ultimately Witkoff appeared to back Netanyahu’s strategy. “Our policy is that Hamas cannot continue to exist here,” he said. “That’s the president’s policy.”
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