Driven by the messianic far right that has him in its grip, and by his personal need to prolong the war to win the next elections, Benjamin Netanyahu crosses his Rubicon and announces his intention to reoccupy Gaza permanently. The die is cast, he lets it be known, making public Donald Trump’s support for the announced reoccupation of the Strip.
Formally, the decision is justified by the impossibility of freeing the hostages through negotiations—talks that both sides see merely as a tactical pause ahead of the final showdown. The seasoned Bibi knows well that wars have their own cycle, a sort of “expiration date,” a momentum beyond which the stalemate erases and even undermines previously gained advantages. And Gaza—with its immense humanitarian disaster and the dramatic reappearance of the hostage issue—risks nullifying Israel’s undeniable achievements in the regional geopolitical arena.
To permanently occupy the Strip also means putting an end to the revival of the “two-state solution,” which had regained traction—if only as a mobilizing idea—after France and the United Kingdom’s recognition of Palestine. In short, Netanyahu’s announcement reveals that the emperor has no clothes.
The issue returns, without hypocrisy, to what has been on the table since October 8th: redrawing borders, turning Hamas’s attack into an opportunity to retake Gaza, moving toward the annexation of large parts of the West Bank, and bringing the Palestinian statehood issue to a close.
In this grim game of snakes and ladders, the piece is deliberately placed back at the starting square: everything began in Gaza, and that’s where it will start again—only now with reversed power dynamics. It’s a choice fraught with uncertainty, as underscored by numerous respected former figures from Israel’s military, diplomatic, and intelligence establishments, who have appealed to Trump to stop Netanyahu. An appeal destined to fall on deaf ears with the current White House occupant, but one that strips the Israeli prime minister of his last remaining excuse.
After two years of war, the signatories argue, Hamas is no longer a strategic threat to Israel. Its military capacity is now marginal, and the collapse of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” has deprived the Islamist movement of a solid military and logistical backbone.
Hence, an implicit verdict of absurdity on the new, looming campaign in the Strip—a judgment shared even by Chief of Staff Zeyal Amir, whose opposition was swiftly dismissed by the government with a curt suggestion to resign, and who was ominously accused of attempting a “coup” by the furious prime minister’s son—an accusation clearly not made in a personal capacity.
The choice of occupation implies an Iraq-style operational model for the IDF: troops garrisoned in bases mapped out by the brutal new urban planning of occupation, from which they would launch raids into refugee camps, beaches, and ruins.
Raids carried out with indifference to “collateral damage”—which would affect not only the civilian population but also the hostages, whose liberation remains a secondary objective for Bibi and his fundamentalist allies, who would never sacrifice the “divine will,” intrinsic to the Theology of the Land, for the sake of saving a human life.
A scenario that could include, even more unwelcome to the IDF, the establishment of a military government—one likely to make political use of resources: be it water, electricity, population sustenance, or the selective concentration of civilians into areas excluded from combat.
This resource management would serve to facilitate the so-called “voluntary” exodus of the population, as demanded by Ben Gvir and Smotrich—a plan that barely conceals an act of ethnic cleansing: aimed at the definitive erasure of the Palestinian issue and a symptom of the deep crisis in Israel’s identity—and its democracy.
This article was originally published by the Italian newspaper Domani, on August 5, 2025.
Cover photo: Israeli right-wing protesters gather on a hill overlooking the besieged Gaza Strip near the border fence on July 30, 2025, during a rally to mark 20 years since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Several Israeli far-right groups held a rally under the slogan “20 years later, we’re coming back to the Gaza Strip”, a day after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should reoccupy Gaza rather than negotiate with Hamas. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP)
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