Israel verkar sitta fast i fällan

 And what if Hamas doesn’t blink? (TOI)

Six hundred days after Hamas invaded southern Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting 251, the Netanyahu government has embarked upon what amounts to a deadly game of chicken with Gaza’s would-be Israel-destroying terrorist leadership and gunmen — a high-risk strategy in the course of which Israel is losing most of its remaining allies and increasingly becoming a pariah state.

...The goal of the intensified military campaign, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, is to advance the achievement of what are now the four declared goals that will constitute his promised “total victory” and enable the end of the war: destroy Hamas, secure the release of all the hostages, ensure that Gaza can never again constitute a threat to Israel and, as specified by the prime minister last week, implement US President Donald Trump’s “correct” and “revolutionary” plan for the relocation of Gazans outside the Strip.

…As things stand, Israel will have displaced Gaza’s entire population and taken over the areas where it used to live, amid a rising tide of domestic and international criticism, hoping that Hamas will feel sufficiently pressured as to free some or all of the hostages without a declared pledge by Netanyahu to end the war. The IDF fervently wishes that this will prove the case — in no small part because of the challenge of maintaining an open-ended hold on three-quarters of the Gaza Strip, when reservists are under unprecedented strain and there are multiple challenges on other fronts.

…Hamas knows all this. Gaza’s ultra-cynical terrorist masters know that Trump is impatient. That Israel is increasingly isolated — diplomatically, economically, physically (especially since the Houthis hit Ben Gurion Airport), and in global public opinion. That even Germany, that most supportive of Israel’s allies given its special, terrible history, is now openly branding Israel’s current military operations unjustifiable.

...And, of course, Hamas knows that Israel is riven over the moral implications of this phase of the conflict — the Jewish state forcing an entire populace from their homes, first pushing Gazans into deep hunger and now reluctantly struggling to supply aid.

Far from blinking, the fear is that Hamas, which cares nothing for Gazans and for the ruin it has brought down upon the Strip, is laughing.

A Times of Israel illustration showing areas of the Gaza Strip under IDF evacuation orders as of May 28, 2025, and the approximate locations of planned civilian areas in Gaza City, central Gaza, and the Mawasi area in the Strip’s south. (Times of Israel)