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For almost two years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone out of his way to avoid agreeing to a Gaza ceasefire.
In November 2023, a deal saw the release of 110 captives taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
But a week later, Netanyahu refused to extend the ceasefire, leaving the rest of the captives behind.
Since then, whenever a ceasefire has seemed to be within reach, Netanyahu has shifted the goalposts. In May 2024, Hamas accepted a proposed deal, but Israel denied agreeing and invaded Rafah instead. By September, Netanyahu had introduced a new condition: permanent Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor – the area between Egypt and Gaza – which both Cairo and Hamas rejected.
Later, after pushing the position that only a partial deal would be agreed to, Netanyahu changed the parameters and insisted that Israel would only agree to a deal that would see all the captives released – and not in return for an end to the war.
Even when allies advanced proposals, Netanyahu sidestepped them. Also in May 2024, then-US President Joe Biden announced that Israel had offered a ceasefire plan, but Netanyahu stayed silent, and no deal followed.
When a deal was agreed and implemented, Netanyahu ensured it broke down. In January 2025, under pressure from incoming US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu accepted a phased ceasefire deal that would continue until a final settlement to end the war was agreed. Yet by March, Israel unilaterally violated it, resuming bombardment and blockade.
And last week, as Hamas negotiators met in Doha to discuss a new US-backed proposal, Israel bombed them, effectively sabotaging the talks.
Plates spinning
The Israeli government would insist that deals haven’t been reached because the Palestinian group Hamas has not been an honest broker, and because it will attempt to rearm must be eradicated.
But after the attack in Doha, Einav Zangauker, the mother of Israeli captive Matan Zangauker, who has been held in Gaza for almost two years, was clear about who was to blame.
“Why does the prime minister [Netanyahu] insist on blowing up any deal that comes close to happening? Why?” she asked rhetorically.
Why indeed.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. One of the reasons for his success is his ability to keep multiple plates spinning – to juggle different priorities, even if they are sometimes contradictory, without resolving them fully.
Being able to juggle these priorities allows Netanyahu to push away decisions that could lead to him losing support from the public or from his political allies. And in a country like Israel, where parliamentary politics is based on who can keep the biggest coalition, that is vital.
Netanyahu is also facing domestic legal trouble – he is on trial for corruption – and staying in power is most likely his best bet at avoiding prison.
Coming back to the question of a Gaza ceasefire, Netanyahu has a fundamental problem: he is beholden to the messianic far right to prop up his government, and they have made it clear: an end to the war at this stage will see them walk away from the prime minister’s coalition, almost certainly causing it to collapse.
The far right – Israelis like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – want to push Palestinians out of Gaza and bring in Israeli settlers to live in the land left empty by those ethnically cleansed.
Netanyahu might not be completely averse to that goal, but he also understands the difficulty in achieving it. Even Israel would be stretched militarily if it were to try to conquer and keep the whole of the Gaza Strip, and months or years of high-intensity conflict would cause more dissent from a military that is heavily reliant on calling up thousands of Israelis as reservists.
And, of course, such a brazen attempt at ethnic cleansing would further isolate Israel internationally.
What comes next?
Instead, Netanyahu keeps the plates spinning. He keeps Ben-Gvir and Smotrich on his side by never agreeing to end the war, strings along mediators by sending negotiation teams to discuss proposals he won’t accept, and never fully commits to the military fight that would be necessary to try to completely take Gaza.
He insists that Hamas cannot be allowed to rule Gaza and rejects the Palestinian Authority ruling the enclave, while also saying Israel doesn’t want to control it.
How long can Netanyahu keep this up? There were times when he struggled, and it almost came crashing down.
Trump did not want to take “no” for an answer in January, forcing Netanyahu to agree to a deal that had been on the table for more than six months. That led to Ben-Gvir resigning his government position and Smotrich threatening to resign his if the deal progressed and led to an end to the war.
As previously mentioned, it did not. And Ben-Gvir quickly came back. Trump says contradictory things about ending the war, only to never firmly tell Netanyahu to stop.
The next Israeli elections have to take place before October 2026. Perhaps Netanyahu will be able to present enough wins to the electorate – he can already argue that he has weakened Hamas, defeated Hezbollah, and bombed Iran’s nuclear sites – to get enough support that he is no longer reliant on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and can end the war on his terms, whatever they may be.
Or perhaps the war continues, potentially with pauses, only for Israel to return to bombing Gaza when it feels the need to.
Alternatively, continuing the war with no end in sight could increase both foreign and domestic opposition, ramping up the pressure on Netanyahu until he is either forced to make a decision on ending the war or faces defeat at the ballot box in 2026.
The Palestinians of Gaza – of whom Israel has killed more than 64,800 – are the ultimate casualties of the dragging out of this war, as well as the Israeli captives still held in Gaza.
For now, they will keep suffering – as Netanyahu keeps his plates spinning.
