‘Total failure': Israel's return to war has heaped ruin on Gaza and done little for Israelis

Sydney Morning Herald

29-07-2025

Israel's blockade of food from March until May led to a rise in hunger across the territory. Since ending some restrictions in late May, Israel has largely reconstituted the way that food is distributed. In doing so, Israel made it more dangerous for Palestinians to get that food. Hundreds have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers along the routes to new distribution sites.
The outcome has resulted in a rare level of censure from Israel's allies. Key partners such as Britain and Germany called for the war to end. France said it would recognise a Palestinian state. The secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, called the situation 'a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.'
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Before Israel started the blockade and broke the truce, Palestinians in Gaza were already suffering some of the worst conditions in a century of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. A vast majority of the population was displaced, and most of the buildings in the territory were damaged, according to the United Nations.
Then the resumption of war felt as if someone had 'shut off the last source of life,' said Karam Rabah, a civil servant in central Gaza. 'We thought we'd survived the worst, then it got even worse.'
The truce from January to March had brought some respite, said Rabah, who is paid by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, a rival of Hamas.
'Children went back to some kind of learning; families returned to their homes,' he said. Then the fighting restarted, and 'homes that had survived were suddenly gone, and even food became scarce,' he added. 'I never thought that I would fight for a kilogram of flour for my kids.'
As Palestinians suffer on one side of the border, Israelis on the other side are questioning what has been achieved through the return to war.
As in earlier phases of the conflict, the war's protraction has allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep his ruling coalition intact, extending his tenure. A New York Times investigation has found that Netanyahu has dragged out the war partly for political reasons, in order to avoid upsetting key far-right partners who threatened their resignation if the war ended.
Netanyahu denies the accusation, saying he has continued the war in the Israeli national interest.
But his critics say the war's extension is at odds with the interests of Israeli hostages. It brings added risk to Israeli soldiers, who are still regularly killed in Gaza in service of a strategy that, to many, feels fruitless. It is a strain on reservist soldiers, who are repeatedly called up from their day jobs. And it has heightened the risk to Israelis travelling overseas, who increasingly report hostility from the people they meet, in addition to the criticism levelled at Israel from foreign governments and officials.
'There's a diplomatic tsunami against Israel like nothing anyone has ever seen,' said Shira Efron, a Tel Aviv-based analyst for Israel Policy Forum, a research group in New York. During a recent work trip to Washington, Efron said, she detected an unusual level of frustration in meetings with officials and analysts usually supportive of Israel.
'It was very clear from American politicians on both sides of the aisle – even Republican politicians and affiliated national security experts – that there is complete disapproval of the images coming from Gaza,' she said. 'Even those who think Hamas was at fault for the situation thought that Israel needs to change its position. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, you don't want to see children starve.'
Even Israelis who broadly support the government's return to war say that the approach has not achieved its goal. Their solution, however, is different: In their view, Israel should have attacked far harder than it did in the past months and must do so now.
For months, the Israeli military has largely stayed away from the most densely populated areas of Gaza, where the remaining Israeli hostages are believed to be held. Right-wing Israelis say that Israel should invade and occupy those areas, even if it endangers the hostages.
'We need to stop everything, occupy the strip from end to end,' Moshe Saada, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's party, said in a television interview on Monday.
Others say that Israel was right to break the truce in March, but wrong to do so without a clearly communicated plan for how Gaza would be governed in the future.
'Israel needs to fight until Hamas is defeated,' said Jonathan Conricus, a former Israeli military spokesperson. It is failing to do so, Conricus said, because of 'an incoherent Israeli strategy, tremendous international and regional pressure against Israel, and Hamas's willingness to leverage the suffering of the civilian population for its own cynical benefit'.
Israel needs to 'strategically regroup, formulate a plan to defeat Hamas and provide a regionally and internationally acceptable solution for the future of the Gaza Strip,' said Conricus, an analyst for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a research group in Washington.