Why Israel is forced to sabotage itself
The decision to implement a daily ten-hour pause in military activity in areas such as Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, and Gaza City reflects more than an internal policy shift. It reflects the immense, and at times irrational, external pressure placed on Israel by international actors moved not by objective fact, but by a meticulously engineered campaign of imagery and emotion. What has been presented to the world as a humanitarian necessity is, in truth, the product of a questionable narrative manufactured by Hamas and amplified by a complicit media ecosystem.
That narrative, relentlessly promoted, is one of famine and mass starvation, with Israel cast as the deliberate agent of human suffering. Images of skeletal children and desperate civilians, often of dubious provenance, have flooded western media
Israel has long worked to prevent humanitarian collapse in Gaza, even while engaging in military operations. Hundreds of aid trucks pass into the Strip daily. Calorically and logistically, the supply is sufficient. The breakdown, crucially, is in distribution. Hamas seizes trucks, sells aid at inflated prices and uses hunger as both a coercive internal tool and an international PR weapon. This strategic use of civilian suffering has allowed Hamas to manufacture outrage that in turn translates into diplomatic pressure on Jerusalem. While the starvation narrative is falsely exaggerated, and the depiction of Israeli intent as cruel or indifferent is entirely fabricated, it is also true that some hunger and shortage now exist. These are not the result of Israeli policy but of deliberate Hamas engineering. Any relief Hamas permits will not be due to concern for its population, but because it is extracting a strategic benefit – time to regroup, concessions from Israel, or PR advantage. And it will not hesitate to throttle aid again if doing so serves those ends.
The role of the UN and particularly UNRWA further complicates the picture. Israeli and independent sources have long documented the deep infiltration of these agencies by Hamas operatives. In recent weeks, Israel allowed international journalists into Gaza to witness the massive stockpiles of aid the UN had refused to distribute – aid cleared by Israeli checks and held up only by UN inaction. Only once exposed and embarrassed did UN agencies begin moving trucks. The resulting chaos, captured on video, showed the UN's operational dysfunction, contrasting sharply with the more disciplined efforts of the US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. High-level sources confirm to me that GHF trucks have never been raided, while UN trucks have repeatedly been hijacked, mobbed, and violently taken over. Numerous videos have documented these episodes, underscoring the vulnerability and dysfunction of UN-led distribution.
The political echelon in Israel is under pressure on multiple fronts. President Trump and the US administration have leaned heavily on Jerusalem to show a humanitarian face. Internally, Prime Minister Netanyahu must navigate criticism from both right-wing parties and security professionals. Some argue that the IDF should distribute aid directly, severing Hamas from its stranglehold on civilian life. Others, including sources close to Netanyahu, insist the tactical pause is essential to preserving operational freedom and denying Hamas the international sympathy it craves.
These pauses, however, are not cost-free. Colonel (res.) Yaron Buskila, CEO of HaBithonistim, warned that the humanitarian corridors risk creating de facto ceasefires, granting Hamas time to regroup. The structure of the pause itself, daily ten-hour windows from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in designated areas where IDF operations are scaled back, provides predictable, exploitable gaps for Hamas. While Israel pauses, Hamas does not. It continues to exploit the calm to fortify its infrastructure, rebuild command centres, repair tunnel networks, and reposition fighters. On the propaganda front, Hamas uses the visibility of these humanitarian pauses to bolster its victim narrative, claim the international moral high ground, and deepen the sense of equivalence between itself and a sovereign state. In addition, Hamas will use the lull to study the movements of aid convoys and Israeli logistical patterns, gathering intelligence that allows it to more effectively sabotage humanitarian operations. This learning curve is not theoretical: recent weeks have seen an increase in the lethality and precision of Hamas attacks against Israeli troops, a direct outcome of its ability to study and adapt as operational patterns emerge. The cessation of hostilities for aid delivery becomes a two-pronged weapon: operationally beneficial for Hamas and psychologically corrosive for Israel.
The current negotiation framework for a hostage deal further illustrates this asymmetry. Hamas offers a slow drip of some living hostages and bodies of those it has killed, in exchange for a lengthy 60-day ceasefire. This would be a strategic boon that would allow it to rehabilitate while Israel stalls. The demand to shift aid back to UN control and away from the GHF is part of the same plan: to reassert control, regain legitimacy, and cripple Israel's ability to bypass Hamas's influence in Gaza.
This is the bitter paradox: to maintain moral and strategic legitimacy in the eyes of its allies, Israel must act against its own operational interests. It must enable aid it knows will be exploited, allow actors it knows to be compromised, and accept international narratives it knows to be false. These tactical pauses are not humanitarian victories. They are defensive moves in a war where images matter more than facts, and where the battlefield extends as much into living rooms and newsrooms as it does into Rafah and Khan Younis.
In this arena, Hamas has one comparative advantage: it is not constrained by truth. And too often, neither are its media allies. That Israel continues to function under such constraints is not a sign of weakness but of ethical discipline. Yet discipline is not immunity. And in a war of attrition fought with lies, even the most moral actor can be coerced into a corner.
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