‘Clearly an excuse': Does Netanyahu really want Hamas gone?
Israel's war on Gaza rumbles on, even as international condemnation grows.
Hamas has expressed that it is ready for a deal to end the war, even offering to turn over the administration of Gaza to a technocratic government. United Nations Security Council members have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a ceasefire, a resolution blocked from passing only by a United States veto.
But Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is adamant in its refusal of any agreement that does not include what it calls the 'defeat of Hamas', even if that means endangering the Israeli captives still held in Gaza.
'Hamas is already the weakest it's ever been, and there's nothing they can do that is remotely comparable to what Israel possesses,' writer and researcher on Israel-Palestine and founder of The Fire These Times podcast Elia Ayoub told Al Jazeera.
'There's ample evidence by now that the only reason this genocide is ongoing is because Netanyahu wants it to continue. It's clearly just an excuse to keep the war going.'
But why would Netanyahu want the war – which is Israel's longest since 1948, and is causing economic crisis – to continue?
One answer is that the war provides a distraction from Netanyahu's own problems.Israel's longest-serving prime minister has well-documented legal troubles; he is being tried for corruption.
And, aside from that, should a permanent ceasefire be realised, some analysts believe Israeli society will hold Netanyahu accountable for security shortcomings that led to October 7.
'He's afraid once it's done, eyes will rightfully turn to him over corruption and the failures of October 7,' Diana Buttu, a legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said.
And so, Netanyahu has two main tasks. The first is to prolong the war, allowing him to continue using it as an excuse to avoid accountability. The second is to prevent the breakup of his government, while somehow setting himself up for another successful election, which must happen before October 2026.
Netanyahu has been 'reliant upon Hamas throughout the war', Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
'The far right and Netanyahu have consistently used Hamas as an excuse not to negotiate or plan for a day after,' she said.
The Israeli refusal to negotiate a final end to the war stands in stark contrast to Hamas's willingness to hand over all captives held in Gaza.Over the last 20 months, much of Hamas's leadership has been killed. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's political leader, was assassinated in Tehran on July 31, and Yahya Sinwar, his successor, was killed in Gaza on October 16.
Israel is now claiming it killed Sinwar's successor and younger brother, Mohammed, though Hamas has yet to confirm his death.
Militarily, analysts say, Hamas is estimated to have lost significant strength. It is still conducting some attacks, but fewer and further between than the ambushes it was able to carry out earlier in the war.
In a sign that Hamas perhaps understands that it is no longer in a position to rule Gaza, it has also offered to step down from the administration of the Palestinian territory, which it has controlled since 2006, and hand over to a technocratic government.
'The technocrat offer is not new,' Hamzé Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst from Gaza, said.
'It was on the table since before the invasion of Rafah [which occurred on May 6, 2024]. They want Hamas to give up their arms and give up everything, and Hamas has responded by saying: 'We're stepping aside.''
That has been firmly rejected by Israel, which has not endorsed any vision for post-war Gaza.Instead, over the last nearly 20 months, Israel has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000 in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry.
In addition, Gaza is now 'the hungriest place on Earth', according to the UN, all its inhabitants at risk of famine after Israel strangled aid delivery throughout its war, then completely blocked it from March 2 until May 27.
Israel has also turned 70 percent of the enclave into no-go zones.
All the while, Israel's bombing of Gaza continues.
Discounting the pretext of destroying Hamas and returning the captives, some analysts believe there is a deeper goal: pushing Palestinians out of Gaza.
'Neither Hamas nor the hostages are the targets,' Meron Rappaport, an editor at Local Call, a Hebrew-language news site, said.
'The goal is to push the people of Gaza into very few, small and closed areas where food will be delivered scarcely, hoping that the pressure on them will get them to ask to leave the Strip.'
'Israel is no longer fighting Hamas,' he added.Netanyahu said in late May that Israel would control the entirety of Gaza by the end of its latest offensive, while many foreign officials and experts have warned either directly or implicitly that Israel's actions amount to ethnically cleansing Gaza.
A recent report in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, cited 82 percent of Jewish Israelis supporting the expulsion of the people in Gaza.
To do so would have a historic impact, Buttu said, one that Netanyahu might feel he can portray as protecting Israel from a Palestinian state – something he has repeatedly promised to prevent.
'He recognises he will be the fall guy or the hero,' Buttu said. 'If he is the one who ethnically cleanses Gaza, he becomes the hero.'
Until that happens, analysts believe, Palestinians will continue to die at the hands of the Israeli military. Hamas is the pretext and their willingness to negotiate or succumb is of secondary importance.
'Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of ending this war,' Zonszein said. 'It doesn't matter what Hamas offers. They can offer to return all the hostages or give up governance.
'This war is going to continue until Netanyahu is forced to stop it, and that can only come from Trump.'
Additional reporting by Simon Speakman Cordall
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Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Hamas's ‘last man standing' faces fight to keep control of Gaza
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Boston Globe
36 minutes ago
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Can the Ivy League band together to fight Trump's attacks on higher education?
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37 minutes ago
Amid recent string of attacks inspired by Israel-Hamas war, some experts worry counterterrorism not a priority
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A DHS senior official said in a statement to ABC News, "Any suggestion that DHS is stepping away from addressing terrorism is simply false." "Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security will use every tool and resource available to secure our border, protect the homeland, and get criminal illegal aliens out of our country," the DHS official said. "The safety of American citizens comes first." The wave of extremist violence has come against a backdrop of a rising number of assaults, vandalism and harassment nationwide linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist group staged a widespread ambush in Israel, killing 1,200 people, including children, and taking 251 hostages, with about 20 still held in captivity. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, the death toll in Gaza is nearly 54,000 since the war began. Federal and state law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly issued bulletins, warning the country is vulnerable to terrorism, especially at large events, as a result of the Gaza war. The New York City Police Department, responsible for protecting the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, issued a bulletin last month, saying, "Jewish people and institutions continue to be the target of violent assaults, harassment, intimidation, hate crimes, and threats, especially since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war." On Thursday night, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned of an "elevated threat" facing the Jewish community in the wake of the back-to-back incidents in Washington, D.C., and Boulder. However, the DHS and FBI did not indicate there are any known threats in a joint intelligence bulletin sent to law enforcement on May 23. "Violent extremist messaging continues to highlight major sporting and cultural events and venues as potential targets, and threat actors -- including domestic violent extremists (DVEs), homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) inspired by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), and other mass casualty attackers not motivated by an ideology -- previously have targeted public events with little to no warning," according to the bulletin. John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security undersecretary of intelligence, said he is concerned that at this time of heightened security, the White House has proposed cutting the FBI's fiscal-year 2026 budget by $545 million dollars, or about 5% of the bureau's budget. An internal memo from the FBI Chicago office, obtained in March by ABC Chicago station WLS-TV, confirmed that members of the office's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), and terrorism task forces nationwide, will be supporting Homeland Security task forces focused on making immigration arrests. "So at the very time that we are seeing more and more acts of violence and destructive demonstration activity by people who are being, in some cases, not only inspired but facilitated by foreign threat actors, the concern is that the resources being devoted to addressing that threat are being decreased," said Cohen, an ABC News contributor. Neumann said it's not just the FBI's counterterrorism departments getting slashed. She said an office she helped establish within the Department of Homeland Security to help communities across the nation prevent hate-fueled attacks is being drastically cut back. ProPublica reported this week that the office, the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), is currently being spearheaded by a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no previous counterterrorism experience. "What this office does is it creates capability locally, within a state, to be able to educate bystanders on the signs and indicators of somebody that might be radicalizing ... and then it helps states create the capability for mental health practitioners and other professionals to be able to intervene with individuals," Neumann said. "It was needed because we just have so many people moving into that stage of, 'Well, they might commit an act of violence, but they haven't done anything criminal yet.'" Neumann, an ABC News contributor, said she has noticed a complacency set in after the U.S. declared victory over ISIS in 2019 and withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021. "We are moving our eye off the ball to focus on things that I don't know are what I would put in the top of my counterterrorism bucket," Neumann said. 'Immigration security IS national security' In a statement to ABC News, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said concerns that the administration has taken its eye off counterterrorism to focus on its deportation crackdown are unfounded. "Immigration security IS national security -- look no further than the terrorist, who was in the United States illegally, that firebombed elderly Jewish women," Jackson said, referring to 45-year-old Egyptian citizen Mohamed Soliman accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a group of marchers advocating for the release of hostages being held in Gaza. "Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is Making America Safe Again." Soliman entered the U.S. in 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023, according to DHS. A senior official told ABC News he was then granted a work permit that expired in March 28, 2025. Answering critics questioning the administration's preparedness for protecting the homeland in the wake of the string of recent terror attacks, Jackson said, "But the President can walk and chew gum at the same time -- we're holding all criminals accountable, whether they're illegal aliens or American citizens. That's why nationwide murder rates have plummeted, fugitives from the FBI's most wanted list have been captured, and police officers are empowered to do their jobs, unlike under the Biden Administration's soft-on-crime regime." According to the Department Justice and annual FBI violent crime statistics, that nation's murder rate has fallen for the past three consecutive years. The White House also pointed to President Donald Trump's proclamation on Wednesday banning travel from 12 countries -- including Afghanistan, Iran and Libya -- and imposing travel restrictions on seven other countries as evidence the administration has not lost its focus on national security concerns. Egypt, where the suspect in the Boulder attack is from, was not included in the list of countries. Ben Williamson, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, told ABC News in a statement that while the bureau does not comment on specific personnel decisions, "our agents and support staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime -- a mission which certainly overlaps with the consequences of the previous administration's open border policies for four years." Williamson added, "We are proud to work with our interagency partners to keep the American people safe." DHS: Terrorist attacks linked to Gaza war Cohen, the former DHS intelligence official, said neither the Trump administration nor the Biden administration have done enough to prevent terrorism, while foreign actors and terrorist groups like ISIS have upped their game on the internet to radicalize converts within the U.S. "We're continuing to see efforts to not just inspire but instruct those individuals who are angry, who are certain, who are looking for the justification to engage in violence, to express that anger," Cohen said. "So content is developing and introduced online that's intended to inspire them to commit violence, but also providing instructions on just how to do it. We've seen videos talking about vehicle ramming. We've seen videos talking about how to construct explosive devices. We've seen video online encouraging mass shootings at the same time." In August 2024, two Austrian teenagers were arrested and accused of plotting to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna. Authorities said both suspects appeared to have been inspired by ISIS and al-Qaeda, and one of them had researched bomb-making techniques and uploaded to the internet an oath of allegiance to the current leader of the Islamic State. "Law enforcement analysts over the last several months have seen online content posted by al-Qaeda-related and Hamas and Iranian-linked groups advocating violence as a way for people to respond to their concerns about what's going on in Gaza," Cohen said. 'COVID is a huge reason why it's more complicated' Neumann said the pandemic opened the door for terrorist groups to manipulate people during a time of extreme vulnerability. "COVID is a huge reason why it's more complicated," said Neumann, adding that the usual modus operandi of terrorist groups is "offering a certainty in an uncertain world." "It's offering this black-and-white answer of why the bad thing happened to them," Neumann said. "When you look at why people mobilize to violence or radicalize, it is not the ideology. The ideology is kind of the bow that comes on top after all of these other factors have kind of gotten into play for an individual." She added, "We, largely as a field, understand those that commit acts of violence have underlying psychosocial factors that have led them to this place where they are willing to be convinced that violence is the right solution for their problems." Neumann pointed to a 2023 poll by University of California, Davis Violence Prevention Research Program that found 32.8% of respondents considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance some political objectives. "And then you add to it, COVID, Oct. 7, social media, it's just a perfect cauldron for a lot of people to be led astray," Neumann said. In three of the alleged U.S. terrorist attacks that have occurred since mid-April, investigators said the suspects were motivated by the war to commit violence on American soil. The suspect in the April 13 firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor's residence allegedly targeted Gov. Shapiro, who is Jewish, "based upon perceived injustices to the people of Palestine," according to a criminal complaint. The man who allegedly gunned down two Israeli embassy staff members on May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., was captured on video shouting "Free Palestine" following the shooting. Neither suspect has entered a plea. In Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, authorities say Soliman, shouting "free Palestine" and wielding a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, targeted demonstrators, injuring 15. Soliman has been charged in both state and federal court. He is also charged with hate crimes in the federal case. He has yet to enter a plea to any of the charges. The year started off with the New Year's Day truck-ramming on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that left 14 people dead. The suspect, who was killed in a gunfight with police, had pledged support for ISIS, according to investigators. In a Facebook video the suspect posted as he drove to commit the attack, he said he "originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the 'war between the believers and the disbelievers.'" Cohen said, "Regional conflicts in the past were isolated events occurring in foreign lands. But because of the internet, they are now taking place in communities across America." A fifth terrorist attack, that was apparently unrelated to the Middle East war, occurred on May 17 in Palm Springs, California, where a car packed with large quantities of ammonium nitrate was detonated, allegedly by a 25-year-old man who investigators said died in the blast and lived by "pro-mortalism, anti-natalism, and anti-pro-life ideology," or the belief that people should not be born without their consent. An alleged co-conspirator in the Palm Springs attack was arrested this month with federal authorities saying he provided large quantities of ammonium nitrate to the suspect killed in the blast. The attacks in Washington, D.C., New Orleans and at Gov. Shapiro's Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, residence were all allegedly carried out by U.S. citizens, according to investigators. The suspect in the Boulder attack is an Egypt-born man who lived in Kuwait until he moved to Colorado three years ago and had overstayed his B2 tourist visa, investigators said. Additionally, a dual American-German citizen was arrested on May 19 after he allegedly attempted to attack the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, but was thwarted by a guard, investigators said. The suspect was captured after dropping a backpack filled with Molotov cocktails, authorities said. "We have to do a better job at maintaining awareness of the threat, and that means by tracking what foreign domestic threat actors or what foreign intelligence services terrorist groups are posting online, the types of attacks they're calling for and the techniques that they are promoting to conduct those attacks," Cohen said. "Law enforcement can take that intelligence then and have a better understanding of the targets that are at risk and ensure that security measures are put in place to reduce the likelihood that these types of public events would be targeted." Neumann said that the current threat environment requires an urgent response from the federal government. "As with everything that happens in Washington, there will be another attack of such a scale that people are going to say, 'We should do something,' and then all of a sudden, the money will flow, and then they'll be like, 'Oh, look, here's this new shiny object that we can solve this problem with,'" Neumann said. "It will get restarted, but we will have lost a long period of time and expertise and will have to make some similar mistakes again as we relearn. That's kind of sad, because in the intervening time people will die because we're not investing in this now."
