Trump team rethinks Gaza strategy after six months of failure

Axios

2 days ago

"We need to do some serious rethinking," a visibly frustrated Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a group of hostage families on Friday after the latest round of Gaza talks broke down, two people who attended the meeting tell Axios.
The big picture: Six months into his presidency, President Trump is no closer to ending the war in Gaza. The humanitarian crisis is worse than ever, negotiations are deadlocked, and the U.S. and Israel are increasingly isolated internationally.
Trump campaigned on ending the war and bringing the hostages home. As it drags on, and images of starving Palestinians are shared all over the world, cracks are emerging in the MAGA base over Trump's support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's maximalist war strategy.
The breakdown in ceasefire talks — which came after Hamas didn't accept the latest ceasefire terms and Israel withdrew its negotiators in protest — could be a turning point for the administration's policy.
Driving the news: Trump signaled Friday that it's time for Israel to further escalate the war to "get rid" of Hamas and "finish the job."
Israeli officials weren't sure whether that was a negotiating tactic or a genuine change of course from Trump — a "green light" for Netanyahu to use even more extreme military measures.
"It's terrible what happened with Hamas. Tapping everybody along. We'll see what happens. We'll see what response Israel has to that. But it is getting to be that time," Trump told reporters after landing in Scotland on Friday.
Behind the scenes: While meeting with hostage families at the State Department Friday, Rubio said several times that the administration needed to "rethink" its strategy on Gaza and "come to the president with new options," according to the sources.
Zoom in: Over the past six months, Trump has given Netanyahu an almost free hand to do whatever he wants in Gaza — from military operations, to hostage negotiations, to the distribution of humanitarian aid.
While White House officials say Trump is genuinely disturbed by the killing of Palestinians and wants the war to end, he has applied virtually no pressure on Netanyahu to end it in the last few months, according to Israeli officials.
"In most calls and meetings Trump told Bibi, 'Do what you have to do in Gaza.' In some cases he even encouraged Netanyahu to go harder on Hamas," one Israeli official told Axios.
The other side: Netanyahu accused the Biden administration of holding Israel back, including by limiting some arms deliveries.
He claimed that once Trump took office and Israel installed a new military chief, he would finally be liberated to defeat Hamas. In private, he even put a timetable on it: three months.
Trump gave Israel the 2,000-pound bombs Biden wouldn't send, along with many more weapons, and ceased any public criticism over the killing of Palestinian civilians.
But the results of Israel's military operations over the last six months aren't much different than before — the Israel Defense Forces have systematically destroyed more and more of Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in the process, but Hamas has not been eliminated.
Flashback: Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff had a big role in reaching a ceasefire and hostage deal in January, days before the inauguration.
But they allowed Netanyahu to violate that deal by not negotiating seriously on its next phase. Israel resumed the war unilaterally in March.
Rubio noted in Friday's meeting that neither he nor Trump had ever liked the incremental format of the Biden-era deal, with short-term truces in exchange for the release of some hostages.
A State Department official with details of the meeting said that while Rubio did indicate he did not believe the incremental approach was sustainable in the long term, both he and Trump recognized it had to be handled that way in January.
Between the lines: Netanyahu preferred that format for domestic political reasons, so as not to have to commit to ending the war.
Despite his reservations, Trump endorsed it during the ensuing rounds of talks, which thus far have all failed.
The only exception to that failure was when Trump bypassed Netanyahu to secure the release of U.S. citizen Edan Alexander.
Rubio made clear in the meeting on Friday that he still doesn't think the incremental approach is the right one and hinted that it might be time to explore a more comprehensive approach to end the war and free all the remaining hostages, according to sources in the room.
Zoom out: Trump was one of the first world leaders to warn publicly that Palestinians were starving in Gaza, but he has also been far less critical than his predecessor of Israel's policies to limit the entry of aid.
Trump endorsed the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an effort to deliver aid in Gaza through a private U.S. company and not through the UN in an effort to ensure Hamas couldn't commandeer it.
While the GHF did manage to get food to some of the population in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while making their way to the aid centers.
State of play: The humanitarian situation in Gaza is at its worst point since the beginning of the war 20 months ago, with 122 Palestinians dying of starvation in recent weeks, according to the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The Palestinian death toll since the war began stands near 60,000.
Nearly all Western leaders have been urging Israel with increasing desperation to stop the fighting and allow in more aid — making Trump's "finish the job" message all the more jarring by contrast.
"The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now," France, Germany and the U.K. said in a joint statement Friday. "Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable."
The bottom line: Israel and the U.S. are together on a diplomatic island, seen by many of their allies as jointly responsible for the dire situation.