Gaza in Ruins, Israel Isolated: Netanyahu’s Calculated Addiction to Conflict

By Elijah J. Magnier –

When Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz declared that his country was “opening the gates of hell,” the phrase was not an exaggeration but a direct description of policy. In recent weeks, Israeli jets have unleashed relentless waves of airstrikes on Gaza City, striking at its core districts of al-Rimal and Tal al-Hawa. The results are staggering: in the span of a single week, more than 500 buildings were destroyed, including more than a dozen high-rise towers that once housed hundreds of families. Around 600 tents sheltering displaced people were burned to the ground, and at least 20 centres for refugees were bombed. The destruction has rendered more than 50,000 civilians homeless overnight, forced to scatter with nowhere safe to go, carrying only what they could save in those few minutes before the U.S.-made bombs struck.

These statistics tell a story that official Israeli communiqués carefully avoid. Over the last month, there has been no credible claim of Hamas networks dismantled, underground facilities seized, or senior commanders captured inside Gaza City. Instead, what the army highlights are its so-called “evacuation warnings”—calls or leaflets giving families only minutes to flee before American-supplied bombs strike their homes. High-rise towers, schools, and refugee shelters are repeatedly bombed on the grounds that militants may be present. For the displaced, these warnings are meaningless. 

With nowhere safe to go, families are forced to choose between risking death under bombardment or fleeing into overcrowded camps where hunger and disease are rampant. Entire neighbourhoods are erased, and with them the fragile sense of continuity that sustains society. The deliberate targeting of the urban fabric is not collateral damage but a calculated effort to render northern Gaza uninhabitable, amounting to ethnic cleansing conducted through explosives and enforced displacement.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s public justifications for prolonging the war have shifted repeatedly as circumstances demanded. First, the obstacle to peace was Mohammed al-Sinwar, the Hamas commander in Gaza. After al-Sinwar was killed, the focus shifted to Mohammed al-Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing. Once al-Deif was eliminated, Netanyahu announced that the movement’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, stood in the way of peace. One by one, Hamas leaders have been targeted and assassinated, including the son of al-Sinwar, Mohamad, who assumed command. Yet each killing only led to the identification of a new scapegoat. The pattern reveals that the real obstacle is not Hamas leadership but Netanyahu himself, who is unwilling to close any deal regardless of Hamas’s response, because ending the war would undermine his political survival.

US diplomacy has inadvertently exposed Israel’s role as saboteur. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Israel, his focus was not on brokering a ceasefire but on ensuring the release of hostages and to confirm that “the US relationship with Israel won’t change regardless of what happened in Qatar”. His first stop was Jerusalem, not Doha, even though Qatar is the key mediator with influence over Hamas. The symbolism was clear: Washington knows that the decisive veto lies with Netanyahu, not with Hamas or its allies. Whenever negotiations approach a breakthrough, Israel acts to derail them.