Israel is not bringing the Gaza war to a close from a position of victory. Its government is leading it toward precisely the outcome its leaders repeatedly promised would never happen.
The facts are becoming difficult to disguise. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have authorized reconstruction work in eastern Rafah, close to the Yellow Line. The Prime Minister’s Office says the project will provide temporary housing in an area free of Hamas rule and under Israeli supervision. That distinction matters, but it does not change the central fact: reconstruction has begun before Hamas has disarmed, despite Netanyahu’s earlier declaration that this would not happen.
At the same time, Israel’s security cabinet has approved the legal framework for the limited entry of an International Stabilization Force. The proposed initial deployment reportedly consists of about 200 troops from countries considered friendly to Israel. They are expected to operate around a pilot humanitarian zone in Rafah and, under the broader American plan, could eventually replace Israeli forces in areas from which the IDF withdraws. Their entry is not immediate and still requires Israeli approval, but the structure is already being created.
Then came the reduction in Israeli military activity. Netanyahu publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest 15-point Gaza roadmap and insisted that there would be no further withdrawal until Hamas surrendered all its weapons. Yet Reuters reported that Israel had sharply curtailed its attacks under American pressure, limiting military action largely to immediate threats and halting the targeted strikes it had previously conducted on a near-daily basis.
The government’s words remain uncompromising. Its actions tell a different story.
Israel withdrew to the Yellow Line under the October 2025 ceasefire arrangement and later expanded its control beyond the original line. The new American proposal begins with a pullback to that original line and envisions additional sector-by-sector withdrawals as Hamas’s weapons are taken out of use and an international force works with a new Palestinian police structure. Netanyahu says that withdrawal will follow only complete disarmament. Hamas avoids even using the word “disarmament” and demands Israeli concessions first.
For now, the sequence is disputed. But the direction is unmistakable: Gaza is being internationalized, Israeli freedom of action is being narrowed, reconstruction is moving forward, and the IDF is being placed on a path toward replacement by foreign forces. A further retreat from the Yellow Line may not happen tomorrow, but the political and administrative machinery for it is being assembled today.
And Hamas is still there.
It has been badly damaged. Senior commanders have been eliminated, much of its military infrastructure has been destroyed, and its governing capacity is weaker than it was before October 7. Those are real achievements, purchased through the courage and sacrifice of Israeli soldiers.
The return of the hostages was also an essential national achievement. All 20 remaining living hostages were released in October 2025, and the remains of the final hostage were recovered in January 2026. Nothing in this criticism should diminish the importance of bringing them home.
But the government did not promise merely to weaken Hamas or negotiate the hostages’ return. It promised “total victory.” It defined the war’s central objective as the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing power.
That objective has not been achieved.
Hamas survives as an organization and, more dangerously, as an idea. There is no evidence that its ideology has moderated; survival may make it more confident, not less. Israel itself says that the group continues to recruit, rearm and rebuild tunnels. The Prime Minister’s Office made that accusation again in August, even as international pressure increasingly focused on restraining Israel and advancing the reconstruction process.
For a terrorist movement, survival after a war of this magnitude can itself be marketed as victory. Hamas does not need to return immediately to its former strength. It needs only to remain armed, preserve its ideological hold and wait for international attention to move elsewhere. If it does that while foreign troops restrict Israel’s room to operate, the foundations for the next war will already have been laid.
This outcome also damages the moral case Netanyahu’s government made for the war.
Israel still possesses a fundamental moral distinction from Hamas. Hamas initiated the October 7 attack and deliberately targeted civilians. A failed strategy does not erase that fact or make the two sides morally equivalent. But Israel can no longer invoke that moral distinction as a substitute for strategic accountability.
But Israel’s defense of the war’s enormous cost rested on more than the justice of responding to October 7. It rested on necessity: the claim that the campaign had to continue until Hamas could never again rule Gaza, rebuild its forces or threaten Israeli communities.
If the war ends with Hamas alive, reconstruction underway, Israeli military action constrained and foreign troops assuming responsibility inside Gaza, that argument becomes far harder to sustain. The question will not only be whether Israel had the right to fight. It will be whether its government had a coherent strategy capable of turning military force into a defensible political result.
On that question, Netanyahu has no convincing answer.
Nor is it clear in what possible sense this can be called right-wing policy. A genuinely right-wing security doctrine is supposed to prioritize deterrence, sovereignty, strategic clarity and the defeat of enemies—not endless slogans followed by concessions implemented quietly and under foreign pressure.
A government cannot promise that reconstruction will follow demilitarization, authorize reconstruction first and still demand to be judged by its original promise. It cannot denounce an internationalized solution while approving the force that will implement it. It cannot reduce military pressure while Hamas remains armed and then present its restraint as victory.
The bravery of the IDF is not in question. The political leadership’s use of that bravery is.
So what did Netanyahu ultimately accomplish in Gaza?
He presided over a war that inflicted enormous damage on Hamas but did not destroy it; returned the hostages, but left the enemy organization alive; devastated the battlefield, but failed to secure the political outcome he promised; and brought Israel to a point where Rafah is being rebuilt as international forces prepare to enter.
That is not “total victory.” It is a retreat dressed in right-wing language, and one of the most humiliating strategic failures in Israel’s history.
