On August 8, under the coercion of far-right forces such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel made a major and historic decision that completely reverses the peace process between Palestine and Israel, announcing that it will fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip, completely eliminate the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and establish a new civil government. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office stated that the Israel Defense Forces will be prepared to take over Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to civilians outside the war zone.

It is reported that the Israeli Security Cabinet approved by majority vote Netanyahu’s strongly advocated “final solution” for Gaza, passing the so-called “Five Principles to End the War,” which include disarming Hamas; returning all Israelis held captive, whether alive or dead; achieving the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip; maintaining Israel’s security control over the Gaza Strip; and establishing a civil government that belongs neither to Hamas nor to the Palestinian National Authority.

This move by Israel is enough to shock and deeply worry world public opinion. When Israel, after ending 20 years of institutionalized garrison in the Gaza Strip, once again imposes full military administration, it is tantamount to declaring the complete death of the “Oslo Accords,” that the Palestinian National Authority recognized by the international community is no longer a peace partner, that the Gaza Strip is no longer “owned and governed by Palestinians,” and that Israel will once again become the overlord of this land.

From a broader and longer-term perspective, this move will weaken Israel’s strategic mutual trust and reconciliation cooperation with its peace partner and the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the PLO, and may reset the reconciliation process between Israel and Arab countries based on the “Abraham Accords,” possibly further worsening Israel’s relations with the international community, and even creating new troubles for the United States, which fully supports Israel, increasing its heavier strategic liabilities.

Reoccupying the Gaza Strip and dominating its future governance is to put the historically turbulent train of the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli peace process into reverse, pushing Israel to repeat the mistakes of history. It will neither help effectively resolve the Gaza war predicament it is deeply mired in, nor help achieve lasting peace and stability, especially the historical reconciliation with Palestine and Arab countries.

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and crossed the border to attack Israel, only a year and a half has passed, yet the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has escalated into the “Sixth Middle East War,” with the flames of war extending to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea region, and the Persian Gulf. Israel appears to have achieved military victories over most of its opponents in the “Axis of Resistance,” even hardline adversary Iran, and unexpectedly reaped the “fruit” of the Syrian regime’s collapse. However, it has never managed to conquer the Gaza Strip, which is only 360 square kilometers, has not eliminated Hamas despite the leadership being reportedly “wiped out,” has not eradicated the remnants of Hamas engaged in “ruins guerrilla warfare,” and has not rescued nearly 50 hostages on the brink of death.

Netanyahu and his government, using near-genocidal “scorched-earth tactics” and “starvation tactics,” have created a contemporary, horrific humanitarian disaster that shocks the conscience, challenges the principles of international and humanitarian law and the bottom line of human civilization, humiliates the international community, especially the United Nations composed of 193 sovereign states and two observer states, triggers a global wave of condemnation and anti-Israel sentiment, and revives non-mainstream antisemitic thought in both Eastern and Western societies. In addition, major Western countries that originally adopted indulgent and appeasing policies toward Israel have successively changed their positions—Canada, France, the UK, and Australia are preparing to recognize the State of Palestine, with some countries taking various forms of sanctions and restrictions against Israel. Some developing countries have long since imposed harsher sanctions on Israel, including severing or downgrading diplomatic relations, cooperating with the International Criminal Court in issuing “war crimes” warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders.

However, Netanyahu, regardless of Israel’s historic political and diplomatic failures, and ignoring opposition from intelligence chiefs, in order to please far-right forces and avoid the collapse of his ruling coalition, as well as to evade legal accountability likely to arise from corruption cases and national security crises, has recklessly led the full reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, expanding the scale and intensity of the war, and increasing Palestinian suffering.

Netanyahu’s latest risky Gaza strategy is actually the result of excessive personal self-interest and an extreme obsession to fight to the end, ignoring that the whole country has fallen into a long war and is fighting on multiple fronts, ignoring the daily casualties at the front line, ignoring the gradual exhaustion of manpower to the point of overturning decades-old national policy to forcibly conscript religious students, ignoring that the entire country’s main trajectory has shifted from peace and development to war and conquest, ignoring the continuous deterioration of the investment climate, the ongoing withdrawal of foreign capital and expatriates, and the constant hemorrhaging of economic development.

Netanyahu’s “scorched-earth tactics” have completely deprived the geographically small Gaza Strip of any security space. Not only are Palestinians losing their lives at the rate of hundreds per day, but the plight of Israeli hostages is also worsening. Especially when combined with the “starvation tactics,” it not only continuously causes a systemic crisis in the basic food and nutrition supply for Palestinians, but also objectively turns surviving Israeli hostages into burial companions.

After Hamas and other organizations recently released the latest hostage status video, the world was shocked, and Israel suffered another heavy blow: Evyatar David, trapped in a confined space, is skin and bones, estimated to have lost half his body weight. Evyatar was even forced to dig his own grave in the reinforced concrete tunnels under Hamas control. Although Hamas’s inhumane acts are certainly condemnable, they show that Netanyahu’s military pressure policy has completely failed—the clearing strategy that nearly flattened Gaza and dug three feet underground cannot completely eliminate Hamas.

It can be said that Hamas, by torturing and starving hostages in extreme retaliation for Israel’s “starvation tactics” and mocking Israel’s “scorched-earth tactics,” has severely provoked Israel’s political nerves and emotions across society. Evyatar’s family accuses Netanyahu’s Gaza policy of failure, and more Israeli citizens, former senior officials, and intelligence chiefs are urging an end to the war to secure the release of hostages. Perhaps the tragic scene of Evyatar being on the verge of starving to death will become a watershed moment in the Gaza war, placing the warlike Israeli right-wing ruling coalition on the fire, and forcing the cornered Netanyahu to take his final gamble—staking his political future, the destiny of Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli peace process.

In 1993, the Israeli Labor Party government, suffering from the multiple torments of the long-term occupation of Palestine, reached the “Oslo Accords” with the PLO regarding transitional autonomy. Then Prime Minister Rabin, who had once served as Defense Minister, had always sought to free Israel from the “Gaza nightmare,” because since seizing the Gaza Strip from Egypt in 1967, “peace under Israeli rule” had lasted only 20 years. In 1987, the spark of the “Intifada (uprising)” was ignited in the Gaza Strip, quickly sweeping into a prairie fire and spreading to the broader West Bank.

Rabin himself had also sworn to “break the bones of the Palestinians,” and more Israeli generals cursed Gaza as a “damned strip,” a “hateful hornet’s nest,” because the Israeli army occupied this area during the day, while at night control shifted to various resistance forces. The conflict over the occupied territories, with Gaza as its focus and symbol, plunged Israel into an unprecedented predicament under international law and a whirlpool of world public opinion, while also paying a heavy security and economic price. Today, Netanyahu has forgotten the lessons of history, willingly returning to the old path of the occupier that runs counter to the correct direction of human civilization and history, once again mortgaging Israel’s national image, national development, and international status to the occupation of the Gaza Strip.

On August 7, the Israeli right-wing mouthpiece The Jerusalem Post published an editorial warning Netanyahu to “heed the warning and avoid the Gaza quagmire,” pointing out that fully reoccupying it would worsen the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and give Hamas a propaganda victory, portraying Israel as an occupier and inspiring resistance.

The paper pointed out that historical experience and military analysis show Netanyahu may believe that occupying the Gaza Strip will bring the hostages home and crush Hamas, but this is wishful thinking. The paper quoted famous retired U.S. General David Petraeus, comparing the Gaza ground campaign to “Mogadishu on steroids,” which would lead to rapidly escalating casualties and chaos.

Petraeus, a renowned special warfare expert, U.S. Army general, former commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq, commander of U.S. Central Command, top commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and director of the CIA, was later forced to resign due to an extramarital scandal. Petraeus is far more aware than Netanyahu, who is not from a military background, of the heavy costs and political consequences if the Gaza Strip becomes “Mogadishu-ized.”

In October 1993, U.S. peacekeeping forces stationed in Mogadishu fell into an urban warfare trap while trying to capture aides of warlord Aidid. The U.S. forces killed more than 1,000 fearless militiamen but suffered 19 dead, one captured, and two Black Hawk helicopters destroyed. When televised images reached the U.S. of the captured soldier begging Washington for rescue and Mogadishu mobs dragging the bodies of dead American soldiers through the streets, public opinion pressure skyrocketed, forcing the Clinton administration to announce withdrawal from Somalia four days later.

Today, Evyatar, emaciated and displayed in a Hamas video, is in a situation eerily similar to the U.S. military’s Mogadishu defeat back then. Petraeus’s reminder of this American heartbreak is actually a warning to Netanyahu and his government that if they insist on reoccupying Gaza and causing an even more severe disaster, it could trigger a reversal in America’s one-sided favoritism toward Israel.

The Jerusalem Post also pointed out that fully occupying the Gaza Strip would not ensure Israel’s security; rather, it would trap Israel in the Gaza Strip, in an expensive, endless war with no visible end, making all Israelis bear the consequences, whether reduced income or long-term military service. The paper cited data released by Bank of Israel showing that the war has already caused serious damage to Israel, with all war-related activities—including reserve mobilization, reduced labor force, and disruption of high-tech supply chains—costing more than $600 million per week, about 6% of GDP. By the end of 2025, the cumulative economic burden is expected to reach $5.3 billion to $6.7 billion, close to 10% of GDP.

In 1994, based on the “Oslo Accords,” both sides launched the peace process, starting with “Gaza-Jericho First Autonomy,” later expanding to all Palestinian-populated cities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. After the five-year transitional autonomy ended, the two sides failed to reach a compromise on a series of final status issues, the peace process reversed, Palestine launched the second violent resistance, the “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” and Palestinian-Israeli relations deteriorated rapidly, leading to the demise of the relatively moderate Israeli left-wing camp.

With the rise of Israeli right-wing leader Sharon and the Likud bloc to power, and the Bush administration’s “Axis of Evil” doctrine and anti-terrorism strategy after 9/11, the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was deliberately distorted and deconstructed by Israel and the U.S., demonizing the core relationship of “occupation and anti-occupation” into “terror and anti-terror.” Fatah, the long-term ruling party of Palestine advocating peace, suffered joint suppression by the U.S. and Israel, and its widely recognized political leader Arafat died under Israeli siege. The Palestinian political landscape was thus fundamentally reshaped, with the hardline positions of Hamas and others gradually winning mainstream public opinion.

In 2005, at the critical moment when pro-peace and pro-war forces within Palestine were subtly reversed, the Sharon government unilaterally announced withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, ultimately allowing Hamas to completely gain the upper hand and drive Fatah, which insisted on cooperating with Israel, out of the Gaza Strip, turning this small area into its exclusively controlled “Hamastan.”

In 2006, Hamas, by participating in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, indirectly acknowledged and accepted the “Oslo Accords” and even the “two-state solution,” because whether the Palestinian transitional autonomy government or the legislative body, their establishment and operation were legally based on the “Oslo Accords.” This move was actually a key change in Hamas’s policy toward Israel, but because it did not amend the “Hamas Charter” in time—i.e., did not explicitly and publicly abandon the fundamental position of “eliminating Israel”—its governing legitimacy was not recognized by Israel and the U.S., instead leading to a harsher blockade of the Gaza Strip, creating the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

Since then, as Israeli right-wing forces became more aggressive, continually nibbling away at occupied West Bank territories and intensifying “Judaization” measures in East Jerusalem, it triggered two major Palestinian-Israeli conflicts from 2008 to 2014, i.e., what Israel defines as the “Israel-Hamas wars.” Over the past 20 years, the Netanyahu government has deliberately adopted a “strike but not destroy” approach toward Hamas, intentionally creating two Palestinian power centers, aggravating their geographic, social, political, and governance divisions, and maintaining the enormous and one-sided benefits Israel reaps from long-term occupation.

In 2017, when the U.S. Republican Party returned to power, Hamas seized the opportunity once again, issuing a declaration on May 1 that year accepting the existence of Israel, reaffirming the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and the Gaza Strip and West Bank as its territory, and expressing hope that the Trump administration would promote the resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. This was originally another rare window for the Palestinian issue, but it was jointly shut by the unprecedentedly pro-Israel Trump administration and the Israeli right-wing, greedy for immediate interests: the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, introduced the “Deal of the Century” that sacrificed Palestinian national interests, promoted the “Abraham Accords” that betrayed the Palestinian cause, and encouraged Israel’s far-right forces to further expand illegal settlements.

Hamas’s slow strategic shift and repeated gestures of goodwill abroad were met with humiliation, “warm faces pressed against the cold backsides” of the U.S. and Israel, while domestically facing doubts and challenges from radicals such as the Islamic Jihad Organization and Jihadist Salafists. Thereafter, Hamas returned to hardline and violent policies, becoming involved in multiple large-scale conflicts with Israel, while the “Abraham Accords,” which abandoned the Palestinian cause, created a new reconciliation trend for Israel, paving the way for normalization talks between Saudi Arabia, the new “leader” of the Arab world, and Israel.

Beset by internal and external troubles and despairing about the prospects for peace and reconciliation, at the latest low point and turning moment in the fate of the Palestinian people, on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the “Ramadan War” when Israel had suffered heavy losses, and at the last moment before Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. might cross the key threshold of sacrificing Palestinian interests, Hamas carefully planned and tightly executed the largest-ever single “suicidal” cross-border attack in world military history with 2,000 people at once, attempting through the predictable ruthless retaliation by Israel and the heavy Palestinian casualties to attract the world’s attention and sympathy, push the long-marginalized Palestinian issue back to the center of the world stage, and thereby cause rare mutual fatal injuries and cycles of violence between the two sides, triggering the “Sixth Middle East War,” surpassing all previous Middle East wars in scale and losses.

Strictly speaking, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not mean what Israel claimed as the “end of the occupation,” and naturally meant that Hamas retained the right to armed resistance granted by international law. Because the Gaza Strip is part of the occupied Palestinian territory, Hamas claims to represent the interests of all Palestinians and indeed has won the support and recognition of most Palestinians. Because Israel has not returned Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters, has not returned control of Gaza’s external crossings and residents’ freedom of movement, has not ended the collective punishment of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and has not alleviated the historical suffering of the Palestinian people.

After the “Al-Aqsa Flood” ignited a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, UN Secretary-General Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, stated: “Hamas’s attack on Israel did not happen without reason.” This statement is entirely from the standpoint of international law, and also represents the mainstream value judgment and main empathy of the international community. Over the past two years, the international attention received by Israel and Palestine has been completely reversed; politically and morally, the Palestinians have achieved victory and honor, and Hamas has realized its strategic vision, even though I personally firmly and consistently oppose resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through violent means.

Therefore, Netanyahu’s scheme to fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip, or the plan to continue besieging the Gaza Strip that may be rejected, are not fundamental solutions to breaking the Gaza deadlock and achieving lasting security for Israel, but are two different strategies for maintaining the illegal occupation, different cost-performance schemes for internal calculations of gains and losses. Has Israel’s de facto occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip over the past 20 years not ended in failure? Has it not led to the national disaster and national humiliation of the “Israeli 9/11”? Whether full reoccupation or continued blockade, the essence is to maintain the illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip and the entire Palestine, prolong the long suffering of the Palestinian people, and create endless national hatred, family feuds, and cycles of violence—it is the typical act of drinking poison to quench thirst, ladling water onto boiling soup, or extinguishing a fire with fuel. In the end, it is still a dead end.

Lives are of paramount importance, whether Israeli hostages or Palestinian civilians. The most feasible emergency choice is for Israel to immediately and unconditionally cease fire, fully open humanitarian aid to Palestine, in exchange for the early release of Israeli hostages, and then to study and review whether Israel’s war goals of “de-Hamasization, de-militarization, and de-violence” are reasonable and realistic, and whether they can once and for all end Israel’s security predicament and the historical tragedy of the Palestinian people.

Continuing to put faith in iron and blood and the big stick will lead Israel away from the original intentions and vows of independence and statehood, further from the political legacy of compensation for the Jews’ suffering in the Holocaust, and closer to the racism, militarism, and fascism that once persecuted the Jews. The latest cover article of The Economist points out that “a state that ignores the laws of war and feels no shame for illegal acts, without correcting them, not only harms the victims but also harms itself. Israel has a survival interest in achieving justice. Conversely, if it glorifies those who planned famine and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, its politics and society will tilt toward demagoguery and authoritarianism. The young, idealistic state born in May 1948 will cease to exist.”

In any case, the actions of the non-state actor Hamas in killing more than 1,000 Israelis cannot be the reason for the state actor Israel to cause the deaths of more than 60,000 Palestinians. Perhaps Israel’s reoccupation of the Gaza Strip is as irreversible as Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC, but it must never be allowed to repeat the unrestrained annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in 1938.

Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.