Netanyahu fueling the fire to escape the flames

Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmongering ideology has long defined Israel’s approach to Gaza, but in recent months his escalatory rhetoric and relentless military campaigns have exposed the dangerous depths of his political calculus. Far from being about security, Netanyahu’s ongoing aggression against Gaza is a carefully calculated strategy — one designed to ensure his political survival, shield him from corruption scandals and perpetuate a system of oppression that serves Israel’s expansionist ambitions. The international community cannot afford to remain passive. His unchecked militarism is not only devastating Palestinian lives but also destabilizing the entire region.

For Netanyahu, war is a political tool, not a last resort. Facing corruption charges and an increasingly fractured government, he has relied on continuous conflict to rally support from Israel’s far-right factions. The more brutal the military campaign, the more he secures the backing of ultranationalist and extremist parties that are essential to his fragile coalition. War has become his most effective distraction, shifting public focus away from his legal troubles and domestic governance failures. In this cynical game, the lives of Palestinian civilians are collateral damage in Netanyahu’s bid to cling to power.

But his strategy extends beyond political self-preservation. Netanyahu has long embraced the doctrine of “controlled destabilization,” ensuring that Gaza remains in a state of permanent crisis. By periodically unleashing devastating military operations under various pretexts — whether assassinations of resistance leaders or retaliation for rocket fire — he prevents the Strip from achieving any semblance of stability. This endless cycle of destruction ensures that Palestinian resistance remains fractured, that no alternative governance structures emerge and that Gaza remains an open-air prison under an unrelenting siege.

In this cynical game, the lives of Palestinian civilians are collateral damage in Netanyahu’s bid to cling to power

Hani Hazaimeh

Even more insidious is the Zionist agenda embedded within this strategy: the gradual demographic manipulation of Gaza’s population. The systematic destruction of infrastructure, the targeting of hospitals and schools, and the tightening of blockades serve a larger goal — to push Palestinians into a humanitarian catastrophe so unbearable that displacement becomes inevitable. Netanyahu and his far-right allies know they cannot expel Gaza’s population overnight, so they create conditions that make life unsustainable. Starvation, disease and homelessness are not unintended consequences; they are deliberate instruments of ethnic cleansing.

The human cost of Netanyahu’s policies is staggering. Gaza’s healthcare system, already fragile due to years of blockade, is collapsing under the weight of relentless bombardment and shortages of critical medical supplies. Hospitals are overflowing with casualties, many of them children who have suffered gruesome injuries from Israeli airstrikes. Doctors and nurses, working under unimaginable conditions, are forced to make impossible choices about who receives lifesaving treatment and who is left to die. The deliberate targeting of medical facilities is not just a war crime — it is a calculated strategy to break the will of the people by denying them even the most basic means of survival.

Beyond the hospitals, the situation is equally catastrophic. With water and electricity supplies systematically cut off, Gazans are struggling to access even the most fundamental necessities of life. Families are drinking contaminated water, leading to a surge in waterborne diseases, while children go to sleep hungry as food supplies dwindle. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, leaving tens of thousands homeless with no place to seek refuge. The psychological toll of constant bombardment, loss and displacement has created a generation of traumatized children who have never known a day of peace.

The blockade, imposed under the guise of security, is in reality a tool of collective punishment. It prevents Gaza from rebuilding, from developing, from even hoping for a better future. Students who dream of furthering their education abroad are trapped, their ambitions crushed by an occupation that denies them the right to mobility. Farmers are unable to cultivate their lands and fishermen who dare venture beyond Israel’s arbitrary sea limits are shot at or arrested. Every aspect of life in Gaza is dictated by an occupying power that seeks not just to dominate, but to suffocate.

Every aspect of life in Gaza is dictated by an occupying power that seeks not just to dominate, but to suffocate

Hani Hazaimeh

Despite these horrors, the resilience of the Gazan people remains unshaken. They continue to find ways to live, to create, to resist. Artists paint murals on bombed-out walls, musicians play amid the ruins and teachers hold classes in makeshift tents. This defiance, this refusal to be erased, is the ultimate act of resistance against Netanyahu’s genocidal policies. The world must not only recognize their suffering but stand in solidarity with their fight for dignity and justice.

What Netanyahu fails to account for is the unwavering resilience of the Palestinian people. Despite relentless bombings, enforced poverty and unimaginable suffering, Gaza refuses to submit. Its people continue to resist not just through armed struggle but through their sheer will to survive, to educate their children and to assert their right to exist on their land. Netanyahu’s military superiority has not and will not break the Palestinian spirit.

But resistance alone is not enough. The international community must recognize that Netanyahu’s policies are not just a threat to Gaza but to regional and global stability. His warmongering risks igniting wider conflicts, drawing in neighboring countries and fueling extremism on all sides. If the world continues to turn a blind eye, it will be complicit in the perpetuation of endless war.

It is time for concrete action. Diplomatic condemnation without consequences is meaningless. The world must impose real costs on Netanyahu’s government — through sanctions, arms embargoes and legal accountability for war crimes. The International Criminal Court must pursue investigations with urgency and governments that claim to champion human rights must stop enabling Israel’s war machine through military aid and political cover.

Netanyahu’s endless war cannot be allowed to continue. The time for half-measures and empty statements is over. The world must act decisively to curb his reckless militarism and ensure that justice for Gaza is not just a distant dream, but an urgent reality.

• Hani Hazaimeh is a senior editor based in Amman. X: @hanihazaimeh