A key paradox facing future historians of the Gaza war and genocide is Israel’s eventual acceptance of a ceasefire agreement. Why did Tel Aviv agree, on October 9, to terms that seemed fundamentally inconsistent with the stated military and political goals it championed over the course of the two-year genocidal campaign?

The answer demands a critical examination of Israel’s actual war objectives. While many Israeli military analysts and politicians frequently opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing he lacked a coherent strategy for the ‘next day’ in Gaza, this critique missed the central truth: Netanyahu did, in fact, pursue a singular, clear goal—the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

This objective, which began as a tentative proposal among extremist elements on the Israeli right, rapidly metastasized into the unifying war cry. It galvanized not only Israel’s ruling elites but also became a consensus position embraced by many in the Israeli populace itself.

A March poll commissioned by Pennsylvania State University and conducted by Tamir Sorek through Israel’s Geocartography Knowledge Group found that 82 percent of Israeli respondents supported expelling Gaza’s residents, while 56 percent favored removing Palestinian citizens of Israel—an alarming increase from 2003 figures, when support for such expulsions stood at 45 percent and 31 percent respectively.

For his part, Netanyahu attempted to sanitize this genocidal objective as ‘voluntary migration,’ as if a population facing mass extermination would somehow retain agency over its fate should resistance fail. The Prime Minister immediately betrayed the sheer cynicism of this term, stating: “Our problem is a lack of places willing to absorb (the refugees), and we are working on it.”

Within months, the project of ethnic cleansing transformed from an Israeli domestic obsession to a matter discussed within American officialdom. 

Even before former US President Donald Trump wholeheartedly championed the idea, leaked reports indicated that former US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had broached the subject with Egypt’s Abdelfattah Al-Sisi. Al-Sisi, according to detailed reports from The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, firmly rejected the proposal, an act motivated most likely by concern for internal Egyptian stability rather than any genuine commitment to preserving the Palestinian nation and its rightful struggle for freedom.

Israel’s strategy appeared to succeed, not only in normalizing the concept of a new Palestinian Nakba — the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 — but also in persuading certain Arab commentators to adopt the Israeli narrative on widely watched Middle Eastern media. These voices echoed the critique of an Israeli lack of vision and strategy for the war and for the crucial ‘next day’ in Gaza.

They were fundamentally wrong, of course, as subsequent events have proven. Their flawed analyses were rooted in an old Orientalist trope that strips the native population of agency, operating on the assumption that the fate of nations is determined solely by the party wielding superior weaponry. Gaza, however, operated on a radically different dynamic: defeat is not an option; resistance will continue regardless of the cost, and no new Nakba would be allowed.

Thus, Netanyahu did have a strategy; it simply failed. It was utterly defeated by a stubborn nation that elevated the concept of sumoud (steadfastness) far beyond mere passive endurance. Suddenly, sumoud became an active, operational strategy that nullified the power of Israel and the massive US-Western arsenal of munitions. Future historians must pause here to reflect on the limits of firepower when it clashes with the unyielding will of a people and their unmatched sense of dignity and collective power.

The more legitimate Israeli criticism – from an Israeli viewpoint, of course – of Netanyahu’s failure to craft an achievable military strategy, also demands deep reflection. The Israeli leader did clearly state his ultimate intent from the very start: “We will never hand (Gaza) over to the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. We will provide overall security,” he stated, repeatedly. This objective was an explicit demand for a return to Israeli occupation, mirroring the period between 1967 and the 2005 redeployment, which ushered in the hermetic siege.

Yet, a massive military force estimated to be over 300,000 Israeli soldiers — a combination of the standing army, reservists, and special units, supported by the full technological might of the collective West — failed to defeat the Gazans. 

The resistance adapted fluidly to every operation, constantly shifting its core centers of gravity from Khan Yunis to Rafah, then back to the ruins of Shujaiyyeh, Zaitoun, and Jabaliya in the north, demonstrating a persistent, elusive presence across the entire Strip.

The Israeli narrative of the war rapidly devolved into a vicious cycle of blame-shifting: the political institution condemning the army for failing to subdue the resistance, and the army accusing the government of lacking a viable political vision. Both entities were left paralyzed, politically and militarily, because they were fundamentally incapable of establishing lasting control over any part of Gaza, remaining largely confined to fortified enclaves near the border areas.

While Netanyahu and his cohort intensified their rhetoric, vowing to obliterate Gaza and even actively searching for Global South nations willing to accept the surviving Palestinians, the military responded by launching operation after operation under new, boastful names: “Swords of Iron,” “Gideon’s Chariots,” “Gideon’s Chariots 2,” etc.

Despite honest Israeli observers repeatedly declaring each operation an astounding failure, Netanyahu doubled down on the madness. He remained oblivious to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, his country’s spiraling international isolation, and the implosion of its economy. For him, defeating Gaza was an existential imperative, a goal he explicitly framed: “We are in an existential war, Israel has to win,” he said in March 2024.

Of course, Netanyahu did not operate in a vacuum. The unwavering, unconditional support of most Western countries – at least until very recently – offered a crucial buffer, providing reassurance that Israel’s damaged international repute could eventually be reversed and its economy salvaged. Further endorsement came from Arab regimes, some of whom actively engaged in media warfare against the resistance, specifically Hamas, and even facilitated alternative trade routes to help Israel circumvent the impact of the Red Sea siege imposed by Yemen’s Ansarallah.

Yet, all this support amounted to nil. Even with continuous American intervention, repeatedly orchestrating ceasefire proposals tailored to Israel’s benefit, the resistance remained immovably solid. It insisted on a core set of demands, refusing to yield an inch — to the profound fury of Israel, the US, and their allies. While Israel floundered, unable to achieve or even define its true goals, the Palestinians, for the first time in decades, presented an unbreakable front. This represented a complete historical break from the compromise and capitulation that characterized the Oslo Accords, the inception of the Palestinian Authority, and the temporary demise of the Palestinian national project.

Two years into the genocide, not a single core Israeli military or political objective was achieved, save for the brutal vengeance rained upon Gaza. This campaign of vengeance resulted in the killing and wounding of over 237,000 Palestinians. The true toll is likely to rise as the full horror of the genocide is realized. Beyond this immense carnage and the near-total destruction of Gaza, the resistance, rooted deeply in a popular culture of defiance that transcends any single faction’s ideology, remained as powerful as ever.

The Trump administration’s Gaza proposal should not be misread as an imposition on Netanyahu; it was an American ‘bullet of mercy’ intended to conclude an unwinnable war. Its core purpose was to save Israel from itself, preserving the underlying hope that new avenues to defeat the Palestinians could be found later. Hamas’s response to the 20-point proposal was measured. They welcomed the proposal but expertly limited their engagement to the few points within their mandate as a resistance group. Crucially, they asserted that the remaining points belonged to the entire Palestinian nation and required national consensus. In doing so, they decisively reasserted themselves as rational political actors, starkly contrasting with Palestine’s chronic, historical lack of true leadership.

The first phase of the agreement is now being implemented. Israel is already maneuvering, attempting to slow the process, manufacture obstacles, throw tantrums, and project the image of being the party in charge. Yet, the strategic outcomes are sealed. When the second and final phases are discussed, Israel and its allies will undoubtedly continue their old tactics, especially with figures like Tony Blair – a loathed character widely regarded as a war criminal from the days of the Iraq war – reportedly positioning himself to govern Gaza. But how can any such scheme possibly succeed when a genocidal war itself failed so spectacularly to alter the outcome of an already lost war in the Strip?

Throughout the war, every grim aspect of the genocide was discussed, often obsessively. Statistics were constantly tossed about — of the dead, the wounded, the scale of destruction. Yet, little focus was placed on the psychology of the war, and the profound significance of the fact that Israel failed for the first time in its history to defeat the Palestinians and use its military superiority to dictate political outcomes.

On October 25, 2023, Moshe Feiglin, the former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, crudely but tellingly encapsulated the war’s psychological shift: “Muslims are not afraid of us anymore.” Whether the element of fear among Muslims has been wholly eliminated is a subject for future discussions. The undeniable truth, however, is that Palestinians in Gaza are now liberated from a historical complex that has endured for a century. Though filled with unimaginable grief, they achieved the seemingly impossible: their sumoud defeated well over 100,000 tons of Israeli explosives. The psychology of that achievement shall permanently alter the relationship between Palestinians and Israel, on the one hand, and the now shunned state of Israel and the world, on the other, for generations to come. 

It remains to be said that freedom is not a negotiable asset; it is not a metric to be measured or a commodity to be touched. It is a primal state of being that must be fiercely felt, experienced, and relentlessly seized. The Palestinians in Gaza now stand at the apex of this realization. Left abandoned – fighting alone, enduring the bombardment alone, and bearing solitary witness to their own genocide – they have forged an unprecedented moral and existential victory. This nascent collective power is an asset of an immeasurable weight, far transcending the material destruction wrought by Israel, precisely because its psychological and strategic impact is eternal.