The intensified IDF actions in Gaza over the weekend can be seen as the continuation of negotiations by other means.
Despite expectations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington would culminate in a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, no deal emerged.
Israeli and Hamas teams had engaged in a week of “proximity talks” in Doha, and US President Donald Trump had issued upbeat messages suggesting an agreement was just around the corner. Yet the talks stalled in Doha, and Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff—who had been expected to fly there to help finalize the deal—stayed home.
Netanyahu’s return from Washington without a ceasefire deal—despite Trump’s public optimism—was immediately followed by the IDF’s most intensive strikes in Gaza in months, with the military saying some 250 targets were hit over 48 hours, including heavy bombing in Beit Hanun, where five soldiers were killed last week.
Before leaving Washington, Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s core demands: Gaza must be demilitarized, and Hamas’s military and governing capabilities dismantled. “If those things will be achieved by way of negotiations, so much the better,” he said in a video statement. But if not, he made clear, those aims would be achieved through other means.
The escalation on the ground serves both as a message to Hamas and a signal to Netanyahu’s coalition partners that the government’s war aims remain unchanged.
Aerial photos from Beit Hanun – just across the border from Netiv HaAsara and six kilometers from Sderot – show a city largely destroyed above ground.
But as has often been the case in this war, the real battle lies underground, in the sprawling network of Hamas tunnels, some of which remain intact and operational. That subterranean maze now appears to be at the center of Israel’s operational focus.
Whether by design or necessity, the breakdown in diplomacy was quickly followed by a sharp escalation on the ground. That escalation fits squarely into Netanyahu’s broader approach: maintain intense military pressure on Hamas until it accepts Israel’s core demands.
This latest turn – stalemated diplomacy abroad, intensified military operations at home – offers a revealing window into Israel’s current strategy. This isn’t a case of diplomacy collapsing and war filling the vacuum; it’s a case of both tracks moving in parallel, each shaping and reinforcing the other.
Israel is trying to craft the contours of a future deal not just with diplomatic language, but with airstrikes. The goal is to generate leverage on the battlefield to carry back to the negotiating table.
NETANYAHU’S RETURN without a deal sent a message, reinforced by the stepped-up military action: he means what he says – that at the end of the day, Hamas will have to demilitarize and be stripped of any military or government capabilities, and that the fighting will continue until this happens.
His coming home Friday empty-handed shows that the public and political pressure to prioritize the hostage release over Hamas’s defeat has not shifted his position. The juxtaposition of Netanyahu’s return and the surge in fighting sends a clear message to Hamas: if there’s no agreement, this is what lies ahead.
It also sends a broader message – to Hamas, to the region, and to Washington. Despite America’s involvement in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities last month – and despite some expectations that Netanyahu would be compelled to wrap up the Gaza campaign as a concession to Trump – Netanyahu is showing that on this matter he retains agency and the final say.
First, Hamas wants the IDF to pull back to the lines agreed to in the ceasefire reached in January, including a withdrawal from the Morag corridor and a significant reduction of the current operational footprint.
Since the last ceasefire, the IDF has expanded its presence in key areas, and Hamas wants that reversed. Israel is not inclined.
Second, Hamas wants to restore the UN-coordinated aid distribution system that allowed it to control humanitarian assistance and maintain power. Israel, by contrast, wants to preserve the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created earlier this year, which limits Hamas’s ability to hijack aid for its own purposes.
Israel needs both – control of most of the Morag Corridor and the GHF to distribute aid – to establish a Hamas-free “humanitarian city” in Rafah, something Hamas is adamantly opposed to.
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have indicated they will bolt the government if the Doha talks render a ceasefire agreement that leaves Hamas with a grip on aid distribution or sees the IDF retreat significantly.
By coming home from DC without a deal and then taking the strongest military action in Gaza in months, the prime minister is sending them a signal that he hasn’t abandoned the war’s central objectives, and that – in turn – they shouldn’t abandon the government. In the end, Hamas will have to lay down its arms and be stripped of any governing or military capabilities in Gaza.
What remains elusive is how to square all of that with what was once the war’s overriding parallel aim: the return of all the hostages.
For now, Netanyahu is signaling that the defeat of Hamas remains the guiding priority and that any deal that undermines that goal, even if it brings some hostages home, is not worth the cost. That message is directed at Hamas, at Trump, at the international community, and perhaps most urgently, at his own political base.
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