Gaza is not Netanyahu’s exit; it may be his political end

Benjamin Netanyahu is looking for an alternative war.

After his room for action against Iran became limited, and after Washington began pressuring Israel to restrain its actions in southern Lebanon, Gaza seems to be the only battlefield left for him. He needs a war to survive politically. He needs an open front to escape domestic questions, failure, and the image of a leader who promised to reshape the Middle East but now waits for Washington to allow or stop him.

But Gaza is not an exit. Gaza may be his final trap.

Since the ceasefire, Israel has not treated the agreement as a path to end the war. It has treated it as a temporary pause before another round.

The agreement was emptied of its real meaning and reduced to one demand: disarming Hamas. The priority was no longer restoring life, opening crossings, rebuilding Gaza, or stopping the killing of Palestinians.

Everything became tied to one Israeli condition, used by Netanyahu’s government to say: “Nothing is over yet”.

This is the game. Netanyahu does not want a real agreement in Gaza because a real agreement means the end of the war. And the end of the war means the beginning of his accountability. That is why he needs Gaza to remain burning, or at least ready to burn again at any moment. He wants to tell Israelis: I am still leading, I am still fighting, I still control the initiative.

But this time, the calculations are different.

Any new invasion of Gaza will not be just another military operation inside a destroyed strip of land. Gaza is now connected to every front in the region. If the war returns, tension may return to Bab al-Mandab. Yemen may move again. Iran, or its allies, may say that recent understandings with Washington are no longer valid. Pressure may return to Hormuz, energy markets, and global shipping. This is exactly what Trump does not want now.

Trump does not want a new war in Gaza because it will not stay in Gaza. He knows markets have not fully recovered. He knows energy prices cannot absorb another shock. He knows American reserves are not in a comfortable position.

So, he may be forced to restrain Netanyahu; not because he cares about Palestinians, but because he fears that a new Israeli adventure could become an American domestic crisis.

This is where Netanyahu becomes trapped.

If he does not return to Gaza, he loses his image before the Israeli right, which feeds on permanent war. If he does return to Gaza, he may clash with Washington, Egypt, and regional fronts that Trump does not want open now. In both cases, war no longer gives him strength as it once did. It exposes his weakness.

The bigger problem for Netanyahu is that returning to Gaza will not give him a clear victory. What can he still say? Gaza has been destroyed. Tens of thousands have been killed. The population is trapped. Infrastructure has been crushed. Yet he did not achieve the “total victory” he promised. If he returns to war now, he will return to the same hole he failed to escape.

He will repeat the killing, but he will not produce victory. He will increase destruction, but he will not create a solution. He will ask Israeli society for more time, more money, and more blood; without answering the basic question: where does this end?

That is political suicide.

Netanyahu built his last years on the illusion of force. He believed he could engineer Palestine, then engineer the region, then drag the United States behind his project. But he is now discovering that power has limits. Israel cannot keep all fronts open forever. Washington is not always ready to pay the price of his adventures.

He wanted to appear as the leader who changed the Middle East. Instead, he now looks like a man escaping from one failure to another.

For Netanyahu, Gaza is not only a military battlefield. It is his last political card. But if he uses it again, he may burn what remains of his political future. Returning to war would mean he has no plan except war, no vision except survival, and no answer to failure except creating a bigger failure.

That is why Gaza may be his end, not his rescue.

If Trump restrains him, Netanyahu will look like a leader who has lost freedom of action. If he defies Trump and goes back to war, he may open doors he cannot close: Bab al-Mandab, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and global markets. In every scenario, Netanyahu pays the price of the illusion he created with his own hands.

He may try to escape into Gaza to save himself. But he may discover too late that Gaza is no longer a battlefield he can run to. It is a mirror showing his political end.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.