Neither Israel nor Hamas is willing to tolerate the other’s existence.
Palestinians inspect damage following an Israeli airstrike in the Shejaiya residential district, east of Gaza City, on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Ahmad Salem / Bloomberg / Getty)
March 18, 2025, 1:25 PM ET
When Israel and Hamas finally agreed to a cease-fire in January, many outside observers credited the agreement to Donald Trump’s commitment to peace. Unlike Joe Biden, the story went, America’s new president was willing to put the screws to Israel to compel quiet in Gaza and would keep the deal on track.
These claims completely misread the map. Trump was less interested in ending the war than in being able to say he’d gotten some hostages out by the time he was inaugurated. Hamas was willing to release those hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but it was never going to agree to permanently lay down its arms. Israel, for its part, sought to extract as many of its people from Gaza as possible and wanted to stay on Trump’s good side so that he might grant them sweeping policy wins later on.
Two months in, this confluence of interests has come apart, and so has the cease-fire. The deal had been on life support for weeks, with no hostages coming out of Gaza and no humanitarian aid going in. No longer willing to grant Hamas a reprieve without receiving anything in return, Israel launched extensive air strikes across the Strip last night, reportedly killing hundreds, including civilians and top Hamas officials. The Trump administration supported the move—the National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told reporters that “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the cease-fire but instead chose refusal and war.”
More war is not what the people of Gaza or Israel want. But Gazans have no ability to control or restrain Hamas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not responsive to the preferences of the Israeli public. Polls have consistently shown that the majority of Israelis support continuing the cease-fire deal, even if it means releasing some of the worst convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons and ending the war without eradicating Hamas. “The military pressure endangers the hostages while an agreement brings them home,” wrote Yarden Bibas, a freed hostage whose wife and two children were murdered by Hamas. His sentiments were echoed by other former hostages, who vowed to keep fighting to bring all their fellow hostages home.
Read: Trump made the Gaza cease-fire happen
But Netanyahu is not listening to these voices. His coalition relies on the Israeli minority that prioritizes destroying Hamas over returning the hostages, and its far-right members hope to seed Gaza with Israeli settlements. Absent any real pressure from Trump, Netanyahu was always going to follow his base. And far from reining Israel in, Trump has floated relocating Gaza’s population, abolished Biden’s sanctions regime targeting violent Israeli settlers, and sanctioned the International Criminal Court over its prosecution of Israel. Likewise, Hamas’s patrons in Qatar have been seemingly unwilling or unable to get it to adopt a more conciliatory position.
But setting aside the interests and intentions of Hamas, Netanyahu, and Trump, the Gaza cease-fire was never going to hold for a more fundamental reason: Neither side is willing to tolerate the other’s continued existence. Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction. For decades, the terrorist group has plundered Gaza and sacrificed its people in pursuit of an unending messianic war to eliminate the Jewish state. Before October 7, Israelis dismissed this aspiration as unrealistic and believed that they were safe behind their high-tech border fence. After October 7, they no longer do.
For Hamas, the conflict will not end until Israel is gone. For Israel, the conflict cannot end until Hamas is gone. Which means that though a new temporary cease-fire might still be struck in the coming days or weeks, the war will go on.
