'Profoundly Damning': NYT Report Says Netanyahu Prolonged War on Gaza to Stay in Power

An explosive new report from The New York Times flatly contends that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "prolonged the war in Gaza" to stay in power and avoid potential criminal prosecution.

The Times' reporting reveals that Netanyahu in April 2024 was close to signing off on a six-week cease-fire proposal that would have led to the release of more than 30 hostages captured by Hamas six months earlier and "would have created a window for negotiations with Hamas over a permanent truce."

However, Netanyahu abruptly changed course when Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardliner who has long demanded the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza, warned Netanyahu he and his allies would quit their coalition government if any cease-fire deal were reached. Such a move would collapse the coalition and force new elections, which polls at the time suggested Netanyahu would lose.

According to the Times, the Israeli prime minister tossed the cease-fire proposal away and kept the war grinding on until this very day, even expanding military operations into nations such as Lebanon and Iran.

"Under political pressure from those coalition allies, Netanyahu slowed down cease-fire negotiations at crucial moments, missing windows in which Hamas was less opposed to a deal," the Times writes. "He avoided planning for a postwar power transition, making it harder to direct the war toward an endgame. He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing. When momentum toward a cease-fire seemed to grow, Netanyahu ascribed sudden significance to military objectives that he previously seemed less interested in pursuing, such as the capture of the southern city Rafah and later the occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. And when an extended cease-fire was finally forged in January, he broke the truce in March in part to keep his coalition intact."

The report also details American efforts to persuade Netanyahu that he would politically benefit by reaching a cease-fire deal that would release hostages by referencing opinion polls showing that more than 50% of Israeli voters would back such a move.

"Not 50% of my voters," Netanyahu responded, according to the Times' sources.

The toll taken on Palestinians in Gaza has been horrific. At least 57,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed as a result of Israel's war, and researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said earlier this year that it's possible the actual number of civilians killed is significantly higher than that. Additionally, civilians in Gaza are facing widespread food insecurity and even run the risk of getting shot by the Israeli military while standing in line to receive food.

The report on Netanyahu's maneuvers to prolong the Gaza war drew a disgusted reaction from Ron Ben-Tovim, a senior lecturer at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel.

"I no longer know if there's anything that will bring down this government, but an investigation showing how and when exactly Netanyahu prolonged a baseless war of destruction to stay in power should end his political career," he wrote on X.

Joel Swanson, a scholar of modern Jewish intellectual history at Sarah Lawrence College, similarly expressed his disgust with Netanyahu.

"Everything in this report is just so profoundly damning of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the worst and cruelest world leaders of our age," he wrote on Bluesky.

Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, argued that the Times report also delivered a damning portrayal of former U.S. President Joe Biden.

"Portraying Biden as feckless and cranky at constantly being conned by Netanyahu really undersells his culpability," he wrote on X. "Netanyahu couldn't have massacred Gaza and revived his political career without Biden’s total support, which Biden chose to give."