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'Profoundly Damning': NYT Report Says Netanyahu Prolonged War on Gaza to Stay in Power
"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," reports The New York Times.
Jul 11, 2025
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."
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10 Children Among at Least 17 Killed in Israeli Bombing of Gaza Charity Clinic Queue
"This is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza," said the head of Project HOPE.
Jul 10, 2025
An Israeli strike on Palestinians waiting in line outside a charity clinic in central Gaza killed at least 17 people including 10 children Thursday, a day that saw scores more Gazans killed throughout the embattled enclave.
The Palestinians were killed even as progress was made toward a cease-fire agreement, with Hamas agreeing to release 10 hostages held since October 2023.
Eyad Amawi, director of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, told The Washington Post that the facility received the bodies of at least 17 victims of the strike on the Altayara Clinic, which is operated by Project HOPE, a Washington, D.C.-based humanitarian aid group. More than 30 others were wounded in the attack.
Drop Site News published the names and ages of 15 people killed in the strike, who include seven preteen children and toddlers.
Warning: The "show more" link in the following social media post shows images of death.
"The scene was so painful, more than you can imagine," local journalist Dua al-Hazarin told the Post.
According to the newspaper:
In footage [al-Hazarin] took and shared on social media, dust rises from the streets as the high-pitched wails and screams of children ring out. Women gather around the body of a child with blood seeping from his head. Elsewhere, bodies lie on the ground with pools of blood around them. One bloodied little girl is motionless in a pink dress. Next to her is a man hunched over, with blood seeping from his head. A woman lies still. Their conditions are unclear. The camera continues to pan over more bodies, many of them children, collapsed across the pavement.
Victims were waiting in line to receive treatment for chronic illnesses, infections, and malnutrition amid an ongoing starvation crisis caused by Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza, which officials say has caused the deaths of hundreds of residents, many of them children and infants, since October 2023. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported last month that more than 5,000 Gazan children under the age of 5 were treated for malnutrition in May alone.
"Project HOPE's health clinics are a place of refuge in Gaza where people bring their small children, women access pregnancy and postpartum care, people receive treatment for malnutrition, and more," Rabih Torbay, the charity's CEO, said in a statement. "Yet, this morning, innocent families were mercilessly attacked as they stood in line waiting for the doors to open."
"This is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza, even as cease-fire talks continue," Torbay added. "This cannot continue. Project HOPE urgently calls for an immediate cease-fire, unimpeded humanitarian access, and a dramatic scale-up of aid to meet the urgent needs of Gaza's civilian population."
No Project HOPE staff were harmed in the strike, which occurred before the clinic opened in the morning. The charity said it would indefinitely suspend operations at the Altayara Clinic "as a precautionary measure." The attack was at least the second one targeting a Project HOPE clinic in Gaza during the war.
Hundreds of humanitarian aid workers have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since during the U.S.-backed annihilation of the coastal strip, including over 300 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East as well as staff of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen, and other organizations.
Near-daily massacres of Palestinian aid-seekers at distribution points operated by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have also killed nearly 800 people, according to sources including the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and troops have admitted to receiving orders to fire guns and artillery at aid-seekers, regardless of whether they posed any security threat.
An IDF spokesperson told Haaretz that Thursday's Altayara Clinic strike targeted a member of Hamas' elite Nukhba force who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. The spokesperson said the IDF is investigating the incident, and that it "regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians and works to minimize such harm as much as possible."
However, following the October 7 attack the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
As a result, the majority of the at least 57,680 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been women and children, with the high civilian death toll prompting South Africa to file a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
UNICEF—which condemned Thursday's massacre—said in late May that more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli attacks in Gaza, which the U.N. agency has called "the world's most dangerous place to be a child."
The Gaza Health Ministry said aThursday that at least 82 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, including strikes on the crowded Nuseirat Market, a tent encampment housing forcibly displaced people on the outskirts of Khan Younis, and an apartment building in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, Hamas said Thursday that it would release 10 hostages kidnapped during the October 7 attack as part of a "commitment to the success" of ongoing negotiations for a cease-fire in the 21-month onslaught, a development that followed meetings between Netanyahu and U.S. leaders including President Donald Trump earlier this week to discuss a potential deal to end Israel's assault. The leaders also discussed an Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from throughout Gaza and concentrate them in a camp outside the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.
Trump said Wednesday that there was a "very good chance" of a cease-fire deal being reached, possibly as early as later this week. However, Netanyahu has scuppered past cease-fire efforts as they have neared the finish line—moves some critics say are meant to prolong the war in order to delay a reckoning in his ongoing criminal corruption trial.
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The Israeli Government Is the Real Threat to Peace and Stability in the Region
Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation.
Jul 08, 2025
Last week, the United Nations was scheduled to convene a special session promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel’s attack on Iran and the deadly exchanges that followed resulted in a postponement. While the rest of the world may have the luxury of tuning in or out to the plight of the Palestinian people, the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem only worsens. Their dire state is compounded by the feckless response of most nations to the ongoing tragedy. Instead of definitively condemning the genocide and the occupation, the best they can muster are hollow and sometimes banal pronouncements urging the parties to negotiate (as if there were something about which to negotiate) or professions of their support for a two-state solution (as if that were even possible at this point).
This hasn’t stopped some from proposing “peace plans,” calling for international peacekeepers, a “reformed Palestinian Authority,” and a disarming of Hamas. But these proposals also ignore two important realities: Israel’s rejection of every element of every plan put forward to date, and the fact that the Israeli occupation is so entrenched and has so distorted the realities on the ground in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem that the way forward to Palestinian independence has become far more complicated than it was at the time of the Oslo accords.
To better understand where we are and what must be done, my company has conducted annual polls in the occupied lands in order to assess Palestinian attitudes toward their current situation and their hopes for the future. What comes through quite clearly in these surveys is that the Palestinians in all three areas are in deep distress. As a result of the unique burdensome conditions Israel has imposed on them, there are distinct differences in the opinions of respondents in each area—toward their governance, the threats they face, and their hopes for the future. These cannot be ignored.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward.
For two decades, Gaza was severed from the rest of the Palestinian population and economically strangled by Israel, with Hamas being both punished and then rewarded by the Israeli government which sought to foster a division in Palestinian ranks. This was accomplished, enabling Hamas to grow in strength.
Israel’s war on Gaza has had devastating consequences for Palestinians. Our findings were able to quantify the magnitude of their losses. Almost two-thirds report having been forced to evacuate their families four or more times in the first 18 months. Most have lost family members. A full 70% say that their homes have been totally destroyed, with majorities reporting extreme scarcity of food, water, medical services, and adequate shelter.
The three-decades-long enforced closure of East Jerusalem has severed the city’s Palestinians from their compatriots in the rest of the occupied territories. Before closure, Palestinians from the West Bank came to Jerusalem for employment and services. After closure, Palestinians in East Jerusalem lost their customers, clients, and income, and were forced to become incorporated into the Israeli economy. Since October 7, our polls show majorities reporting heightened levels of economic and political distress.
There is also increased economic insecurity in the West Bank. Because Israeli policies retarded independent economic development, the two largest employers of Palestinians in the West Bank became securing permits to work as day laborers in Israel or Israeli settlements or working for the Palestinian Authority. After the war, Israel suspended work permits and restricted the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues to the PA, forcing the PA to reduce salaries. As a result, there has been a tripling of unemployment in the West Bank and an increased impoverishment of the population.
What has also grown are the severity of threats experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, emanating from settler violence, home demolitions, land seizures, forced expulsions, and raids from Israeli security forces. As a result, Palestinians report feeling increasingly threatened and insecure.
Our findings also demonstrate a Palestinian crisis of confidence in their own leadership. Palestinians in Gaza want little to do with Hamas, while those in the West Bank have diminished regard for the role of the PA. Gazans increasingly blame both Hamas and Israel for the war, and three-quarters of West Bank Palestinians are dissatisfied with the PA’s overall performance in response to the conflict. The PA, which once conveyed the promise of a Palestinian future, has increasingly come to be seen as humiliated by Israel, or even as an agent of the occupation.
These factors combined—the devastation created by the war and Israeli policies that have negatively impacted and created a loss of confidence in their leadership—define the crisis confronting Palestinians today. They know what they want—independence, security, an improved economy and better jobs, and improved services—but don’t see a clear path forward.
Flowing from this, our poll findings point to some disturbing signs of despair. When asked for their preferred strategies moving forward, the plurality of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza say they just want the situation to revert to pre-October 7 but with better paying jobs, and improved services and quality of life. And despite the finding that a majority of Gazans and a plurality of West Bank Palestinians still favor a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, almost two-thirds of respondents in all three areas say that, given current political conditions and facts on the ground, they believe the situation is now close to a one-state reality in which Israel controls Palestinians throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward. Current efforts of the international community focus on what Palestinians must do. But the real threat to peace and stability is the Israeli government which has rejected any and all proposals that call for an end to their assault on Gaza, withdrawal of their forces, a role for the PA in Gaza, and any suggestion that Palestinian independence or sovereignty be on the agenda. It is this intransigence that must be addressed. Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation, impose an international trusteeship with a peacekeeping force in the occupied territories, and make a long-term commitment to assisting Palestinians in establishing representative governance in an independent sovereign state—all of which our polling shows majorities or pluralities of Palestinians support.
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