How ceasefire talks and coalition politics shaped Israel’s war strategy

At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, Netanyahu was awoken by a WhatsApp message from a senior officer: Hamas had launched its assault. On a safe name moments later, he ordered the assassination of Hamas management and requested, “Can we take out their management?”—a pointy distinction to his prewar resistance to placing Gaza. When informed the IDF had hit 1,000 targets, he scoffed: “1,000? I would like 5,000.”

Even within the struggle’s earliest hours, Netanyahu was already crafting a political defend. “I noticed nothing within the intelligence,” he stated in one in every of his first conversations. In keeping with the Occasions, he ordered conferences to go unrecorded, aides to change official transcripts, and even had senior officers looked for hidden recorders. A labeled doc was leaked to a international outlet in what gave the impression to be an effort to discredit his critics—together with hostage households.

As ceasefire negotiations progressed, Netanyahu inserted new army targets—resembling capturing Rafah and seizing the Egyptian border—targets the army didn’t deem important. These delays got here at a heavy price in hostage lives and appeared, the investigation notes, to serve a political objective: stopping a deal that would fracture his coalition.

In April 2024, an in depth six-week ceasefire proposal—together with the discharge of over 30 hostages—almost made it to a cupboard vote. Saudi Arabia, seeing an opportunity to normalize ties with Israel, was able to again the deal. However throughout the assembly, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned: “If such an settlement is offered, you now not have a authorities.” Netanyahu folded. “No, no—there’s no such factor,” he replied, then whispered to his advisors, “Don’t current the plan.”

What started as a nationwide disaster turned, in Netanyahu’s fingers, right into a stage for political endurance. Because the struggle expanded throughout borders and dragged on for months, the prime minister emerged not as a unifying statesman, however as a tactician bent on outlasting the chaos—no matter the price.