Israel appears to end Gaza ceasefire with US backing
Netanyahu always said the truce was temporary and used the 'war pause' to grab more land in the West Bank and go after those in Israel who opposed the Kahanist war aims of his far-right coalition
Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP
A man walks through the rubble in a school-turned-camp after an Israeli strike in Gaza City on March 18, 2025.
Israel appears to end Gaza ceasefire with US backing
Israel has killed more than 300 Palestinians in Gaza after declaring an end to the ceasefire there and conducting a barrage of intense air strikes on densely populated urban areas in the Strip.
The White House confirmed that President Trump was consulted ahead of the attack, while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said the attack was in response to Hamas’s “repeated refusal” to extend the first phase of the ceasefire instead of moving to phase 2 as initially agreed.
The air strikes hit densely-populated urban areas, makeshift schools, residential buildings, and areas sheltering displaced people in tents and come in the midst of a deepening man-made humanitarian crisis in Gaza because Israel has banned the entry of food, water, medicine and electricity from entering the Strip for more than two weeks, in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan.
The ceasefire was reached in January, just days before Trump's inauguration. At the time, Israel was recently seen as having been pressured by Washington into accepting it. Some even saw it as the beginning of the end for the coalition government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli troops were partially withdrawn, aid (that should never have been withheld) was allowed in, and tens of thousands of north Gaza residents were allowed to return home, as Israeli hostages were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu has sought to shift the blame for the failures that led to the attack on 7 October 2023, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken into Gaza as hostages.
Yet in recent weeks and months, several senior officials, including the defence minister, have gone. The resignation of the army’s Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, took effect in early March. On a roll, this week Netanyahu said he was now trying to fire the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency.
Since the ceasefire, Israel's far-right coalition has been restive, itching to go back to war
Restive far right
But since the ceasefire, Israel's far-right coalition has been restive, itching to go back to war. Almost a year and a half after the gloves came off when Hamas attacked Israel, Netanyahu seems as intent as ever on continuing his plans of "eradicating Hamas".
Agreeing to the truce relieved some domestic pressure on him from hostages' families and supporters by getting some out, assuaging a groundswell of anger from the Israeli public, and helped him patch things up with US President Donald Trump, who harboured a grudge from 2020 when Trump called Joe Biden to congratulate him on an election win that Trump was still disputing.
But Netanyahu has always been clear that the truce was not the end of the war; it was only temporary. He set the war aim of eradicating Hamas, yet the organisation is clearly still functioning, as the hostage release videos are intended to show.
During the ceasefire, Israel was not sitting on its hands. It took the opportunity to turn its military might onto the West Bank, most notably to Jenin, where Israeli troops attacked a huge Palestinian refugee camp in the largest such operation in decades.
Beyond Palestine, Israel has also gone after its stated enemies in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen, all the while the US was actively shielding Israel from international pressure. This support is central to understanding why Israel has felt emboldened to continue its war on Palestinians despite the international pressure and court cases against it.
While US President Joe Biden offered occasional tepid criticism of Israeli conduct in Gaza, Trump pushed Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire while threatening Hamas with "hell" if it did not hand over the remaining hostages.
He also spoke about Gaza as a real estate opportunity, severed ties with the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister.
A free hand with Trump?
With Trump in office, Netanyahu no longer faces even minimal criticism from Washington and seems to have unconditional support for all Israeli aims, including its continuing slow-motion process of effectively annexing the West Bank.
For Netanyahu, whose first term as prime minister began almost 30 years ago (in 1996), Trump is the ultimate green light, not just abroad but domestically, too. Since 2009, he has helped shape Israel's collective attitudes. In terms of voting habits and opinions, the Israeli public has been moving steadily to the right since the 1970s.
It is now at the point where Kahanism is resurgent. Based on the view of Meir Kahane, this is an extreme religious Zionist ideology. Kahane felt that most Arabs living in Israel were the enemies of Jews and should have no voting rights in what he hoped would be a Jewish theocratic state.
Followers of the late Brooklyn-born Rabbi and founder of the Jewish anti-Arab movement Meir Kahane pray at his grave at the Givat Shaul cemetery on the outskirts of occupied Jerusalem.
Many in Netanyahu's ruling coalition harbour the goal of achieving full control over 'Eretz Israel' (historic Palestine). To this end, they have been seeking to subordinate Israel's (currently) independent judiciary to politicians. For years, Israel's Supreme Court has stymied the far-right idealogues, and now they want revenge.
New laws (dubbed "reforms" by Netanyahu's allies) would give politicians power over the appointment of judges, subordinate the government's legal advisor, and prevent the Supreme Court from ruling out laws as unconstitutional.
Between January and October 2023, these reforms drove hundreds of thousands of Israelis onto the streets in protest, a weekly occurrence that left Netanyahu deeply unpopular, only ending with the attack from Gaza and the mass mobilisation that followed. Israel has been on a war footing ever since.
Resuming old battles
Netanyahu used the war to expand his coalition and gradually rebuilt public support, bringing Gideon Sa'ar into government to end the threat of early elections. Having mended relations with Trump, he has returned to his judicial overhaul while also seeking greater control over Israel's security apparatus.
In early March, Justice Minister Yariv Levin revived the plan and sought to remove Gali Baharav-Miara as Israel's attorney general. Levin has also refused to recognise the appointment of Justice Yitzhak Amit as President of Israel's Supreme Court despite his being elected at the end of January.
Under Trump, Netanyahu no longer faces even minimal US criticism and seems to have his unconditional support
For Netanyahu, the potential prize of reining in Israel's judiciary is an escape from his corruption trial. For his allies, it is the passage of laws that senior judges would otherwise find unconstitutional, such as the forced displacement of Palestinians and the confiscation of their lands and homes.
This would further entrench Israel's system of apartheid and expose it to greater international criticism, but Netanyahu is unlikely to care. His plan is working. The army's new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, served as Netanyahu's personal military secretary for three years from 2012-15. Just two days after his appointment, Zamir said he intended to resume the war in Gaza with even greater force, saying Hamas must be "completely eradicated, no matter the cost".
Likewise, Netanyahu barred the heads of Mossad (Israel's foreign intelligence agency) and Shin Bet (its domestic intelligence agency) from participating in the ceasefire negotiations because they had supported an end to the war.
Apportioning blame
Shin Bet's investigation into the failings that led to 1,200 Israelis being killed on 7 October saw the agency take some responsibility, but it also laid some of the blame at Netanyahu's door, saying government policy was a contributing factor.
Netanyahu rejected calls from Mossad and Shin Bet for an official commission of inquiry into the events of October 7, which would look at the political decisions made before and after the attack, because he feared it would assign him a share of the responsibility and lead to demands for his removal.
Israeli Army Chief Herzi Halevi (2L) and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar (2R) at the Hostages and Missing Persons situation room during the return of the four hostages from Gaza on January 25, 2025.
In that context, he has resumed his push to end the Israeli judiciary's independence and sought the removal of Israel's attorney general and the head of Shin Bet (alongside those of the army chief and defence minister). If he succeeds, he will have more in common with authoritarians than democrats.
More broadly, seeking government dominance over the security establishment and Supreme Court are part of a broader effort to dismantle what remains of liberal and tolerant Israel, replacing it with right-wing, conservative, and ideological forces who want to force Palestinians out, giving their land to settlers.
The consequences of Israel's changing nature are hugely significant not just for Palestinians but for the wider Arab region. The urgency and resolve needed to confront it cannot be overstated.
