Attacking Qatar shows Israel doesn’t want a Gaza ceasefire

For almost two years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone out of his way to avoid agreeing to a Gaza ceasefire.

In November 2023, a deal saw the release of 110 captives taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
But a week later, Netanyahu refused to extend the ceasefire, leaving the rest of the captives behind.

Since then, whenever a ceasefire has seemed to be within reach, Netanyahu has shifted the goalposts. In May 2024, Hamas accepted a proposed deal, but Israel denied agreeing and invaded Rafah instead. By September, Netanyahu had introduced a new condition: permanent Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor – the area between Egypt and Gaza – which both Cairo and Hamas rejected.

Later, after pushing the position that only a partial deal would be agreed to, Netanyahu changed the parameters and insisted that Israel would only agree to a deal that would see all the captives released – and not in return for an end to the war.

Even when allies advanced proposals, Netanyahu sidestepped them. Also in May 2024, then-US President Joe Biden announced that Israel had offered a ceasefire plan, but Netanyahu stayed silent, and no deal followed.

When a deal was agreed and implemented, Netanyahu ensured it broke down. In January 2025, under pressure from incoming US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu accepted a phased ceasefire deal that would continue until a final settlement to end the war was agreed. Yet by March, Israel unilaterally violated it, resuming bombardment and blockade.

Plates spinning
The Israeli government would insist that deals haven’t been reached because the Palestinian group Hamas has not been an honest broker, and because it will attempt to rearm must be eradicated.
But after the attack in Doha, Einav Zangauker, the mother of Israeli captive Matan Zangauker, who has been held in Gaza for almost two years, was clear about who was to blame.

“Why does the prime minister [Netanyahu] insist on blowing up any deal that comes close to happening? Why?” she asked rhetorically.

Why indeed.

Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. One of the reasons for his success is his ability to keep multiple plates spinning – to juggle different priorities, even if they are sometimes contradictory, without resolving them fully.

Being able to juggle these priorities allows Netanyahu to push away decisions that could lead to him losing support from the public or from his political allies. And in a country like Israel, where parliamentary politics is based on who can keep the biggest coalition, that is vital.

Netanyahu is also facing domestic legal trouble – he is on trial for corruption – and staying in power is most likely his best bet at avoiding prison.

Coming back to the question of a Gaza ceasefire, Netanyahu has a fundamental problem: he is beholden to the messianic far right to prop up his government, and they have made it clear: an end to the war at this stage will see them walk away from the prime minister’s coalition, almost certainly causing it to collapse.

The far right – Israelis like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – want to push Palestinians out of Gaza and bring in Israeli settlers to live in the land left empty by those ethnically cleansed.

Netanyahu might not be completely averse to that goal, but he also understands the difficulty in achieving it. Even Israel would be stretched militarily if it were to try to conquer and keep the whole of the Gaza Strip, and months or years of high-intensity conflict would cause more dissent from a military that is heavily reliant on calling up thousands of Israelis as reservists.

And, of course, such a brazen attempt at ethnic cleansing would further isolate Israel internationally.