With Talks Stalled, Israel Puts War Back on the Table

 

News Analysis

With Talks Stalled, Israel Puts War Back on the Table

 

While Israel has stopped short of a ground invasion for now, its new strikes in Gaza seem to be an effort to force concessions from Hamas.

 

Patrick Kingsley

By Patrick Kingsley

Reporting from Jerusalem

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-war.html

March 18, 2025

Updated 3:58 a.m. ET

 

Israel’s overnight attacks on Gaza stopped short of an immediate ground invasion, suggesting that its leaders may be waiting to gauge Hamas’s reaction before returning to a full-scale ground war, analysts said on Tuesday.

 

The Israeli strikes, which health officials said killed more than 250 people, followed weeks of fruitless negotiations on an extension to the country’s truce with Hamas. The talks stalled after Israel pushed Hamas to release significant numbers of hostages, a move that Hamas was unwilling to make without assurances that Israel would allow it to remain in power in Gaza after the war ends.

 

The nature of Israel’s strikes on Tuesday morning suggested that its leadership was trying to force Hamas to compromise in those talks, a deadly and risky tactic that could still lead to full-scale war, analysts said.

 

By focusing on missile strikes instead of ground operations, Israel is seeking “to push Hamas to show more flexibility,” said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs and a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence.

 

“Personally I don’t think it’s likely Hamas will be ready to give up their red lines,” Mr. Milstein said. “I’m quite concerned that within a few days we will find ourselves in a limited war of attrition: ongoing airstrikes but no readiness from Hamas to give up.”

 

Six hours after the bombardment began, Hamas still had not fired back — either because its military capabilities were so degraded during the earlier phases of the war, or because it sought to avoid a stronger response from Israel.

 

But it showed no public signs of backing down in the negotiations. In a statement, Hamas condemned the strikes, saying that Israel had condemned the remaining hostages in Gaza to an “unknown fate” and calling for it to be held “fully responsible for violating and overturning the agreement.”

 

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in a statement that Israel’s goal was “to destroy Hamas,” expressing hope that the new attacks would evolve into an operation “completely different to what has been done so far.”

 

But in its official statement announcing the resumption of heavy military action, the Israeli government was more cautious. It avoided any mention of how long the operation would last, or whether it would include the kind of ground invasion required to force Hamas from power. By mid-morning, the Israeli military ordered Palestinian civilians to leave two areas close to the Israel-Gaza border, but it again stopped short of saying that it was deploying troops and tanks there.

 

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

 

Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley