On August 8, 2025, Israel’s cabinet endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest plan: to assert full control of the Gaza Strip, beginning with Gaza City. The move would force roughly a million residents south by Oct. 7, two years to the day since Hamas’s massacre. The symbolism of Netanyahu’s timing is not subtle. It is meant to project resolve, to frame the war as unfinished business, to tie the next operation to that trauma. But in truth, it reveals not a plan to end the war, but a plan to never end it.

Netanyahu’s long game is decades in the making. This month marks 20 years since Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza, a dramatic withdrawal with no “day after” plan. That vacuum paved the way for Hamas’s takeover and years of blockade, rockets, and reprisals. Successive governmen

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