Localized Gaza ceasefires crumble Israel's former war strategy - analysis

It’s easy for the pro-Israel crowd to cry foul about global media accusations of mass starvation in Gaza – being made knowingly or naively in the service of Hamas – given that there is a dangerous food shortage, and there are likely individuals who are starving, but no one has been able to actually prove mass starvation.

And it’s easy for Israeli critics to condemn Israel for “more genocides” over the situation.

But the brutal truth is that the IDF admits there is a dangerous food situation in Gaza, even if short of the claimed mass starvation, and an awful public-relations situation there – all of this because of several Israeli policies that some in the defense establishment warned about but that were overruled by the political echelon.

For much of 2024, or after US President Donald Trump took office in 2025, some elements of the political echelon – with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eventually joining them sometime late last year – started to pressure the IDF to make radical policy changes to break Hamas’s control of food in Gaza. This was one major element of undermining not only its military power but also its political power.

These same elements, again, with support from Netanyahu, eventually pressed for the IDF to take over large portions of Gaza to break Hamas’s political control over the civilian population.

What else could have been done other than just giving Hamas everything it wanted on a silver platter?

Former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Herzi Halevi and former defense minister Yoav Galant had pressed to try out much smaller versions of the GHF project as early as 2024 in northern Gaza, although not in southern Gaza.

They wanted to try to have small areas in Zeitoun, Beit Hanun, and other parts of northern Gaza receive food from a humanitarian entity other than the standard United Nations-sponsored entity, which was allowing Hamas to take control of the food aid.

Halevi and Gallant said Netanyahu and some of his hard-right coalition partners had blocked the initiatives as far back as in early 2024. They did not want to carry out any activities that smacked of a postwar Gaza period.

His coalition partners wanted to keep the war going and were hoping to eventually find an opening to resettle Gaza with Israelis.

Before taking larger responsibility for a larger number of Palestinians, a smaller-scale GHF-style experiment to test its potential would have been able to work through some of the issues in building a radical new and untested non-UN alternative to providing food aid.

Also, this would have happened in a time period when the Palestinians had relatively more food saved in inventory storage areas, i.e., if there were hiccups with a few food deliveries, the Palestinian civilian population would not be in any immediate danger.

In contrast, the current Israeli policy since March was to loudly and proudly block all new food aid until May to try to pressure Hamas, and then open GHF in a framework when Palestinian civilians were already at one of the worst food shortages of the war (even if not at a point of mass starvation).

While GHF took over food aid for southern and central Gaza, the IDF allowed UN groups to continue to handle food aid in northern Gaza.

Part of the time, Hamas continued to control the northern Gaza food aid, and part of the time, the IDF tried to get the international aid groups to hew close to standards and tactics that would prevent Hamas from controlling the food.

Halevi and Gallant had warned that such a sudden, ambitious Gaza-wide food-control project would be very difficult to operate successfully on a practical level.

They had also cautioned that such a Gaza-wide project, especially wrapped in with a policy of taking over the majority of Gaza’s territory, could lead to the IDF and Israel being stuck with paying for and delivering the food aid to the Palestinians, while also giving Hamas the prize of being able to easily mark Israel as causing “starvation.”

Halevi and Gallant had urged both smaller pilot GHF-style, food-aid programs as well as handing Gaza over, e.g., to Egypt, the UAE, and some foothold for the Palestinian Authority.

This initiative might have failed back then for many reasons, but we will never know.

Netanyahu and his coalition partners had hoped that with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir now in charge, taking over 75% of Gazan territory, blocking food aid from March until May, and then rolling out the GHF and new limits on food-aid groups in May, that Hamas’s political power would be wrecked.

If successful, this would have the near-term benefit of compelling Hamas to return more hostages in exchange for another IDF ceasefire and withdrawal. In the long term, this could have the benefit of permanently ending Hamas’s political power in Gaza.

Maybe Netanyahu still has an outside shot at achieving his goal. Maybe continued IDF control of 75% of Gaza and the threat of the military taking over additional areas will finally get Hamas to return more hostages on Netanyahu’s terms.

But on Sunday, it seemed like the policies had come crashing down.

Israel has dropped many of its registry tactics to try to keep Hamas from controlling the food in Gaza.

It has greatly increased the number of trucks of food aid per day that it is approving for entry into Gaza, which will likely allow Hamas to start storing more aid for future months.

And it still cannot claim that Gaza is flush with food aid, focusing on 600 trucks ready to go to Gazans, being that from January to March, 600 trucks were going into Gaza every day.

Israel is also providing a “localized” ceasefire and trying to present this as a non-ceasefire, which only covers 25% of Gaza.

But for the food to get to that 25%, a much larger portion of Gaza will need to be under ceasefire status – maybe even the majority of Gaza.

Moreover, all or nearly all of the Hamas terrorists are hiding in the 25% of humanitarian areas where the “localized” ceasefire is holding securely in place, and some of their smaller numbers in other places can now make their way to those areas to obtain immunity.

This could also make Hamas less likely to rush toward a formal ceasefire and hostage deal if it is getting much of what it needs unilaterally by having successfully used the world and Israel’s own strategic errors to pressure Jerusalem into giving up much of its leverage.

Or it might agree to a deal, having achieved much of what it wanted with global media pressure on Israel.

Of all of the Israeli errors, the costliest and seemingly least beneficial was the March-May 2025 period of completely blocking food aid.

It does not matter that there was no mass starvation then, because so much aid had entered between January and March that there was stored inventory.

It also does not matter that food aid was restored in May before any mass starvation took place.

By taking such a position, Israel made it hard to have credibility with the global community afterward when trying to campaign for the GHF as a legitimate way to replace the old way of food distribution controlled by Hamas.

And it made it hard to get the world to believe that Israel was not trying to starve Gaza. (It also does not help that some Israeli ministers are publicly in favor of starving Gaza.)

The GHF may still have some successes.

Soon, it will likely have handed out more than 100 million meals in Gaza.

But all of these other “original sins,” along with logistical and tactical failures by the mixed IDF-GHF coordination, have made it very hard to promote GHF as a success globally.