Israelis want out of the Gaza war. But all the exit routes feel like traps
The world might see us as bloodthirsty — they couldn’t be more wrong
Families and supporters of Israelis held hostage in Gaza since October 2023 hold a protest calling for action to secure their release outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on July 31. Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty Images
“What hasn’t been achieved in 20 months of war will not be achieved now,” former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Avi Mayer wrote in a recent Substack post.
The moment I read that sentence, things fell into place. All my frustration and confusion over where the war in Gaza is going made sense. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised us far too many times that we’re just a step away from victory. And yet, some 16 months since he began claiming that, we seem no closer to the “total victory” that we’ve been promised.
Almost two years since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel is emotionally worn out. Soldiers are still dying in Gaza. Every week seems to bring a new IDF manoeuvre we’re supposed to believe will change everything, or a threat from the government that will, we’re told, finally topple Hamas.
And yet, nothing changes.
Israelis, by and large, no longer think we can defeat Hamas the way Netanyahu keeps promising. We want out. But we also know we can’t leave Gaza while Hamas is still holding hostages, and is all but certain to reassert control over the strip the moment Israel leaves.
You can see that tension play out in polling data, which shows that Israelis are desperate to end this nightmare, but unwilling to end it in a way that sends us back to square one.
On July 11, Channel 12 published a poll showing that 74% of Israelis — including a majority of voters who back Netanyahu’s governing coalition — would support a deal to bring all the hostages home, in exchange for ending the war.
But when pressed on the details of the deal, voters are less sure. The very next day, a different poll was released that found that 81% of respondents wanted Israel to reject Hamas’ terms for a deal, which, as the poll laid out, include a full IDF withdrawal from Gaza, leaving Hamas in power, and releasing a ghastly number of convicted Palestinian terrorists.
If you live abroad, you might assume Israelis still back the war out of a belief in some eventual victory. But speak honestly to people here — not in the Knesset, but in taxis, cafes, and on the street — and you’ll hear something else entirely. Yes, people want the hostages back. Yes, people want to dismantle Hamas. But no one really believes that’s around the corner.
Hamas won’t vanish. Even though the Arab League is now throwing its weight behind a proposal that asserts “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority,” if there’s one thing Israelis have learnt from our history, it’s not to trust international institutions to ensure our security — and to trust the Palestinian Authority even less.
We know, too, that Gaza won’t become, as President Donald Trump suggested months ago, a Middle Eastern “riviera,” flush with investments from Manhattan, London or Dubai.
And we know, deep down, that the war we’re fighting now won’t actually prevent the next one.
But what’s the alternative? Withdraw unilaterally and let Hamas declare victory? Leave the hostages behind?
What outsiders call “support for the war” is really just a refusal to lose. A refusal to betray the dead, the hostages, and the soldiers still inside Gaza.
But support is not the same as belief. And very few still believe.
That’s what makes this war feel so different. In past wars, Israelis had a sense of purpose. In 1948, ‘67 and ‘73, brief and decisive wars were powered by a belief in survival. In 2014, at least, the conflict was governed by a need to restore calm.
Now? We’re fighting because we don’t know how to stop.
Why can’t we stop? If you ask Netanyahu, it’s because Hamas has no interest in coming to an agreement and keeps torpedoing talks with unrealistic demands. And while Netanyahu may well be right, he’s also given Israelis plenty of reason to believe he’s dragging this out for his own political benefit.
But despite our justified suspicions of our prime minister, we’ve also grown wary of the constant reports in Israeli media — much of which is obsessively anti-Netanyahu — that he’s the real force impeding a hostage release deal.
If you ask me what Israelis want most, it’s this: A way out that doesn’t feel like defeat. A deal that brings the hostages home and ensures Hamas can’t regroup. A government that levels with us, instead of pretending the same well-trodden path leads somewhere new.
The problem is that those goals now seem incompatible, and no one in power has been willing to make a hard choice between them.
And so, we remain paralyzed. Not because we love war, or because we want revenge, but because we suspect all the possible exits could be traps.
It’s a nightmare loop. Hamas survives, so we stay. We stay, and the price rises. The world grows more hostile. The hostages remain stuck and imperiled. Every time there’s a potential deal, someone finds a way to kill it.
And the world misreads this paralysis.
Even parts of the Jewish diaspora mistake our fear for bloodlust; our fatigue for cruelty; and our confusion for unmitigated aggression.
But inside Israel, this war doesn’t feel like a conquest. It feels like being stuck in a tunnel with no light.
We want it to end. We just don’t know how.
