As international attention shifts toward southern Lebanon and the prospect of renewed confrontation between Israel and Iran, Israeli occupation forces continue to deepen the crisis in the Gaza Strip through a dual track of violent field escalation and paralysed political processes.
This timing raises serious questions about the credibility of international guarantees and the extent to which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, is leveraging regional conflicts as cover to impose a new reality in Gaza.
How is Israel leveraging regional tensions in Gaza politically and militarily?
Palestinian political analyst Iyad al Qarra argues that Israel is systematically emptying agreements of their substance while the global focus remains fixed on Iran. He describes the current approach as a “freezing strategy” designed to maintain the status quo on the ground for as long as possible.
According to this assessment, Israel is consolidating control over nearly 50 percent of Gaza’s territory, transforming these areas into buffer zones. Militarily, this prolonged freeze aims to exhaust Palestinians and prevent both the public base and resistance forces from regaining momentum. Politically, it seeks to deny Iran or other regional actors the ability to use Gaza as leverage within the broader regional conflict.
From the occupation’s perspective, keeping Gaza isolated and suffocated ensures it cannot evolve into an active front within a wider multi front confrontation.
Why does Israel continue violations despite the ceasefire?
Despite the ceasefire framework proposed under US President Donald Trump, daily violations and massacres continue. Israeli affairs expert Mohammad Halasa attributes this to Israel’s political comfort in Gaza.
According to Halasa, Tel Aviv faces no meaningful consequences for its actions. Its relationship with Washington remains intact, free from even symbolic criticism, while guarantor states maintain silence. This environment allows Gaza to function as a compensatory arena for Netanyahu.
When Israel fails to secure decisive outcomes in Lebanon or against Iran, escalation in Gaza becomes a fallback strategy to satisfy far right coalition partners such as Bezalel Smotrich and to reinforce domestic perceptions of military dominance.
Al Qarra further highlights a dangerous shift in international standards. Daily killings in Gaza no longer trigger strong condemnation and are increasingly treated as routine when compared to large scale massacres. This normalisation effectively grants Israel a green light to sustain its war of attrition.
On Wednesday evening, five Palestinians, including three children, were killed and others critically injured in an Israeli drone strike targeting civilians near a mosque in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.
On 14 April, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that Israel had committed 2,400 violations of the ceasefire agreement since it came into effect on 10 October, including killings, arrests, siege measures and deliberate starvation. These violations have resulted in 786 martyrs and 2,217 injuries, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Why has Trump’s plan stalled and the Gaza administration committee not been deployed?
Former US State Department official Thomas Warrick stated that Gaza has received reduced attention in Washington due to the war with Iran and ongoing developments in Lebanon.
He explained that the current US approach conditions any progress in Gaza on the disarmament of Hamas, a requirement that effectively blocks advancement. Hamas has rejected disarmament and has not agreed to transfer governance to a national administrative committee under these terms, which Washington views as a prerequisite for deploying any international stabilisation forces.
Warrick indicated that this framework has effectively placed Gaza’s political resolution “on hold”, pending the outcome of the confrontation with Iran.
In contrast, Al Qarra pointed to significant flexibility demonstrated by Hamas during recent discussions in Cairo regarding mechanisms to implement the next phases of the agreement. He emphasised that the movement has conveyed a genuine willingness to end the war permanently, aiming to remove pretexts used by Netanyahu to portray Palestinian resistance as obstructive.
Al Qarra concludes that Israel is deploying advanced military force, territorial control and the starvation of displaced civilians as tools of coercion to pressure Palestinians into total capitulation, specifically full disarmament.
The Palestinian position, he argues, is centred on sustained political and field resilience to demonstrate that Israel’s freezing strategy will fail to achieve its security objectives, and that regional stability cannot be built through the suffocation of Gaza.
