03/18/2025March 18, 2025
Resumption of war is ‘not a Hamas violation,’ analyst tells DW
DW spoke to Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, about Israel’s renewed airstrikes in Gaza.
Zonszein said Israel was responsible for breaking the ceasefire and that it has no clear strategy for dealing with Hamas.
“It’s unclear to me what Israel thinks it’s going to achieve by doing the same thing over again,” she said, referring to Israel’s inability to eliminate Hamas even after the first 15 months of the war until the ceasefire took effect in January.
“Israel violated the ceasefire that it itself signed in phase one when it didn’t pull its troops out of the Philadelphia Corridor [the area of land on the Egypt-Gaza border], and it is now violating the ceasefire by bombarding Gaza,” she said. “This is not a Hamas violation,” she added.
She said the return to violence was unpopular in Israel, as people there no longer see how such attacks help in freeing the remaining hostages.
She said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wants to stay in power, his far right wants the resumption of war,” but added that “the families of the hostages are against this resumption of war, precisely because they are worried about the hostages.”
Ultimately, she said, Netanyahu is interested in continuing the war as a way of diverting attention away from his criminal trial and .
“These airstrikes are distracting from the fact that Israel is heading to a full constitutional crisis,” she said. “When Israel is firing and shooting,” she said, “then people tend to stay quiet.”
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