Analysis | Who Will Blink First, Israel or Hamas?

In the tense, high-stakes brinksmanship surrounding Steve Witkoff’s proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza, what we’re witnessing is essentially a game of chicken between Israel and Hamas. Each side is banking on the other blinking first.  While this plays out, the death toll mounts, and the mutual dehumanization is reaching levels that will be hard to fix.

Hamas is gambling that if it holds out long enough, Israel—under growing international and internal pressure—will be forced to end the war without its demand for Hamas to completely disarm and be removed. Israel hopes to break Hamas through military force and sheer attrition—and believes it has found the way to achieve this with its new method of circumventing the group in the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Why would Hamas believe it can outlast a regional superpower? The answer lies in a combination of fanatical defiance, indifference to the suffering of its own people and hard calculations about global politics and internal dynamics in Israel.

First and foremost is the scale of the humanitarian toll inflicted by Israel’s military campaign. According to most reports, some 54,000 Gazans have died, and Israel does not seriously contest the claim that the majority of these are civilians—including many thousands of children. This staggering civilian toll has placed Israel under extraordinary diplomatic, legal, and reputational pressure.  Arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court against Prime Minister Netanyahu and others, and Israel’s image is taking a beating across the world.

Mostly undeclared academic boycotts are spreading, and there is even serious talk within the European Union of suspending Israel’s Association Agreement, the legal framework that provides Israel with preferential trade access to the EU—its largest trading partner. The agreement underpins billions of euros in trade and cooperation. Suspension would not only be a diplomatic earthquake but would deliver a concrete blow to Israel’s high-tech economy, already facing growing skepticism from global investors wary of long-term instability and moral hazard.

Many Israelis console themselves with the narrative that the military is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties. And to be fair, there are some respected military analysts who argue that Israel’s conduct compares favorably to other instances of urban warfare. But this is hotly contested. Many soldiers returning from Gaza tell a different story. Open-fire regulations have been loosened dramatically and civilian risk assessments have grown shockingly lenient.

I was the Associated Press bureau chief in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada and I recall vividly how IDF commanders went to great lengths to explain their refusal to target key militants whenever there was plausible concern about harming their families. Just a few years ago, the army took pride in its “knock on the roof” tactic—dropping warning munitions on buildings before leveling them during previous, less prolonged rounds of fighting. Does anyone really believe those precautions are still the norm?

Instead, we hear farcical justifications from right-wing Israeli officials like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Israeli officials and lawmakers have called for depriving Gaza of all aid, have argued that there are absolutely no innocents in the territory and  have called for leveling it and expelling every resident (to be fair, so did President Trump, in February). 

Such statements were not made by Netanyahu himself, but these are not fringe actors; they are at the core of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and control its fate.

All this is, perversely, a boon for Hamas. The group has never cared much about the death toll among its own people. And now, by virtue of the Israeli government’s composition and its refusal to even hint at a post-Hamas alternative, it is able to maintain its status as the de facto leadership in Gaza. The most obvious potential successor would be a reformed Palestinian Authority—one with expanded international backing, administrative capacity and a revamped leadership. But for ideological reasons, Israel’s far-right ministers reject any Palestinian governance in Gaza, so no credible alternative is being presented to Gazans. And that is Hamas’s greatest gift. With no one else waiting in the wings, the population—traumatized, angry, and hopeless—isn’t pushing Hamas to step aside.

Meanwhile, after more than 19 months of war, the Israeli public is getting fed up, and polls show most would agree to just end the war in return for all the hostages. Netanyahu argues that the protests and the mounting opposition are a service to Hamas—and he is right. But he is sticking to his refusal to end the war, and the latest Witkoff proposals align with that: a return of some of the hostages for a 60-day ceasefire to be followed by more talks.

Critics in Israel argue that it is madness to just keep doing more of the same, but officials believe this dynamic is finally changing. Defense officials claim that the new humanitarian aid delivery mechanism, recently put in place, is starting to cut Hamas off from one of its key power sources: the commandeering and redistribution of foreign aid.

The new aid distribution scheme is operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a newly created body backed by the US and Israel. It aims to open up several distribution centers to reach the public directly, and implementation began last week—much to the chagrin of Hamas, who called on Gazans not to comply.

The new system aims to track aid more precisely and prevent Hamas from siphoning it off for its own networks of patronage. According to Israeli defense sources, this is already weakening Hamas’s grip. But even this is debated, with reports of chaos, looting, and logistical breakdowns that prevent the aid from reliably reaching those in need.

So, while Netanyahu’s government insists it is close to a turning point, Hamas seems convinced it can simply wait out the Israeli offensive—and that eventually the global tide will force Israel into accepting a ceasefire that leaves the group intact. In the meantime, more lives are lost, more homes destroyed, and more damage done to the moral fiber of both societies.

The damage to Israel’s society is incalculable. Consider the attack in recent days by Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans on two Arab bus drivers following a team loss. The footage of the vicious attack in the capital, with multiple assailants kicking and hitting and swearing at the drivers—because they were angry that an Arab player had scored the key goal for the opposing team—is crystal clear (see the footage here). No one stepped in. The assailants are identifiable, and yet days later no one had been charged and only two people briefly detained. The minister in charge of the police is Ben-Gvir. And scenes like this may be where Israeli society is headed as the catastrophe goes on.

Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. A version of this article appeared in his newsletter “Ask Questions Later.”

Top image: (Left) Palestinians displaced in Gaza (Credit: Jaber Jehad Badwan, CC BY-SA 4.0) (Right) Judicial reform protest in Israel (Credit: Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 4.0).