Benjamin Netanyahu has now said aloud what Israeli military operations have implied for months: the goal is not merely to degrade Hamas but to hold most of Gaza indefinitely. In a press conference Wednesday, the prime minister confirmed he has directed the Israel Defense Forces to expand control to 70 percent of the strip—a figure that, if achieved, would leave only the southernmost sliver around Rafah and scattered pockets outside sustained Israeli presence.
The announcement lands at a moment when the Biden and Trump administrations' divergent approaches to the conflict have collapsed into a single, shared problem: neither has a credible theory for what Gaza looks like the day after fighting stops. Netanyahu's directive suggests he has decided the question is moot. There may be no "day after" in the traditional sense—only an open-ended security occupation dressed in the language of counterterrorism.
The math of 70 percent
Gaza is roughly 365 square kilometers. Controlling 70 percent means holding territory home to the vast majority of the strip's pre-war population of 2.3 million, most of whom have been displaced multiple times since October 2023. Israeli officials have framed the expansion as necessary to prevent Hamas from reconstituting command structures in cleared areas. Critics—including some within Israel's own security establishment—argue that holding ground without a political horizon simply converts a military campaign into a permanent counterinsurgency.
The IDF already operates buffer zones along the northern border and the Netzarim corridor bisecting Gaza. Reaching 70 percent would require consolidating control over much of Gaza City and the central camps, areas where urban combat has been fiercest and civilian casualties highest. Humanitarian groups warn that further expansion will accelerate an already catastrophic food and medical crisis.
Washington's shrinking leverage
The Biden administration spent much of 2024 urging Netanyahu to articulate a post-war governance plan. He declined. The Trump administration, now five months into its second term, has shown little appetite for the question either, preferring to focus on Iran and the Abraham Accords' regional expansion. Netanyahu's directive exploits that vacuum: absent American pressure for a political settlement, Israel can pursue facts on the ground.
Reports Wednesday that Washington and Tehran are drafting a ceasefire extension—pending Trump's approval—underscore how disconnected the Iran track has become from Gaza. A pause in U.S.-Iran hostilities would ease oil markets and reduce the risk of regional conflagration, but it offers no mechanism to alter Israeli policy in the strip. Netanyahu has made clear he views the two theaters as separate, and neither American administration has forced him to link them.
Our take
Netanyahu's 70 percent is not a military objective; it is a political declaration that Israel intends to remain in Gaza for the foreseeable future, with or without international blessing. The United States can accept this, oppose it, or pretend it isn't happening. So far, Washington has chosen door three. That may be sustainable for American domestic politics, but it is not a strategy—and it leaves the question of Gaza's future exactly where Netanyahu wants it: unanswered, and therefore his to define.
