Thanks to Trump, Israel played chicken with Hamas. Hamas won.

Soon after he won the 2024 election, US President Donald Trump started talking tough about the war in Gaza. As early as December 2, Trump threatened that “there will be ‘all hell to pay in the Middle East’ if hostages [held in Gaza were] not released by January 20”.

As we know now, the hostages were not released by January 20. Some were released soon afterwards, but many are still held by the terrorists in Gaza, several months after January 20, and there is still no agreement to release them, almost 600 days after they were kidnapped. But Trump is no longer threatening Hamas. He now says that he is “frustrated” with the Gaza war, and he wants Israel to “wrap it up”.

In the meantime, however, Trump’s tough words pushed the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take bolder action in Gaza. In early March, Israel cut off aid to Gaza, and Netanyahu claimed that he had the backing of Trump for this strategy.

For many people, including myself, it was hard to understand how this would benefit Israel. In theory, it would put pressure on Hamas to give up the hostages or at least to be more flexible in the negotiations, but the strategy relied on a game of chicken that Israel would be very unlikely to win.

For Israel to win, Hamas would have had to feel responsible for Hamas civilians nearing starvation, but Hamas is not a charitable organization. It is a terrorist organization. They have been using Gaza civilians as human shields for decades, as Israel well knows. Why would anyone expect Hamas to suddenly develop a conscience?

All Hamas had to do was watch civilians suffer and wait for the world’s outrage to force Israel into backing down. As expected, that outrage came as stories of starving children, women, and the elderly came out of Gaza. Even the very pro-Israel US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “troubled” by the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Eventually, Israel started allowing aid into Gaza again.

This strategy, however, not only failed to bring the desired results, but it also badly damaged the credibility of the Israeli government to the point where its ability to continue the war is seriously in doubt, hence Trump’s “wrap it up” comment. Around the same time, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada issued a joint statement “condemning Israel’s handling of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and calling on the Israeli government to immediately halt military action in the enclave and allow in aid.”

A game of ‘who can be crueler?’

While Israel could technically continue the war, having lost the support of its main allies, including the United States, the war is essentially over, and Hamas knows it.

All Israel can hope for at this point is to get all the hostages back, but it will have to give up on the objective of destroying Hamas and wresting control of Gaza away from them. Hamas knows that Israel is on the ropes, so it will not agree to anything less than the full withdrawal of Israeli troops, and it will get it. It is just a matter of time.

A few months ago, such an ending was not a foregone conclusion. Despite the frustration of many, including most notably Israelis, that the war was taking too long, Israel was able to continue the war because its allies supported Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas, but that was when Gaza civilians were not starving. Cutting off aid, a strategy seemingly encouraged by Trump’s tough words, changed all that.

In the end, Trump’s tough words were empty. He never had any plans for forcing Hamas to do anything, but he raised the expectations considerably, and he expected Israel to deliver.

Israel, however, could not deliver without massive attacks on Gaza that would raise civilian casualties dramatically and would put the lives of hostages at great risk, so Netanyahu tried the strategy of cutting off aid, which was also doomed to fail.

After Trump’s tough but empty words, Israel had no choice but to try to end the war quickly, but Israel lost this war because it is not willing to disregard civilians (both its own and Gaza’s) while Hamas clearly is. The game of chicken was a game of who could be crueler, and Hamas wins that contest hands down.

Trump set Israel up for failure, and he gave Hamas a win. Now Israel must pick up the pieces.