Calculated deception: How Israel uses diplomacy to buy time for Gaza’s destruction

Last week’s mass funeral of 112 people—including 44 children from two closely related extended families—was not a new tragedy; it was the agonising, delayed accounting of a crime committed nearly three years ago. The victims, all belonging to the Abu Sharia and Al-Hassayna clans, lived in adjacent residential blocks in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood when Israeli airstrikes flattened their homes on 22^nd and 23^rd November 2023. Entire bloodlines were wiped out in an instant: at least three generations—grandparents, fathers, mothers, siblings, children, and infants—buried side-by-side. Their bodies, recovered only recently from under the rubble after a 17-day excavation or identified from temporary mass graves amid the relentless siege, were finally laid to rest.

This grim scene serves as a harrowing microcosm of Israel’s war on Gaza: a war that not only slaughters entire bloodlines in single strokes of industrial scale of violence, but meticulously ensures that even the dead are denied dignity, safety, or immediate peace.

On paper, Gaza was supposed to be entering a period of quiet following the ceasefire framework announced in October 2025. In reality, peace never arrived. Israeli forces have continued an unrelenting barrage of airstrikes across the enclave, killing over 1,200 Palestinians—including more than 300 children—and injuring nearly 4,000 others since the agreement was signed. With over 90 percent of Gaza’s population long since uprooted, families are squeezed into ever-shrinking pockets of coastal sand dunes and makeshift tent encampments. Yet even these rudimentary canvas shelters are not spared: the Israeli military routinely strikes these designated “safe zones,” targeting displaced civilians in their sleep.

The double standard of Israeli diplomacy has been laid bare once again by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explicit rejection of the US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza. Unveiled by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace as part of a framework to transition Gaza toward Palestinian administration and eventual self-determination, the 15-point draft called for a phased Israeli military withdrawal alongside disarmament of Hamas. An enthusiastic President Trump, on 30^th July, hailed the deal reached with Hamas as a “monumental step” ” toward peace, with Hamas publicly committing itself to implement the plan under international monitoring. Yet speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting on 9^th August, Netanyahu flatly declared that Israel “does not accept the 15-point document,” shifting the goalposts by insisting that the Israeli military will not pull out a single inch until the total, immediate, and verifiable disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups happens first. The rejection was entirely predictable.

Facing upcoming Israeli Knesset elections on 27^th October 2026—and with his right-wing coalition trailing opposition blocs in opinion polls—a leader facing international criminal accountability and domestic political peril was never going to make meaningful concessions.

Even as recent statements out of Netanyahu’s office spin these public rejections as non-final while quiet talks with American officials continue, the Trump administration’s tolerance of his maneuvering confirms that Tel Aviv is being given full license to use ongoing diplomacy as a shield for further delays. Generally speaking no major development on the Gaza peace will will happen before the October Israeli election, further eroding trust in the Trump administration facing its own midterm election in November.

Hostage to his far-right coalition partners like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who demand complete military reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu’s priority remains personal political survival. By walking away from proposals touted by its closest ally in Washington, Tel Aviv has demonstrated once more that its diplomatic promises are worthless and that no peace framework will ever be honored when political self-preservation dictates further bloodletting.

At the same time Israel continues to weaponise basic survival necessities as central pillar to its strategy, going well beyond the political signaling of rejected peace drafts. Under the 15-point proposal—and the broader framework accepted in principle last year—the immediate, unrestricted entry of food, life-saving medicines, medical supplies, and fuel/electricity was explicitly required as an urgent baseline. By openly repudiating this framework on 9^th August, Netanyahu has not merely rejected a troop withdrawal; he has formally torn up the humanitarian obligations that were supposed to end Gaza’s enforced slow death.

On the ground, the consequences of this refusal are calculated and absolute. Despite transient aid trickles, strict rationing ensures that no Palestinian in Gaza receives adequate daily caloric or nutritional intake, keeping the entire population on a daily search for food. According to UN food security monitors, over 1.4 million people remain trapped in acute food insecurity, forced to survive on severely restricted parcels that are neither enough in quality nor quantity, alongside a severe lack of clean water. By blocking the full restoration of power grids, fuel for water desalination, and commercial trade, Israel ensures that calorie intake is kept systematically below human sustenance thresholds.

The rejection of the 15 points makes Tel Aviv’s policy unmistakable: engineered hunger and biological deprivation are not temporary tactical measures, but permanent levers of control, according to the United Nations’ 7^th August report describing the situation in Gaza as still critical.

The explicit rejection of the 15-point plan is not a sudden policy shift; it is the logical continuation of a campaign where physical destruction and humanitarian attrition go side by side. By refusing to pullout troops and reiterating that no Palestinian state will ever emerge under his watch, Netanyahu has stripped away any lingering diplomatic pretense. His stance makes it unmistakable: agreements, ceasefires, and international proposals are merely tactical stalling mechanisms designed to absorb diplomatic pressure while the slow work of starvation and military destruction continues.

For the two million Palestinians trapped inside Gaza, this political posturing translates into daily, agonizing violence. While diplomats debate phased frameworks and disarmament thresholds, families are left to bury their children after strikes on makeshift tent camps, all while surviving on meager basic food and contaminated water. The mass funeral of the Abu Sharia and Al-Hassayna families is not a tragic relic of 2023—it is a preview of Gaza’s present and future if Tel Aviv’s strategy remains unchecked.

Netanyahu’s rejection of the Trump peace plan only proves what Palestinians have known for generations: Tel Aviv cannot be trusted as a partner in peace. So long as personal political survival, far-right coalition math, and impunity dictate policy, starvation will remain Israel’s strategy, and Gaza’s deadlier phase will continue unabated.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.