It has been almost 10 years since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that if he was elected, he would order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to invade Gaza, bring down the Hamas regime and destroy the terror nest that it has become. On Oct. 29, Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel “has no interest in toppling the Hamas regime.” The prime minister summoned political reporters and regaled them with a very detailed and convincing speech as to why Israel has no current interest in bringing down Hamas and would, therefore, make do with reaching an arrangement to keep Gaza from total collapse. The reasoning, in Netanyahu’s own words, was that the collapse of Gaza “would blow up in our faces.” He then went on to blame Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the collapse of Gaza’s humanitarian infrastructures.

Until now, Netanyahu has built up his image as the macho strongman, facing off against Hamas. He even used a similar expression as a slogan in previous election campaigns. He made a sharp distinction between his own policies and those of the previous governments, with particular emphasis on Ehud Olmert’s policies. But Olmert led the IDF through Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and ground maneuvers in Gaza, stopping before Hamas was defeated for all the same reasons that Netanyahu listed this week. Back then, Netanyahu lashed out at Olmert, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, declaring that things will look very different under him. Today, it became quite clear that he wasn’t quite telling the truth, or as it is described in Israel, “The things we see from here can’t be seen from there” — meaning that things look different from the prime minister’s seat. For the first time ever, Netanyahu admitted as much.

What is remarkable about this chaotic and unresolvable situation is the way that history has been turned upside down. At about the same time that the prime minister was saying this, the PLO’s Central Committee meeting in Ramallah on Oct. 28 decided to call on Abbas to place recognition of Israel on hold along with any security coordination between the Palestinian forces, the IDF and Shin Bet. This call for measures expressed Abbas’ recent policy of “burning the house down.” They leave him watching with nervous anticipation at Israel’s attempts to rescue Hamas, while he remains isolated in Ramallah. The situation in late 2018, more than 25 years after the signing of the historic Oslo Accords, is as follows. Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are locked in a longstanding conflict. There has been little communication between them for a very long time, and the two are moving apart rapidly. Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas are drawing closer. They are now engaged in indirect negotiations, and the two of them recognize each other — at least indirectly. Israel regards Hamas as the sovereign authority in Gaza and is trying to keep it that way, while Hamas continues to preach Israel’s destruction and, to that end, tries to ignite the region and instill an atmosphere of terror. If the three architects of the Oslo Accords — Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres — were to wake up from their eternal rest, they would have a hard time understanding how the parties got to where they did.

Netanyahu went into extensive detail with the reporters about his expansive efforts to reach a long-term arrangement with Hamas in Gaza. According to him, they almost reached such an arrangement just last week, but then the hordes stormed the border fence again. The ensuing “day of battle” pushed his diplomatic efforts several steps backward. As of now, it remains unclear as to what the parties will reach first: an arrangement or a widespread military conflict. Netanyahu went out of his way to explain to his listeners why another round of fighting in Gaza would serve no one. “What would we do with Gaza if we conquered it?” he asked. “We would still have no one to give it to. If there was someone to whom we could hand it over, then we would have conquered it by now, but no one even wants to consider that. I know that if we do go to war in Gaza, everyone will applaud me for the first two hours. The question is, what happens after that?”