As of April 2025, the Gaza Strip has become a territory of Israeli systematic annihilation and extermination. Officially, over 50,000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, and the social, medical and educational infrastructure of the enclave lies in ruins. The total toll of deaths in Gaza is estimated at more than 186.000, according to the Lancet report. Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza is a deliberate, large-scale effort not only to eliminate Hamas but to dismantle Gaza’s capacity for survival and continuity.
Despite extensive documentation by international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Israeli government has escalated its attacks under the guise of security while framing territorial fragmentation, through corridors such as Netzarim, Philadelphia and now the Morag Axis, as tactical imperatives. These maneuvers constitute a broader project of demographic re-engineering and forced displacement in Palestine. Despite Israel’s ability to implement every strategy to destroy Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is losing the war. As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert penned for Haaretz, stating that Israel is closer to a civil war than ever before, Netanyahu seeks to find ways out of the Gaza quagmire, Israel’s Vietnam.
Collapse of strategic alliance
Netanyahu wages a relentless war on Gaza, and he finds himself politically cornered. As the military campaign failed to eliminate Hamas and international outrage mounted over what has been widely referred to as genocide, Netanyahu is relying on two tenuous strategies: the first is about support from the U.S., and the second is about the Gaza war.
Netanyahu is seeking to reactivate full-scale U.S. support under Donald Trump’s presidency, as this endorsement is the top priority, serving as an international shield protecting Israel. In this sense, Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on April 7 clearly aiming to resurrect the historic alliance between Washington and Tel Aviv. However, unplanned and diplomatically barren, the trip signals the erosion of unconditional U.S. support. Trump’s remarks about negotiation with Iran and the success of Türkiye in Syria, the absence of a joint news conference, revealed that Netanyahu’s attempt to stage a political comeback on U.S. soil had failed. Similarly, these political differences highlighted how far apart the two leaders have drifted. No photo op or formal communiqué could conceal the deeper political rift.
Netanyahu’s failure to secure full support is not just about political personalities – it reflects a more fundamental structural change in U.S. public opinion. According to Pew Research Center’s April 2025 report, support for Israel among Americans has dropped significantly since the Gaza war reignited in October 2023. Only 54% of Americans now say that the Israeli-Palestinian war is relevant to them – an 11-point drop from 65% in January 2024. Similarly, the percentage of people who believe the war is significant to U.S. national interests declined from 75% to 66% over the same period. This decline is especially pronounced among young Americans. For instance, Republicans under 50 now show only 17% interest in the war compared to 7% among older Republicans, suggesting a generational divide that undercuts traditional bipartisan support for Israel.
More damning is the public’s changing view of Israel itself. In 2022, 42% of Americans held a negative view of Israel. In 2025, that figure climbed to 53%. The share of Americans with “very negative” opinions nearly doubled, rising from 10% to 19%. Among Democrats, negative views have soared to 69%, while only 37% of Republicans now express unfavorable views.
This data signals more than public disapproval. It reflects a paradigm shift in how Israel’s war is perceived by the very electorate that shapes U.S. foreign policy. The erosion of American moral and strategic support for Israel is no longer theoretical but statistical, demographic and generational. Despite Netanyahu’s efforts to reverse this trend, he is unlikely to achieve full U.S. support for Israel during Trump’s second term.
Tactical escalation of Morag Axis
Confronted by this shifting tide, Netanyahu has turned to his second – and more dangerous – option: intensifying the Gaza war. This is no longer simply a military campaign against Hamas. It is a broader, systemic campaign of destruction and demographic engineering. Netanyahu knows that his military campaigns are not producing a concrete victory but failure. However, his only chance to remain in power is the continuation of the war. Thus, when the war ends, his coalition will be dispersed since they are pro-war and far-right actors. Therefore, Netanyahu’s second political maneuver is not just about deepening Israeli operations in Gaza but also about deepening Israeli operations in Gaza and also about his political career.
In this regard, the Morag Axis is central to lasting the war and marks a new phase in Israel’s strategy. This strategy aims at killing those civilians who may govern Gaza after the war, and keeps alive those who desire the war, and involves de-Palestinianizing Gaza. This axis stretches between Khan Younis and Rafah and was initially declared a humanitarian safe zone. Yet, these areas have been repeatedly bombarded, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 civilians in recent weeks, including medical personnel and aid workers. This is a blatant violation of international law.
The corridor’s name, “Morag,” references an illegal Israeli settlement that existed in the same region between 1972 and 2005. Its revival in military vocabulary signals a symbolic return to settler-colonial aspirations and hints at future plans for territorial reoccupation. Like the Netzarim and Philadelphia Corridors, the Morag Axis is part of a broader “divide and rule” doctrine: to fragment Gaza, depopulate strategic areas and render long-term Palestinian governance unviable.
Ethnic cleansing
Israel’s corridor strategy is more than battlefield maneuvering. It is demographic manipulation masked as security. The so-called safe zones function as tools of forced displacement. By bombing the very areas where civilians are told to seek refuge, Israel is creating an impossible choice: flee or die. This amounts to nothing less than ethnic cleansing. Moreover, the deliberate targeting of Gaza’s civilian leadership, aid infrastructure and health services further reveals the larger objective. The goal is not merely to dismantle Hamas but to eliminate Gaza’s capacity for governance and recovery. This is a campaign to erase Gaza, not just militarily but also socially and politically.
Netanyahu has also begun framing the Morag Axis as a “Second Philadelphia Corridor,” despite Israel’s earlier commitment to withdraw from the original Philadelphia Corridor under the January 2025 cease-fire agreement. This reinterpretation of agreed zones is a clear violation of diplomatic frameworks and a signal that Israel’s intentions are rooted in permanent territorial alteration.
To sum up, Netanyahu’s dual strategy, seeking cover in Washington while accelerating ethnic cleansing in Gaza, is no longer sustainable. The diplomatic trip to the U.S. revealed isolation, whereas Israeli military actions in Gaza have revealed the intention of destruction. Israel’s Gaza project is not a war. It is a project of annihilation of Palestine. If this continues, the consequences are more likely to extend beyond Gaza.