Just two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the peak of a rare political high.
Israel – with US assistance at the very end – had pulled off a staggering strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Operation Rising Lion had reasserted Israeli deterrence, garnered international admiration, and handed Netanyahu a signature moment of strength both domestically and on the world stage.
But this week’s visit to Washington shows how quickly the spotlight shifts – and how swiftly Netanyahu’s focus has moved from Tehran back to the tunnels of Gaza. For an indication, look at any Israeli daily and compare the number of columns and news articles related to the Israel-Hamas War and how many are dealing with the operation in Iran. There is simply no comparison.
The prime minister’s second meeting on Tuesday evening within 24 hours with US President Donald Trump was not about Iran. It was about Gaza: the war, the hostages, and the possibility of a ceasefire.
In the context of where Netanyahu was just two weeks ago – basking in military success in Iran – the mere fact that the bulk of his time with Trump appeared to be focused on Gaza, and not on Iran or a possible future Mideast architecture, speaks volumes. Gaza, not Iran, is once again the dominant story.
Netanyahu and Trump with their eyes only on Gaza
The pivot back to Gaza is natural. While Netanyahu continues to speak about eradicating Hamas from Gaza, reality is tugging in another direction.
Five more IDF soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, bringing the number who have fallen since the last day of Operation Rising Lion to 17.
As a result, public attention has snapped back to the war’s unfinished, painful business: not the destruction of Iranian centrifuges, but the ongoing cost in Israeli lives and the 50 hostages, including 20 believed to still be alive, in Gaza.
Israel may have scored a historic operational success in Iran last month. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington may yet produce the outlines of a new Middle East. But none of that has lifted the fog of uncertainty that still surrounds the war in Gaza, nor dulled the pain.
That’s because the story of this war – unlike the clean arc of the Iran operation – remains open-ended and deeply personal.
The Iran success, while operationally impressive, quickly lost its political momentum. This was painfully evident just hours after a ceasefire was announced on June 24, when the country woke up that morning not to news of diplomatic progress but to news of seven soldiers killed in Khan Yunis.
Once the country regained its breath, it became clear that the stunning successes in Iran delivered a temporary boost to morale, reshaped regional deterrence calculations, and significantly set back Iran’s nuclear timeline. But they didn’t solve Netanyahu’s most urgent political problem: how to bring the war in Gaza to an end and the hostages back home without appearing to capitulate and without inviting a coalition collapse.
Netanyahu, always attuned to political optics, knows that announcing or even hinting at a hostage-ceasefire deal too early could trigger a political backlash at home and drive his hard-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, out of the government.
So, the talks in Washington, which are focused on this, are being kept very discreet. Why risk capsizing the ship unless a deal is ironclad?
That delicate balance was on full display in Netanyahu’s public remarks from Washington on Tuesday, just hours after the news broke of five more soldiers killed in Gaza, this time in Beit Hanun.
“This is a hard day. We lost five of our heroic soldiers,” Netanyahu said. “The mourning and pain are hitting all parts of the nation. By the same token, we are determined… to complete our war objectives in Gaza: to release all our hostages, to bring about the destruction of Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities, and of course to ensure that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel.”
“That means there is no Hamas,” he continued. “This needs to be understood. This is not something we are just saying. It is tied up with a certain strategy that I will not detail here and with actions, some of which are painful, and some of which will hurt Hamas very badly. The final result will be the release of all our hostages and the defeat and dismantling of Hamas. Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel. We have not yet finished the job.”
It was a statement meant to reassure the public – and even more importantly, Netanyahu’s coalition partners – that negotiations in Washington are not a retreat from Israel’s goals but a continuation of them by other means.
Still, the question remains whether the defeat of Hamas that Netanyahu talks about and the compromise that Trump is trying to broker in Gaza are compatible, or whether they are two conflicting paths?
The deaths of five more soldiers on Monday were a grim reminder that the war is still very much ongoing, not just on the negotiating table in Washington but in the ruins and tunnels of Gaza.
That unrelenting cost fuels public impatience and sharpens the urgency behind efforts to reach a deal, adding weight to the already pressing imperative to bring the hostages home.
It also shapes the public mood in ways that no foreign trip or military success abroad can erase. Israelis are not known for strategic patience. And while there is still support for the war’s goals, there is also an increasing sense among many that time is not on anyone’s side. Especially not the hostages. Nor the soldiers still operating in Rafah, Khan Yunis, and beyond.
The war may be closer to its diplomatic resolution than at any point since it began. But that doesn’t mean it’s over – not on the ground, not in the headlines, and certainly not in the hearts of the public that still wakes up every morning dreading to hear the awful words that presage news of another fallen soldier: hutar l’pirsum (cleared for publication).
Even after the dramatic and successful Operation Rising Lion against Iran, the country’s emotional center of gravity remains where it has been since the October 7 massacre: in Gaza; in the hostages still underground; in the soldiers still fighting and falling; and in the pain that still grips the country, muting the afterglow of even the stunning operation in Iran.