There are no constant conditions in warfare, the ancient Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu wrote some 25 centuries ago: “He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent will succeed and win.”
What was true in the fifth century BCE is true today, and it should be kept in mind when evaluating Israel’s dramatic U-turn over the past 48 hours: its decision to declare “humanitarian pauses” in areas where the IDF is not operating in Gaza, establish corridors to enable the distribution of aid, and airlift aid.
While predictably slammed by some in the government, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose opinion was not canvassed on the matter when the decision was made on Saturday, the decision reflects a welcome adaptability by the government. And in war, adaptability is crucial.
Over the past week, as images of emaciated babies and chaotic food distribution scenes in Gaza saturated the international media, it became clear that IDF briefings disputing the starvation claims and footage released of Hamas terrorists feasting inside the tunnels were not having the desired impact.
It was clear something else was needed to swiftly change the narrative before Israel would lose any remaining international legitimacy it had to continue the war in Gaza aimed at toppling Hamas both militarily and as the force that governs Gaza – and to bring the hostages home.
Set aside the debate about whether the photos of starvation in Gaza are authentic or, as some claim, are AI doctored or fabricated. British investigative journalist David Collier, who revealed in March that the narrator and principal subject of the BBC documentary Gaza: How to survive a warzone, was the son of a deputy Hamas minister, wrote on Sunday that the haunting picture that featured prominently this week around the world of a Gaza child with ribs jutting out was the picture not of a starving boy, but rather of one who has faced debilitating health issues since birth.
Set aside also whether this is shaping up to be another Mohammed al-Dura moment – the infamous case from the Second Intifada when a Palestinian boy crouching behind his father at Netzarim junction was portrayed in real time as being killed by Israeli fire, although subsequent investigations cast serious doubt on that version of events.
Whether real or staged, the effect of such images is cumulative and corrosive. Add to that the widely circulated footage of Gazans mobbing trucks for bags of flour, reports of Palestinians being killed while attempting to retrieve aid, and growing international anger at the apparent collapse of humanitarian conditions – and you have a crisis that can’t be ignored.
The mechanism Israel set up with the US to distribute aid while bypassing Hamas – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – was designed to solve precisely this problem. But with Hamas trying to sabotage that effort and chaos overtaking many distribution points, the result was further scenes of disorder that only fueled the perception that Israel was letting civilians starve.
Why has the government shifted tactics now?
And so the government shifted tactics.
Why now? Because starvation is a redline. If it’s real, Israel must act. If it’s not real but being perceived as real by the international community, Israel must still act. In either case, the cost of inaction had become too high.
When Israel decided in March to largely halt the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the move was meant to apply pressure. The idea was that Hamas, as the governing authority responsible for the welfare of the population, would face a choice: Release the hostages and agree to Israel’s terms to end the war, or risk being the cause of severe deprivation to the people they purport to represent, and face domestic unrest as supplies dwindled.
That logic held so long as one assumed Hamas would behave like a rational actor. But Hamas doesn’t operate by the playbook of rational governance.
It is not Sweden. It is not even Assad’s Syria. It’s a jihadist terrorist group, and as the last few months have made clear, it is more than willing to let its people starve if the optics of that starvation help perpetuate its rule.
The hunger and starvation – or at least the pictures of the hungry and starving – serve Hamas’ purposes by increasing pressure on Israel to stop the war. Completely counterintuitively, but logical when considering Hamas’s cynical tactics, the terrorist organization did not become more flexible over the past week as the stories and pictures of famine and starvation spread across the globe; instead, it became more inflexible.
In fact, the worse things get, the less flexible Hamas becomes.
US President Donald Trump – who for weeks had been saying that a deal was just around the corner – put it bluntly on Friday: “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die.” Then he added: “It [has] gotten to a point where [Israel is] going to have to finish the job.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the US were now looking at alternative options for bringing the hostages home. And US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told the families of hostages on Friday that the US needed to reevaluate its strategy toward the Gaza war and come up with new options.
Those statements indicated a different approach was needed in waging the war and in the hostage negotiations. The very next day, Israel announced it would airlift supplies, open a humanitarian corridor, and institute humanitarian pauses.
This was a clear acknowledgment that the previous strategy – ramping up military pressure while halting aid – hadn’t worked. It hadn’t led to Hamas softening its terms, and it hadn’t freed the hostages. Instead, it left Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage.
The new moves may be tactical, or they may signal something deeper: the beginning of a new phase in the war, one aimed at safeguarding the international legitimacy required to continue the war against Hamas without risking a full-blown diplomatic backlash.
They may also be connected to the stalled hostage negotiations in Doha.
Either way, the shift reflects a growing realization in Jerusalem that Israel’s goals cannot be achieved without preserving a degree of international legitimacy, and that legitimacy cannot survive nightly images of starving civilians, whether those images are genuine or doctored.
Sun Tzu’s ancient wisdom has endured because it’s rooted in a fundamental truth: Success in war depends not only on strength but on adaptability. The tactics employed since March – military escalation, humanitarian chokehold, and an effort to bypass Hamas in aid delivery – have not delivered the desired results.
There is no shame in changing tactics.