By Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Peace Studies and International Relations, Bradford University

Up until 1 April, Israel was increasingly being viewed by Western leaders as a near-rogue state. Though US President Joe Biden was still not calling for a ceasefire – despite being the only world leader who can do so – he was reportedly ramping up pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to end the siege on Gaza, allow far more aid into the enclave, and work towards an end to the fighting.

But the entire situation changed after Israel launched an air attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. Amid fears of a probable military response from Iran, Israel became a Western ally once more. When Iran’s counterattack did indeed come, on 13 April, it was met by not only the IDF, but also by US, British and French militaries, with additional support from Arab nations allied to the West, such as Jordan.

After weeks of escalating tensions between the two countries, Israel had been expected to deliver a major attack on Iran in the days before it bombed Damascus. Its eventual strike killed 16 people, but having followed warnings that Israel might target Iran’s civil and presumed military nuclear programme, it was considered a small-scale affair by many Western analysts – so much so that hard-line members of Netanyahu’s coalition were deeply critical of it.

Whatever Netanyahu’s motives in the Damascus attack, one result was briefly minimising the media coverage of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. The number of Palestinians killed is nearing 35,000, including at least 12,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry (as of April 24th), with double that number having been injured and many more missing.

For reasons not entirely understood, both Israel and Iran have chosen to avoid an escalating war, with Iran’s foreign ministry making clear that its strike was a direct response to Israel’s, and that it would take no further action unless the IDF did so. This decision has eased some of the tensions in the region, at least among leaders, and has returned the spotlight to the atrocities in Gaza.

Last week, it was reported that Palestinian civil defence crews had uncovered a mass grave in the grounds of the Nasser Medical Complex following the withdrawal of IDF troops from Khan Younis, a city in south Gaza. The bodies of 180 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have so far been recovered. The news follows the discovery of another mass grave, where the bodies of 30 Palestinians were found, at al-Shifa Hospital last week.

Netanyahu’s determination to destroy Hamas in Gaza appears as strong as ever. The IDF’s attacks are intensifying and it still plans to launch a full-scale assault on Rafah, in the far south-west of Gaza, in the coming weeks. Around 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, whose pre-war population was 280,000, with many having fled to the supposedly ‘safe’ city after Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza last year.

While the Israeli prime minister would no doubt like to clear Hamas out of Rafah, that may not be essential if he still plans, as he suggested at the offset of the war, to contain Gaza’s entire population – 2.2 million people in late 2023 – to the west of the city, in the southwest of the Gazan strip, with deep buffer zones separating it from Israel. There, Netanyahu’s government says Gazans would be in some way supported by the “international community” – the implication being that they will not be Israel’s problem. Their lives would be hugely constricted even compared to the pre-war situation, when the entire Gaza Strip was already a huge, densely populated open prison with border guards instead of jailers. It would become an even more wretched place – far more overcrowded and closely garrisoned.

In this scenario, some in Netanhayu’s government have suggested the whole of the north of Gaza would be settled by Israeli Jews, with the coast particularly attractive for new seaside residences. In time, and perhaps over some years, some Palestinians would find the means to pay illegal smugglers to get them out of their crowded confinement and to elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond.

If the hard-right in Netanyah’s Likud Party becomes a more powerful part of his coalition, a similar process could be expanded across the West Bank, a steady movement towards fulfilling the party’s policy of Israeli sovereignty from the river to the sea.

In the meantime, negotiations between Israel and Hamas are on hold, with mediator Qatar increasingly dubious about prospects for progress as both sides refuse to move on conditions the other deems to be red lines. The IDF is stepping up its offensive operations across the West Bank – having killed ten Palestinians in an attack on the Nur Shams refugee camp on Saturday and launching further lethal attacks on Palestinian towns and villages in the area, according to a local source in the area who wishes to remain anonymous.

In one of the few visible signs of Washington’s pressure on Israel, the US is likely to sanction the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion – a unit of ultra-orthodox Israeli Jews – for human rights abuses, including the death of an 80-year-old Palestinian-American man in 2022. The sanctions will reportedly mean US military equipment sold to Israel cannot be used by the battalion, which will also no longer be able to take part in training with the US Army.

While this may suggest a hardening of a US stance, it comes alongside the congressional decision to agree a $26bn support package to Israel, mostly for weapons. In short, the burst of tension over Israeli-Iranian relations and the risk of war has eased and the emphasis returns to the ongoing war, mainly on Gaza but increasingly in the West Bank as well. As the death toll rises, Netanyahu and his team remain determined to continue the war and there is little sign that Biden will force an early end.

Paul Rogers is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies in the Department of Peace Studies and International Relations at Bradford University, and an Honorary Fellow at the Joint Service Command and Staff College