The declared objective
From October 2023 the stated war aim was the "elimination of Hamas" and its removal from the Gaza equation entirely, with any day-after arrangement to be built without it.
Israeli war objectivesWhat the record says
On 6 July 2026 Hamas dissolved its governing committee and handed civil administration to a technocratic body, and on 30 July an agreement on weapons was announced. But Hamas rejected the language of "disarmament," the word does not appear in the American roadmap at all, which uses "decommissioning," and it tied implementation to Israeli withdrawal and political guarantees, refusing a "weapons first" sequence. Israel’s own INSS wrote on 3 August 2026 that Washington is pushing the deal "to offset the sense of failure vis-à-vis Iran."
INSS · negotiation recordAfter three years and more than 72,000 dead, the party the war was declared to remove remains a negotiating party setting conditions on the sequence of implementation.