Tangle - The war in Gaza resumes.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Tomorrow.

Isaac here. In tomorrow’s Friday edition, I’m going to be doing something I never thought I’d do: write a whole piece defending California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom!

Quick hits.

1. The Federal Reserve said it would leave interest rates unchanged — at around 4.3% — but suggested two rate cuts are still possible this year. The Fed also lowered its projected growth rate for U.S. gross domestic product in 2025 from 2.1% to 1.7% and increased its inflation projections from 2.5% to 2.7%, citing uncertainty over the Trump administration’s economic policies. (The comments)
2. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had an hourlong call in which Zelensky agreed to pause attacks on Russian energy infrastructure for 30 days, mirroring a commitment made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz also said that Zelensky was considering a proposal to have the United States acquire Ukrainian power plants as a form of security after the war. (The call)
3. On Thursday, President Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take "all necessary steps” to close the Department of Education. (The order) Separately, the Trump administration said it is pausing $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its policies on transgender students competing in athletics. (The pause)
4. The United States conducted additional strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and President Trump said the group would be “completely annihilated” if it did not stop its attacks on merchant vessels in the Red Sea. (The strikes)
5. The Taliban released American hostage George Glezmann after more than two years in captivity in Afghanistan following negotiations involving the Trump administration and Qatari officials. (The release)

Today's topic.

Israel’s strikes in Gaza. On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency (ISA) announced they had carried out a series of airstrikes against what they said were Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. The strikes targeted mid-level Hamas commanders, senior political officials and Hamas's military infrastructure, according to an Israeli official. The IDF claimed to have killed Essam al-Da'alis, the head of the Hamas government, in the strikes. Then on Wednesday, the IDF said its forces resumed ground operations in central and southern Gaza. 

Tuesday’s airstrikes killed over 400 Palestinians, including women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel’s strikes ended a tenuous two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

Back up: The ceasefire deal was structured in three phases, the first of which included the return of living and dead hostages held by Hamas and the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Stage one lasted 42 days, but negotiations for the second phase — led by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt — had stalled prior to Tuesday’s strikes. On March 2, Israel announced it was halting the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza to increase pressure on Hamas to accept new terms for an extended ceasefire agreement. 

You can find our coverage of the Israel–Hamas war here. 

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address that he authorized the strikes after weeks of failed negotiations, claiming that Hamas had rejected proposals to return the remaining hostages held in Gaza — 24 of whom are believed to be alive. Netanyahu added that Israel would continue military operations in Gaza and would conduct any future hostage negotiations with Hamas “under fire.” 

In a statement, Hamas said that Netanyahu’s government was “fully responsible for violating and overturning” the ceasefire, and their decision left the remaining hostages in Gaza to an “unknown fate.” A Hamas spokesperson also accused the United States of “partnership” with Israel in its “genocide perpetrated against our people.” Separately, Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned Israel’s actions as “a flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement and a dangerous escalation that threatens to have dire consequences for the stability of the region.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Israel consulted the Trump administration before carrying out the strikes. The president’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff was pursuing a two-month truce extension to secure the release of some hostages while continuing negotiations, but Israel claimed Hamas rejected the proposal. President Trump said he was fine with Israel resuming the war if it chose to.

Today, we’ll explore reactions to the renewed conflict, with perspectives from the left, right, and writers in the Middle East. Then, my take.

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What the left is saying.

• The left is troubled by the resumption of the conflict but says the ceasefire was never going to hold. 
• Some say Netanyahu and Trump are to blame for the lack of a lasting peace deal. 

In The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg argued “the Gaza cease-fire was always going to end.” 

“Trump was less interested in ending the war than in being able to say he’d gotten some hostages out by the time he was inaugurated. Hamas was willing to release those hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but it was never going to agree to permanently lay down its arms. Israel, for its part, sought to extract as many of its people from Gaza as possible and wanted to stay on Trump’s good side so that he might grant them sweeping policy wins later on,” Rosenberg wrote. “Two months in, this confluence of interests has come apart, and so has the cease-fire. The deal had been on life support for weeks, with no hostages coming out of Gaza and no humanitarian aid going in.”

“More war is not what the people of Gaza or Israel want. But Gazans have no ability to control or restrain Hamas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not responsive to the preferences of the Israeli public,” Rosenberg said. “Setting aside the interests and intentions of Hamas, Netanyahu, and Trump, the Gaza cease-fire was never going to hold for a more fundamental reason: Neither side is willing to tolerate the other’s continued existence. Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction… For Israel, the conflict cannot end until Hamas is gone.”

In Forward Magazine, Dan Perry blamed “Netanyahu’s survival politics and Trump’s volatility” for the ceasefire’s end.

“Netanyahu’s decision to resume hostilities appears to have been deeply political. To maintain his grip on power, he needed to ensure that his remaining right-wing allies did not follow Ben-Gvir’s lead, an outcome that would have destroyed his governing coalition,” Perry wrote. “After Oct. 7, prolonging the war gave Netanyahu a convenient excuse for avoiding efforts to hold him accountable for his role in the failures that led to Oct. 7. It seems likely that, by disrupting the ceasefire, he’s hoping the same trick will work a second time.

“The influence of Trump’s unique way of doing business cannot be overstated. Unlike previous administrations, which would insist on adherence to a signed ceasefire, Trump granted Netanyahu the flexibility to walk away from the deal — because Trump sees international agreements as not binding commitments, but rather as tools to be reshaped as circumstances change,” Perry said. “As much as Trump helped bring about the ceasefire, he also laid the groundwork for its end. As the many contractors he stiffed in his career as a developer can attest, the president is fond of making deals, and less concerned with keeping them.”

What the right is saying.

• The right mostly supports Israel’s renewed action, arguing it is acting in self interest.
• Some say Trump bears responsibility for the ceasefire’s end. 

In Creators, Ian Haworth asked “do you want Israel to win?”

“Predictably, Israel is being vilified for doing what any nation must do: defend itself against an enemy that has no interest in peace, no interest in releasing hostages and no interest in putting an end to ongoing attacks against Israel,” Haworth said. “The deck is stacked: Israel is always guilty, Hamas is always innocent, and the so-called international order is far too happy to sit back, tweet ‘war is bad’ and make excuses for those whose one goal in life is to murder every Jew on the planet. The usual chorus of online critics is far too happy to sit back and call for Israel to just wait for the next pogrom.”

“Worse, the moral calculations of Israel's critics are fundamentally broken. If Hamas chooses to launch attacks from civilian areas, use civilians as human shields, and embed military assets within hospitals and schools, the blame for any civilian casualties lies squarely at their feet. Not to mention the fact that this war could end tomorrow if Hamas released the hostages,” Haworth wrote. “If you don't have a viable alternative that ensures Israeli security, then your condemnation is nothing but the same feckless virtue-signaling that put us in this situation in the first place.”

In Reason, Matthew Petti said “Trump owns the Middle East wars now.”

“President Donald Trump's most impressive accomplishment was also his first one: bringing calm to the Middle East. Before taking office, he pushed Israel and Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal that had been on the table since May 2024, including an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange,” Petti wrote. “Now, Trump is rapidly undoing those accomplishments… Turning a ceasefire into permanent peace was always going to be difficult, and both Israel and Hamas played hardball, especially as Trump's plan to empty the Palestinian population loomed in the background. The ceasefire breaking down at exactly this time in exactly this way, however, was a U.S.-Israeli decision.”

“Trump's America First mantra has always contained two contradictory urges. On one hand, there's a feeling that America is wasting its resources on hopeless foreign causes, which can be avoided by trying to ‘solve problems over the telephone’... On the other hand, there's an intense desire to show strength and an intense fear of looking weak,” Petti said. “Just as things shifted rapidly over the past few weeks, they can shift again. By both brokering the ceasefire and allowing it to fall apart, Trump demonstrated that he has more control than anyone else over the pace of violence in the Middle East. And that means he owns whatever comes next.”

What regional writers are saying.

• Writers in the Middle East have disparate responses to the war resuming, but many Israelis say Hamas bears the brunt of the blame. 
• Others say Netanyahu is extending the war to protect himself politically. 

The Jerusalem Post editorial board wrote “the world must finally recognize Hamas's tactics as manipulation.”

“For weeks, Hamas stalled negotiations in Doha, rejecting opportunities to release hostages and de-escalate the conflict. It refused to release captives on March 1, March 8, and March 15, while simultaneously pretending to engage in good-faith discussions. This pattern is familiar: Hamas consistently seeks international sympathy through ceasefires it never intends to honor while using the lull to strengthen its forces,” the board said. “Israel understands the cost of waiting; every delay emboldens the terrorist organization and prolongs the suffering of the hostages it continues to hold. Israel’s response – targeted strikes on Hamas infrastructure – is a necessary step to ensure that Hamas does not use a ceasefire as a smokescreen for its next attack.

“Hamas has no legitimacy to cry foul. It was Hamas that provoked this latest round of violence, just as it did on October 7, when it launched its brutal attack on Israeli civilians. Since then, the terror group has sought to dictate the terms of engagement, weaponizing human shields and international media narratives while keeping the people of Gaza under its oppressive rule,” the board wrote. “Israel has no obligation to allow Hamas to dictate the battlefield. The era in which Hamas could launch attacks, retreat under the cover of a ceasefire, and then reemerge stronger must come to an end. With the backing of its allies, Israel must continue to pressure Hamas until it is no longer capable of threatening its citizens.”

In Middle East Eye, Ahmad Tibi said “Netanyahu is bombing Gaza again to save his political life.”

“Israel unilaterally violated the Gaza ceasefire after refusing to proceed to the second phase, which would have secured the release of all remaining hostages. Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected offers from Hamas for their release,” Tibi wrote. “If his government had genuinely prioritised bringing the hostages home, a deal could have been reached long ago. But that would mean ending the war, without which Netanyahu’s coalition would collapse. The fighting has thus become a political tool, carried out under the pretext of security.”

“Netanyahu operates like Procrustes, the cruel figure from Greek mythology who forced his guests to fit into a bed that was never the right size - if they were too tall, he chopped off their legs; if they were too short, he stretched them until they broke. Anyone who came to him was forcibly ‘adjusted’ to the predetermined measurements,” Tibi said. “Instead of ending the war with a negotiated deal, he is keeping Israel and the hostages trapped in an artificial framework of brutality and destruction… To cling to power, Netanyahu is willing to fire the Shin Bet chief for investigating the prime minister’s office; to dismantle the judicial system in an attempt to evade a criminal trial that could send him to prison; and to abandon the hostages, despite their families’ desperate pleas.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The ceasefire was always tenuous, but the last two months went even worse than I expected.
• While both sides deserve blame for the war’s resumption, Israel is clearly most responsible. 
• Israelis and Gazans are both being failed by leaders who don’t have their best interests at heart.

It’s hard not to be despondent.

Today is the 531st day of the war, and the ceasefire-that-wasn’t has now completely collapsed. I tried, quite desperately, to find some optimism when this ceasefire was announced. In my take, I spared a few sentences for joy and relief, but emphasized that this war was not over, that the hard part wouldn’t start until after phase one. I said that this agreement was only a baby step toward the end of the fighting.

And to be honest, the last two months went worse than I had expected. 

Let’s start with Israel. Since January, Israel has repeatedly violated the terms of the ceasefire; it refused to withdraw its soldiers, it continued military operations (150 Palestinians were reportedly killed in Gaza during the “ceasefire”), and it blocked electricity and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza — a violation of international humanitarian law. 

In January, I criticized Netanyahu for accepting a deal that had long been on the table. It should be one of the great political scandals of our time that he essentially refused a deal like this until he solidified his governing coalition. Then this week, he became the first Israeli leader to ever fire the head of Shin Bet, an intelligence agency in Israel that recently put blame on the Israeli government (and Netanyahu) for failing to act on warnings about the October 7 attack. With Netanyahu’s governing position secured and critical voices banished, the bombing started again in earnest.

All of this is to say nothing of what happened after the ceasefire deal was announced. First, President Donald Trump announced his big plan for Gaza — which amounted to an ethnic cleansing of the entire strip — effectively signaling to Gazans that the U.S. had long-term plans to force them out. Next, Trump sold billions of dollars of weapons to Israel (bypassing congressional review), said he was fine with Israel resuming the war, then stood back as Israel conducted one of the deadliest strikes so far — reportedly killing some 400 people (civilians and combatants) in a single day, including babies and pregnant mothers sheltering in humanitarian zones. 

As for Hamas, the group’s conduct during the hostage releases was simply abhorrent. It paraded Israelis, including dead hostages, through the streets of Gaza to what sure looked like adoring fans. Four of the bodies the group returned included those of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, including a 9-month-old, who Hamas claims were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Four days later, Israel made a harrowing announcement: the adult body returned was not Shiri Bibas, and forensics could not match the body returned to any known hostage. It turned out to be the body of a Palestinian woman. Netanyahu called the handover of the wrong remains “cruel and malicious,” and the entire ordeal became a renewed symbol of Hamas’s brutality on October 7 that caused the war in the first place.

Meanwhile, Hamas spent the two and a half weeks leading up to Monday’s strike refusing to turn over any of the remaining 24 living hostages, despite clear and direct threats about what Israel would do if it continued to stall. Trump promised “all hell” would break loose if they didn’t turn the hostages over, a red line he was obviously going to hold, and Hamas still (by U.S. and Israeli accounts) held out during negotiations. Israel’s strikes on Monday killed several high-level commanders, making it a successful operation in the eyes of many Israelis — and also reinforcing the fact Hamas is still very much operational. 

As pundits unpack the collapse of the agreement and the renewal of violence, the impulse to play the blame game is evident. Understandably so — there is plenty of blame to go around. But while Hamas may be responsible for the horror it unleashed on Gaza with its October 7 attacks, I find it hard to dispute that — within the scope of the last two months — the primary fault for this deal collapsing lies with Israel.

The talking point from Netanyahu and Trump is simple: Hamas didn’t release the remaining hostages. But it’s also incomplete. Hamas did the most important thing it had committed to in phase one: It released all 33 hostages, as the deal called for, and came to the table to negotiate phase two.  

Israel violated the agreement’s terms first by not meeting on the ceasefire’s 16th day to discuss the plans for phase two. Phase two was always going to be the sticking point, because it required an actual end to the war and Israel leaving Gaza. Netanyahu’s refusal to follow through on the commitment to those negotiations was the initial signal that things were going south. Trump then began insisting on an extension of phase one, which was not in the text of the agreement. Then Israel broke the commitment to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor. Then Israel broke its promise to continue aid while second stage talks were ongoing. Then Israel broke the promise to actually cease firing. Israel did all of this before Hamas balked on additional hostage releases. 

The timeline of events here is impossible to dispute. The Haaretz editorial board laid all this out clearly; while the paper is a frequent critic of the Netanyahu government, it is jarring to see it state in such unequivocal terms that the collapse of this deal falls on Israel, not Hamas. It’s not typical to see an Israeli paper, even one with lefty leanings like Haaretz, scorn its own government and defend Hamas’s version of events. But in this case, as depressing as it is, they’re fully justified in doing so.

The ugly truth — the one so many people refuse to acknowledge — is that Netanyahu has abandoned the hostages to extend his political life. From the early days of the war, this has been the story; it’s why he refused to end the war earlier, and it’s how he has survived this year and a half despite his political obituary being written on October 8. Once again, it is politically advantageous for him for the war to continue. Netanyahu needs approval for a budget before March 31, which he can’t get without support from the far-right wing of his party, which wants him to do exactly what he’s doing now.

If Netanyahu were genuinely thinking about the hostages — including the ones recently released — he’d hear their and their families' clear demands that the war stop, as every bomb endangers the remaining hostages in Gaza. But he has no interest in that argument.

Again: It’s all worse and darker than I even imagined. It’s all been worse and darker than I thought it would be since I wrote my first piece on the war, and it's continued on that track for nearly two years. All my worst fears are coming to fruition, and then some. 

Today, Gazans have no ability to restrain or resist Hamas, a group that cares more about killing Israelis or pretending it may have a way to win this war than it does about protecting its own people. Israelis are at the whims of a leader who consistently ignores their pleas for a ceasefire, caring only about his own political survival. Yet somehow he survives — despite overseeing the worst security failure in modern Israeli history, despite tearing the nation apart with attempted judicial reform, despite the corruption charges, despite the embrace of the far-right — despite it all.

How does it end? I wish I knew. A resolution seems impossible, a real plan totally absent. Instead, we have the leaders of Hamas holding on to all they have, which are literal human bargaining chips, and the Israeli prime minister openly defying the desires of the hostages’ families. Meanwhile, the U.S. president openly muses about permanently vacating Palestinians from Gaza, and the Arab world looks on without so much as lifting a finger. I wish I had an answer, or some positive news, but I don’t.

Take the survey: What do you think about the end of the ceasefire? Let us know here.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Has anyone done an analysis of the potential effects on our economy of massive government layoffs/firings? 

—Abby from Lansing, MI

Tangle: This is a fundamentally difficult question to answer right now, as we simply don’t know how many federal workers will actually be fired when the dust settles. Just this week, the Trump administration moved to reinstate roughly 24,000 probationary federal workers who had been fired after a judge deemed their terminations unlawful. If other challenges are successful, it’s possible that the overall cuts will be much smaller than Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency are envisioning. 

With that said, some economists have projected the potential economic impact of the planned cuts. An analysis by Oxford Economics suggested that consumer-facing sectors (like retail and hospitality) in metro areas could be most impacted, as federal worker spending typically comprises a meaningful portion of their revenues. However, the study also estimated that the effect of potential cuts would be blunted by federal workers finding other employment in the private sector or joining state or local governments. Other economists say a sudden uptick in unemployment amid scaled-back hiring could increase the risk of a recession. 

Still, we should keep in mind that federal government employment accounts for roughly 2% of the overall labor force. That's three million people, but it would take far more than laying off twenty or thirty thousand of them to meaningfully destabilize the economy.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Wednesday, authorities in Turkey detained Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu — who is widely viewed as the top political rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — on charges of terrorism, money laundering, and other financial crimes. İmamoğlu won control of Istanbul’s city government in a 2019 election and was set to be chosen as his party’s 2028 presidential candidate in the coming days. Additionally, Istanbul University revoked his diploma, depriving him of a requirement to run for president under Turkish law. The arrest comes amid a broader crackdown on political opposition by Erdoğan, who is technically term-limited in 2028 but could run again if parliament calls an early election or through a constitutional amendment. The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Numbers.

• 25. The number of living Israeli hostages released by Hamas during phase one of the ceasefire. 
• 8. The number of hostages’ bodies released by Hamas during phase one of the ceasefire.
• 59. The estimated number of hostages remaining in Gaza. 
• 1,900. The approximate number of imprisoned Palestinians released by Israel during phase one of the ceasefire. 
• 10,000. The approximate number of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel who have either been convicted or are suspected of "security" offenses. 
• 54% and 31%. The percentage of Americans who said their sympathies were more with the Israelis and the Palestinians, respectively, in 2023, according to Gallup.
• 46% and 33%. The percentage of Americans who said their sympathies were more with the Israelis and the Palestinians, respectively, in 2025.
• 70%. The percentage of Israelis who said they were in favor of continuing to the second phase of the hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas in February 2025, according to a Channel 12 poll. 
• 59%. The percentage of Israelis who said they supported a resumption of hostilities with Hamas in March 2025, according to polling by the Direct Polls Institute.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the social media case before the Supreme Court.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the release of the JFK files.
• Nothing to do with politics: A look back at an early internet icon — Garfield Minus Garfield.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,826 readers answered our survey on the Alien Enemies Act deportations with 61% disagreeing with the deportations and the justification. “We need rule of law. Maybe deportation is the right answer, but in the U.S., you need to prove guilt,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The global nonprofit Little Free Library unveiled its 200,000th mailbox last week. In celebration, they granted 200 “mailbox libraries” to Title 1 elementary schools, each filled with 200 children’s books donated by Penguin Random House. The organization, which operates in 128 countries on all seven continents, attributes its success to volunteer stewards who have made the vast expansion possible. “We are humbled by the number of individuals and organizations who chose to build community, share their love of reading, and expand access to books by starting one or more Little Free Libraries,” the nonprofit’s Director of Communications Margret Aldrich writes. Nice News has the story.

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