Israel Returned to War in Gaza Hoping to Break Hamas. It Achieved Few, if Any, Goals.

When Israel broke its cease-fire with Hamas in March and returned to all-out war in Gaza, the country’s leaders said that the new military campaign and blockade on food would force Hamas to release more Israeli hostages in exchange for fewer Israeli concessions.

Four months later, that campaign is now increasingly perceived, in Israel and beyond, as a strategic, diplomatic and humanitarian failure, especially as starvation rises in Gaza.

In the last four months, Israeli troops have advanced farther into Gaza, mostly recapturing areas they relinquished earlier in the war. They recovered the bodies of eight slain hostages; killed more Hamas leaders, including the group’s top military commander, Muhammad Sinwar; and destroyed more of Hamas’s underground tunnel network.

The move has come at great cost, first and foremost to Palestinian civilians, but also to Israel’s standing in the world — without a breakthrough either in the negotiations with Hamas or on the battlefield. Hamas has refused to surrender, continuing to inflict deadly attacks on Israeli soldiers.

“I have to use these words: total failure,” said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst and former military intelligence officer. “We are no closer to achieving our main war goal — to erase the military and the governmental capacities of Hamas — and Hamas has not become more flexible. We find ourselves right now in a total disaster.”

One American-Israeli hostage has been returned alive since the war resumed, but only through a side deal between Hamas and the United States. Hamas remains in control of key urban areas in Gaza, and has not compromised on its core demands. Mr. Sinwar was replaced by another hard-liner, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who has maintained Hamas’s position, just as Mr. Sinwar had maintained the stance of his own predecessors.