Watching Benjamin Netanyahu blunder into Rafah with no plan for “the day after” is like watching a Greek tragedy whose end is foreseen but can no longer be blocked.

Netanyahu’s push into the city at Gaza’s southern edge — with no strategy for an endgame — will force Israeli troops to reoccupy the entire strip. It will ensure Hamas’ political and military survival, and trap Israeli troops in an unending insurgency.

It will probably doom most of the remaining Israeli hostages. It may also doom thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children.

Worst of all, it will hand both Hamas terrorists and Israeli extremists a devastating win that will continue to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people and on the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s focus on total victory over Hamas blindly mistakes the Gaza war for a conventional 20th-century land war that can be ended solely by military means. He falsely compares Israel to the Allied forces that defeated Adolf Hitler in World War II.

Supposed allies of Israel such as GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham encourage Netanyahu’s delusions when they cite the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a template for bombing Gaza. Not only is such talk morally repugnant, but it shows zero grasp of how to defeat Hamas.

President Joe Biden was absolutely correct to ban a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that can wipe out whole neighborhoods in pursuit of a single Hamas commander. Such actions only increase support for Hamas globally and in the Arab world (even in moderate Arab states whose leaders despise Hamas).

The Gaza war is a nontraditional struggle with an unconventional force — Hamas — that is fighting a guerilla war from underground tunnels. The civilian population of 2 million is trapped in a territory no bigger than Philadelphia, with no possibility to escape. Yes, Hamas uses civilians as a shield, but Israel’s indifference to civilian casualties plays into the terror group’s hands.

The proper military comparison for the Gaza war is the situation the United States faced in Afghanistan after 9/11 — or what Israel faced in Lebanon after 1983. Both countries got mired for years in trying to defeat an insurgency. In both cases, the military alone couldn’t win because there was no concurrent political strategy to isolate the Islamist militias. Continued military attacks further alienated civilians.

Smashing into Rafah, to which half the Gazan population has fled, won’t destroy Hamas — many of its leaders and fighters will survive in tunnels or houses, blend into the remaining population, or even escape to Sinai. Israeli bombs will doom many of the hostages who are still alive.

After tens of thousands more Palestinian civilian deaths, even Gazans angered at Hamas for their plight will adopt its ideology of a one-state Palestinian solution minus Israel. A continued insurgency will bubble under the surface and expand into the West Bank.

Israel will be trapped in Gaza, endlessly trying to crush insurgents.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gets it. He has publicly protested his government’s lack of a Gaza endgame, telling a news conference last week that he wouldn’t allow the establishment of military rule in the Gaza Strip.

“(Netanyahu’s) not taking a decision on a ‘day after strategy’ is tantamount to a dangerous decision to install Israeli military and civil rule in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.

“The end of the military campaign must be a political act,” he warned. “The day after Hamas will only be achieved through the rule of Palestinian elements that form an alternative to Hamas. Above all, this is an Israeli interest. Unfortunately, no such plan has been brought for debate.”

In other words, the only way to doom Hamas is to provide Palestinians with an alternative option that separates civilians from Hamas fighters. That would leave Hamas politically and physically exposed.

The Biden administration, along with moderate Gulf Arab states, has put forward the only plausible alternative: plans that would involve a possible Arab peacekeeping force, along with Arab and international funding to rebuild from Israeli bombing.

But such plans were contingent on two steps by Israel — the first being putting a stop to the reckless killing of civilians.

Had Netanyahu thought strategically, he would have made every effort to establish real safe zones for civilians with water and sanitation that would have separated noncombatants from fighters. This strategy would have given Israel more time and more leeway to destroy Hamas terrorists in tunnels and above ground.

Instead, Israel let vengeance rule, bombing indiscriminately and blocking aid. After the horrors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage, this may be understandable from an emotional standpoint, but was strategically stupid and morally ugly. Even today, after Israel has closed almost all entry points of humanitarian aid to Gaza, Netanyahu permits followers of his right-wing political allies to block the few food shipments still headed there via Israeli roads.

Second, the Biden plan is contingent on Israel facilitating the return to Gaza of rule by a rejuvenated Palestinian Authority, or PA, the governing body that exercises partial control over the West Bank. The PA’s return depends, in turn, on Israel endorsing a political path forward toward the end of occupation, a path that ultimately would lead to a two-state solution.

Yet, Netanyahu has vehemently opposed any role for the PA. He has fantasized that apolitical Palestinians or tribal leaders will somehow emerge to run daily life in Gaza, and Israeli forces will continue to police Gaza, which will be “demilitarized” and “de-radicalized.”

That is a pipe dream, as Hamas will survive in the wings, and no tribal leaders will help Israel maintain a military occupation. Moreover, with most of Gaza’s housing destroyed or broken, the majority of Palestinians will be living in rubble, unable to function or feed themselves.

Israel will be left ruling over the ruins. Moderate Arab states will not finance the rebuilding of the strip if the war there continues; no international force will police those ruins.

Continued Israeli military occupation of Gaza will seriously undermine Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and prevent any future normalization with Saudi Arabia. It will alienate large segments of the public in Europe and the United States, and make the country an international pariah.

It will undercut one of Israel’s closest friends ever, who tried and failed to force Israel’s leaders to face reality: President Biden.

It may be too late to reverse Netanyahu’s self-defeating course, even with more U.S. pressure. Yet, the road he has chosen — in order to retain power and avoid jail time for corruption — will keep Hamas alive and intimidate any nascent opposition. It will cause too many more Israelis and Palestinians to die.

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By MICHAEL R. SISAK, JAKE OFFENHARTZ, JENNIFER PELTZ and COLLEEN LONG (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers rested their defense Tuesday without the former president taking the witness stand in his New York hush money trial.

The jury was sent home until May 28, when closing arguments are expected. Trump did not stop to speak as he left the courthouse and ignored a question about why he wasn’t testifying.

After more than four weeks of testimony, jurors could begin deliberating as soon as next week to decide whether Trump is guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Prosecutors have accused Trump of a scheme to bury negative stories to fend off damage to his 2016 presidential campaign and then falsifying internal business records to cover it up.

Trump, the first former American president to be tried criminally, has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing in the case, which he has slammed as politically motivated.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP) — A defense witness in Donald Trump’s hush money case whom the judge threatened to remove from the trial over his behavior returned to the stand Tuesday as the trial nears its end.

Trump’s lawyers hope Robert Costello’s testimony will help undermine the credibility of a key prosecution witness, Trump fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen.

Costello turned to Judge Juan M. Merchan before the jurors arrived to the court, speaking quietly. The judge acknowledged him and nodded, a much more cordial scene than the drama that unfolded during Monday’s proceedings, when Costello made comments under his breath during testimony, rolled his eyes and called the whole exercise “ridiculous.” The antics angered Merchan, and the judge briefly kicked reporters out of the courtroom to admonish him.

The judge told Costello, a former federal prosecutor, he was being “contemptuous,” adding, “If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand,” according to a court transcript.

The defense was expected to rest its case later Tuesday, clearing the way for the trial to move on to decisions about how to instruct the jury on deliberations. Prosecutors on Monday rested their case accusing Trump of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to bury stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign. The criminal trial, the first of a former U.S. president, is in the final stretch, with closing arguments expected the Tuesday after Memorial Day.

The charges stem from internal Trump Organization records in which payments to Cohen were marked as legal expenses. Prosecutors say they were really reimbursements for a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public before the 2016 election with claims of a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump says nothing sexual happened between them.

Trump, a Republican, has said he did nothing illegal and has slammed the case as an effort to hinder his 2024 bid to reclaim the White House.

“They have no case,” Trump said outside the courtroom Tuesday. “There’s no crime.”

After jurors left for the day Monday, defense attorneys pressed the judge to throw out the charges before jurors even begin deliberating, arguing prosecutors have failed to prove their case. The defense has suggested that Trump was trying to protect his family, not his campaign, by squelching what he says were false, scurrilous claims.

Defense attorney Todd Blanche argued that there was nothing illegal about soliciting a tabloid’s help to run positive stories about Trump, run negative stories about his opponents and identify potentially damaging stories before they were published. No one involved “had any criminal intent,” Blanche said.

“How is keeping a false story from the voters criminal?” Blanche asked.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo shot back that “the trial evidence overwhelmingly supports each element” of the alleged offenses and said the case should proceed to the jury.

The judge didn’t immediately rule on the defense’s request. Such long-shot requests are often made in criminal cases but are rarely granted.

The defense called Costello because of his role as an antagonist to Cohen since their professional relationship splintered in spectacular fashion. Costello had offered to represent Cohen soon after the lawyer’s hotel room, office and home were raided and as Cohen faced a decision about whether to remain defiant in the face of a criminal investigation or to cooperate with authorities in hopes of securing more lenient treatment.

Costello in the years since has repeatedly maligned Cohen’s credibility and was even a witness before last year’s grand jury that indicted Trump, offering testimony designed to undermine Cohen’s account. In a Fox News Channel interview last week, Costello accused Cohen of lying to the jury and using the case to “monetize” himself.

Costello contradicted Cohen’s testimony describing Trump as intimately involved in all aspects of the hush money scheme. Costello told jurors Monday that Cohen told him Trump “knew nothing” about the hush money payment to Daniels.

“Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments, that he did this on his own, and he repeated that numerous times,” Costello testified.

Cohen, however, testified earlier Monday that he has “no doubt” that Trump gave him a final sign-off to make the payments to Daniels. In total, he said he spoke with Trump more than 20 times about the matter in October 2016.

Trump lawyer Emil Bove told the judge that the defense does not plan to call any other witnesses after Costello, though it may still call campaign-finance expert Bradley A. Smith for limited testimony. It has not said definitively that Trump won’t testify, but that’s the clearest indication yet that he will waive his right to take the stand in his own defense.

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This story has been corrected to fix the time element to Tuesday, not Monday.

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Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; and Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.