Israel July 2025-

Israel, Palestine, Gaza, West Bank

22 October
Jewish figures across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel
In an open letter, Israeli ex-officials, artists and intellectuals say ‘unconscionable’ actions in Gaza amount to genocide
Over 450 signatories, including former Israeli officials, Oscar winners, authors and intellectuals have signed an open letter demanding accountability over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The letter’s release comes as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday amid reports they plan to shelve proposals for sanctions over human rights violations.
The signatories urge world leaders to uphold international court of justice (ICJ) and international criminal court rulings, avoid complicity in international law violations by halting arms transfers and imposing targeted sanctions, ensure adequate humanitarian aid to Gaza, and reject false claims of antisemitism against those advocating for peace and justice.
World Court says Israel must ensure basic needs in Gaza are met

13 October
A Divided Israel Unites in Joy as Hostages Come Home
With the release from Gaza of the last surviving captives, many Israelis said it was time for the country to heal after years of polarizing war.
(NYT) A majority of Israelis had long wanted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritize their release with a deal to end the war, polls showed. But Mr. Netanyahu accused protesters of “hardening Hamas’s stance” while critics of the prime minister accused him, in turn, of prolonging the war to appease his far-right political allies on whose support he relies to stay in power.
Now, many Israelis said, with an open-ended cease-fire in place and all the living hostages back home, it was time for the country to heal.
“This is a momentous day, a day of great joy,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an address in the Knesset, or Israeli Parliament, on Monday alongside President Trump.

7-8 October
How Oct. 7 has transformed Israel, Palestine, and the world
The Oct. 7, 2023 attacks fundamentally transformed Israel, Palestine, and the world in ways that will persist for years — regardless of whether Donald Trump’s current peace negotiations succeed. Here’s what has changed and what lies ahead.

After two years, Israel’s Gaza war has reshaped the Middle East
Israel’s hard power preeminence in the Middle East seems paramount. But the country’s leaders — and the entire region — still face an array of political challenges.
(WaPo) A region home to many tragic clichés is at a crossroads and poised on a knife edge. Two years after the horrific events of Oct. 7, 2023 — when militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 255 hostages — the Israeli campaign that ensued, devastating the Gaza Strip, smolders on. There’s a glimmer of hope that ongoing talks in Egypt, backed by President Donald Trump, may finally yield a ceasefire and the release of all remaining hostages in Hamas captivity.
Still, Israeli bombardments in Gaza continued Tuesday, adding to the toll of Palestinian civilian casualties, which has surpassed more than 67,000 people killed, according to local health authorities. The territory has been flattened, with most of its civilian infrastructure destroyed, as well as the bulk of its housing stock, schools and medical and sanitation facilities. On Tuesday, Israelis mourned the Oct. 7 attack with solemn memorials. In Gaza, the trauma of what’s followed is still hard to gauge, with numerous bodies buried under the rubble and the looming prospect that at least some of the territory’s immiserated Palestinian population may be compelled to leave their homeland.
The past two years of war reached far across the Middle East. Israel decimated the once-powerful Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah and pummeled Iran-linked targets in neighboring Syria; by the end of last year, the long-ruling Assad regime in Damascus was so weakened that it collapsed in the face of a rebel offensive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called the bluff of his regional nemesis in Tehran, repeatedly hitting targets on Iranian soil with clandestine sabotage, assassination plots and missile strikes. He even pulled the United States into a brief shooting war with Iran this summer.
But Israel’s tactical triumphs over the past two years have not resulted in clear strategic success. Its hard power preeminence in the Middle East, buttressed by U.S. military aid and political support, may seem paramount, but the country’s leaders face an array of political challenges, including the unresolved question of reconciliation with millions of Palestinians living under de facto Israeli occupation. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is unpopular at home, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and increasingly unwelcome even in the United States, where popular opinion is slowly turning against Israel.
A regional hegemon, globally isolated
(AP) Israel has inflicted major damage on Iran and its allies, emerging as the unquestionably dominant military power in the Middle East, with full control over most of Gaza and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
It showed off powerful military and intelligence capabilities with an attack on Hezbollah using exploding pagers and long-range strikes that took out senior militants, Iranian generals and nuclear scientists.
But its tactical victories have come at an enormous cost.
Israel is more isolated internationally than it has been in decades, with experts, scholars and major rights groups accusing it of genocide, charges it vehemently denies. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, accusing them of using starvation as a method of warfare, allegations they deny. Normalization with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries appears increasingly remote.
The failure to return the hostages, on top of long-standing corruption allegations against Netanyahu and his efforts to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, have left the country furiously divided, with weekly mass protests and discontent mounting as Israel wages another major offensive in Gaza.

26 September
Facing global isolation at UN, a defiant Netanyahu says Israel ‘must finish the job’ against Hamas
(AP) — Surrounded by critics and protesters at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders on Friday that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing international isolation over his refusal to end the devastating war. “Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure,” he said. “And I guarantee you one thing: Israel won’t.”
Netanyahu’s speech, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from multiple nations walked out of the U.N. General Assembly hall en masse Friday morning as he began.
Responding to countries’ recent decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu said: “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere.”

1 September
Israel committing genocide in Gaza, scholars group says
Leading genocide scholars formally declare that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the UN’s definition of genocide.
(Al Jazeera) The world’s top genocide scholars have formally declared that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, marking a landmark intervention from leading experts in the field of international law.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), a 500-member body of academics founded in 1994, passed a resolution on Monday, stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza fulfil the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
17 June
History says the genocide in Gaza will be recognised – eventually
The world never sees crimes against humanity in the moment. Justice, if it comes, is always delayed.

25-28 August
Benjamin Netanyahu is turning Israel into a pariah state. He doesn’t care
Gary Mason, National affairs columnist
(Globe & Mail) With so much evil in the world, it’s quite a feat to be considered the worst of the worst. And yet, I think we are there with the Israeli government, which has in recent months taken over the title from Russia.
And while we consider the bombing Israel is conducting against the people of Gaza, the famine it has incited and the sheer savagery of the war being overseen by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is difficult to not be equally outraged by the pathetic, feeble response of the global community.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There isn’t a foreign ministry around that hasn’t produced a statement (or several) condemning the latest atrocity committed by the Israel Defense Forces. And the demands that Israel halt what it is doing immediately flow endlessly from the tepid pens of world leaders.
And yet the one person who could stop the conflict tomorrow if he wanted to – U.S. President Donald Trump – has done little more than talk about a ceasefire. Rather, he recently called Mr. Netanyahu a “war hero.” And, of course, the U.S. continues to send Israel the weapons it is using in what some renowned experts have characterized as a “genocide” of Palestinians.
It doesn’t seem to matter how many children lose their lives. Clearly, almost 20,000 isn’t enough. I suppose if the Israeli Prime Minister has his way, there won’t be any children left in Gaza. Because there won’t be any Palestinians, period. …
This week, we saw Israeli forces bomb a hospital, killing 20 people including five journalists. It’s widely been speculated that it was a deliberate “double strike.” This is when one bombs a building, waits for first-aid workers and journalists to arrive to help the wounded and chronicle the devastation, and then bombs the same spot again, killing even more.
That’s how some of the more than 240 journalists who have lost their lives covering this war have died. Most of them have been Palestinians, because Israel won’t allow international journalists in to document what it is doing. It would seem to be doing its best to eradicate anyone who is bearing witness to the war crimes many believe are taking place in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s Path Is Leading Israel to Ruin
Eran Yashiv and Daniel Tsiddon
What began as a response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks has devolved into a campaign of mass destruction, famine, and displacement. Unless Israel abandons its plan to conquer Gaza City and restores the flow of humanitarian aid, it risks catastrophic economic fallout, deepening isolation, and national decline.
(Project Syndicate) Italy’s current government is among the most Israel-friendly in the country’s history, which is why Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto’s recent remarks about the ongoing war in Gaza should set off alarm bells among Israelis, particularly within the government.
n an interview with La Stampa, Crosetto delivered a blunt message to Israel’s leaders. “Fighting terrorists is no longer an excuse,” he said, adding that “We need decisions that will force [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] to stop.” Such measures, he added, should not be directed against Israel itself, but instead serve as a “way to save its people from a government that has lost its reason and its humanity.” Crosetto is right. The war in Gaza has taken a devastating toll not only on Palestinians but also on Israel’s economy, democracy, and global standing. Without an immediate change of course, Netanyahu’s agenda could make Israel an international pariah for decades to come.

25-30 July
Even Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest backer, Donald Trump, doesn’t believe him on claims of ‘no starvation’ in Gaza
(ABC Au)Benjamin Netanyahu is becoming more and more isolated on the world stage, as his rhetoric on the conditions in Gaza becomes more and more fanciful.
While announcing an easing of restrictions on aid deliveries in the strip, following a total humanitarian blockade of Gaza in March and the establishment of private aid distribution in mid-May, the prime minister made a startling claim.
“Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza,” he told a Christian conference in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“What a bold-faced lie.
“There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”
The reason that is startling is because of what is happening on the ground, less than 100 kilometres from Jerusalem.
Israeli public figures call for ‘crippling sanctions’ on Israel over Gaza starvation
Thirty-one high-profile Israelis express shame over ‘brutal campaign’ and demand permanent ceasefire in letter
(The Guardian)) A group of high-profile Israeli public figures, including academics, artists and public intellectuals, has called for “crippling sanctions” to be imposed by the international community on Israel, amid mounting horror over its starvation of Gaza.
The 31 signatories of a letter to the Guardian include an Academy award recipient, Yuval Abraham; a former Israeli attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair; Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Israel’s parliament and former head of the Jewish Agency; and a number of recipients of the prestigious Israel prize, Israel’s highest cultural honour.
28 July
What reporting in Gaza shows amid Trump’s break from Netanyahu on starvation
(NPR) New light has emerged between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, with the latter disputing Israel’s claim that there is no starvation in Gaza.
But Consider This: Even as global outrage and assistance grows, aid agencies say only a total ceasefire will allow all the necessary aid in to get to those who desperately need it in Gaza.
25 July
Israel’s actions in Gaza put it at risk of becoming a global pariah
Israel’s parliament — the Knesset — this week voted 71-13 in favour of annexing the occupied West Bank.
(ABC Au) It was a symbolic, non-binding vote but one that gives a window into the mindset within Israel that is feeding the humanitarian disaster the world is witnessing in Gaza.
That is a disaster with no end in sight following yet another breakdown in ceasefire talks in Qatar on Thursday night, and despite the escalation in international pressure this week, first in a statement from 28 countries attacking Israel’s approach to allowing aid into the strip and, early on Friday Australian time, French President Emanuel Macron’s announcement that France would recognise a Palestinian state.
The significance of the French president’s intervention lies in the fact that he is the first of the G7 nations to commit to recognise Palestine — a step that many, including Australia, have argued until now needed to await a ceasefire and a clarification that Hamas would not have a role in its governance.
A headshot of Emmanuel Macron with a neutral expression in front of a French and European Union flag.

18 July
Faced with a choice between saving his own skin and the lives of others, Netanyahu always chooses himself
Jonathan Freedland
If Israel’s prime minister accepts a ceasefire deal soon, it will only be because the timing suits him. He, like his country, will face a reckoning
(The Guardian) … If the supposed benefit of the war eludes even Netanyahu’s erstwhile partners in government, its cost is apparent to the entire watching world.
Inside Israel, a war without end means the deaths of Israeli soldiers – and, recall, almost every (non-Haredi) Jewish, Druze and Circassian 18-year-old is a conscript – and another day chained in darkness for the 20 living Israelis still believed to be held hostage by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. Which is why three in four Israelis want this war over, immediately.
Next week will see the end of the current session of the Israeli parliament, with the Knesset then in recess until October. During those three months, it is procedurally harder to bring down an Israeli government. So Netanyahu will soon be less vulnerable to the ultranationalists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have long threatened to leave his coalition should he do a deal that ends the war. Hence the speculation of an imminent move.
Underpinning it is the assumption that until now Netanyahu has preferred the hostages to remain in their dungeons, and Palestinian civilians to keep dying, than to risk his hold on power. In other words, if a deal is done soon, it will be a deal that could have been done sooner – but which was delayed to keep Netanyahu in the prime minister’s seat.

17 July
The Wheels Are Falling Off Netanyahu’s Government
The Israeli leader has been alienating his allies and is spiraling toward early elections.
By Yair Rosenberg
(The Atlantic) Outside of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu appears ascendant. After the Israeli leader inflicted heavy losses on Iran last month, The New York Times dubbed the apparent victory his “political resurrection” and “the culmination of a hard-fought comeback from the lowest point in his long political career.” Inside Israel, however, the reality could not be more different.

As has been the case for more than two years, polls continue to show that Netanyahu’s coalition would lose the next election, were it to be held today. And this week, his government lost two of its parties, effectively leaving it with control of just 50 of the Israeli Parliament’s 120 seats. The result: Netanyahu now sits atop a de facto minority government that is no longer able to legislate, and Israel is careening toward new elections, most likely in early 2026.
The reason for this unraveling is twofold. To maintain his grip on power, despite his personal unpopularity and ongoing corruption trial, Netanyahu has relied upon two constituencies: the ultra-Orthodox religious parties (which hold 18 seats) and the far-right ultranationalist parties (which hold 14 seats). Both of these groups support policies at odds with the views of the Israeli majority, and both are now at odds with Netanyahu.
For more than a decade, the ultra-Orthodox have backed Netanyahu even as many Israelis have turned on him. In exchange, the prime minister has provided generous state subsidies to ultra-Orthodox institutions and protected the community from Israel’s military draft: Whereas most Jewish Israelis serve in the Israel Defense Forces, most young ultra-Orthodox men are instead paid by the government to study religious texts. This arrangement has been profoundly unpopular even among Netanyahu’s voters but was tolerated during peacetime as a necessary concession for continued right-wing governance. …

Not just about the Druze: Israel’s rationale for its attacks on Syria
Israel has framed its attacks as in defence of the Druze – but the country has more self-serving reasons.
By Simon Speakman Cordall
(Al Jazeera) On Wednesday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a video message to his country’s Druze minority. He implored them not to cross into southwestern Syria to support Syrian Druze militiamen in their fight against local Bedouin and government forces in Suwayda.
And yet, as Netanyahu made the statement, his own forces were bombing the Syrian capital Damascus, hitting the country’s Ministry of Defence, and killing at least three people.
… Sectarian tensions between the Druze and local Bedouins in Suweyda are longstanding. Meanwhile, attempts by the newly formed Syrian government, which took power after the fall of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, to assert control over the region have been frustrated in part by Israel’s repeated threats against the presence of the Syrian military near its border.
There are roughly 700,000 Druze in Syria. Another 150,000 Druze live in Israel, where, at least before the 2018 law emphasising only Jewish self-determination, many regarded themselves as bound by a “blood covenant” with their Jewish neighbours since 1948 and the founding of Israel at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in the Nakba. While some now feel like “second-class” citizens, the majority are still supportive of the Israeli state, where they serve in the military.
… Since the ousting of al-Assad after a 14-year war, Israel has struck Syria hundreds of times and invaded and occupied about 400 square kilometres (155sq miles) of its territory, excluding the western Golan Heights, which it has occupied since 1967.
Leading analysts within Israel suggest that these latest attacks may not have been entirely motivated by concern for the welfare of the Druze, so much as the personal and political aims of the Israeli government and its embattled prime minister.
… [Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York] sketched out a number of the motivations behind Israel’s recent strikes on Syria, from boosting Netanyahu’s newfound self-image as a wartime leader, to pushing back his corruption trial, to reinforcing the “delusion” that, over the previous 21 months, Israel has somehow managed to reshape the Middle East through military force alone.
“Lastly, he doesn’t want to see a unified Syria with a strong central government controlled by al-Sharaa,” Pinkas said. “He wants a weak central government dealing with areas controlled by the Kurds [in the north] and the Druze and Bedouin in the south.”
The attacks on Syria have the additional effect of sustaining the sense of crisis that has gripped Israeli society and sustained its government through numerous scandals since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war on Gaza.

15 July
Netanyahu under mounting political pressure after party quits
Government vulnerable not in immediate danger of collapse
Coalition members quit over military conscription dispute
Netanyahu still has time to resolve crisis
Gaza ceasefire talks underway in Qatar
(Reuters) – A religious party has quit Israel’s ruling coalition in a dispute over military service, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a razor-thin majority in parliament but still enough political support to secure a potential Gaza ceasefire.
Six members of United Torah Judaism (UTJ) handed in resignation letters overnight from posts in parliamentary committees and government ministries, in protest against lawmakers’ failure to guarantee future exemption from military conscription for ultra-Orthodox religious students.

12 July
Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside
Andrew Roth
Israeli PM manages to avoid breach with US president through high-profile assurances he is seeking end to war

7-8 July
Israeli defence minister’s Gaza proposal marks escalation from incitement of war crimes to official planning for mass forced displacement
Emma Graham-Harrison
Plans for an internment camp on ruins of Rafah are ‘unviable, impractical and morally depraved’ but should be taken seriously
(The Guardian) Defence minister Israel Katz’s plans for an internment camp on the ruins of Rafah mark an escalation beyond incitement to war crimes, already a mainstay of Israel’s political discourse, to operational planning for mass forced displacement.
Israeli lawmakers including cabinet ministers have repeatedly called for the “cleansing” of Gaza, in the wake of Hamas’s cross-border attacks on 7 October, backing the forced deportation of Palestinians to other countries and new Israeli settlements in the territory.
However, Katz was the first senior cabinet member to lay out, in a briefing on Monday to Israeli media, measures to implement the displacement of Palestinians from most of Gaza.
Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’
Military ordered to turn ruins of Rafah into ‘humanitarian city’ but experts call the plan an internment camp for all Palestinians in Gaza
Palestinians will have to pass ‘security screening’ into the camp and then will not be allowed to leave, the defence minister told Israeli journalists
Israel’s defence minister has laid out plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme that legal experts and academics described as a blueprint for crimes against humanity.
Israel Katz said he has ordered Israel’s military to prepare for establishing a camp, which he called a “humanitarian city”, on the ruins of the city of Rafah, Haaretz newspaper reported.

5 July
The Cost of Victory: Israel Overpowered Its Foes, but Deepened Its Isolation
Michael D. Shear, White House correspondent
It is more secure from threats than at any time since its founding. But the war in Gaza, and attacks on Iran and Lebanon, have undercut Israel’s standing among the world’s democracies.
(NYT) It’s Israel’s Middle East now.
After three-quarters of a century fighting hostile neighbors, the tiny Jewish country, about the size of New Jersey, has all but vanquished its enemies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen and now even Iran itself, the one backing them all.
The exercise of raw power has allowed Israel, for the first time since its creation in 1948, a future mostly free from immediate threats. The risk of a nuclear Iran is diminished, or perhaps gone. Israel has stable, if uneasy, relations with Persian Gulf Arab states. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cemented his partnership with President Trump.
The new reality in Israel, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former top aide to Mr. Netanyahu, is that places once under constant threat from Lebanon, Syria or Gaza “will be more secure than Manhattan.”
But at what cost?
Mr. Netanyahu’s relentless and unapologetic military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 people hostage has cemented the view of Israel as a pariah, its leadership accused of genocide and war crimes, and disdained by some world leaders. In opinion polls globally, most people have a negative view of Israel.