One reason for the 78-year survival of Israel, a small democratic country in a mostly hostile region, is that its leaders long grasped that big gains come from preventing wars but, when necessary, fighting them quickly, with clearly defined and realistic aims. Short conflicts should be a prelude to something much more valuable: a flourishing civilian life. Over decades, Israel's military doctrine set out that wars should be limited and based on deterrence, early-warning and decisive action.
Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, argued that the duty of the government was to prolong periods of calm between conflicts, then use that time to build up the economy, society and military. In times of war the IDF would mobilise reserves swiftly, since Israel was too small to maintain a large standing army. His doctrine was formulated around three Hebrew watchwords: harta'a (deterrence); hatra'a (early warning); and hachra'a (decisive action). Its essence was that a tiny country with a small population in a hostile region could not afford to wage long wars frequently. Importantly, Ben-Gurion wrote, "a foreign-policy of peace" was "a fundamental component of security": Israel needed alliances and international legitimacy.
Under Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel has abandoned many of those principles. The IDF is over-extended on four fronts, having seized "security zones" in the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon and Syria and engaged in an increasingly violent occupation of the West Bank. Both Hamas and Hizbullah, though weakened, retain a grip. Hundreds of thousands of reservists have spent many months fighting; the devastation of Gaza, where Israel has killed over 70,000 people, has greatly eroded its international legitimacy.
A new unofficial doctrine has emerged in which the notion of pre-emptive action has been redefined. If Israel can no longer rely on detecting enemies' intentions, it must act much earlier against their capabilities—a principle guiding both its wars with Iran and its occupation of "security zones" in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Senior IDF officers grumble about having to fight wars without an overall strategy, but in public they have fallen into line with Netanyahu's open-ended conflict.
By April 2026 Donald Trump had imposed five ceasefires on Israel in 15 months: two in Gaza in 2025, two over Iran, and one covering Lebanon (where Hizbullah began firing on Israel on March 2nd 2026). Israel is not a party to the talks between America and Iran; it will have to abide by whatever is agreed.
Most of Gaza's population of roughly 2m are descendants of refugees who fled the war that led to Israel's creation in 1948. The Palestinian Authority took over the administration of Gaza in 1994 under the Oslo accords, but Hamas overthrew it in a bloody coup in 2007. Israel evacuated its Gaza settlements—including the Gush Katif bloc—in 2005.
Wedged between Israel and Egypt, Gaza was never self-sufficient. Israel and Egypt imposed an embargo after Hamas took power in 2007. Half the workforce was unemployed and more than 60% of the population relied on some form of foreign aid. The UN ran clinics offering 3.5m consultations a year and schools educating some 300,000 children. Two-fifths of the territory was farmland that supplied enough dairy, poultry, eggs and produce to meet most local demand.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since March 2nd 2025. By July 29th 2025 at least 60,000 Palestinians had been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry, with thousands more buried under rubble. All but 19% of Gaza is now an Israeli militarised zone or subject to displacement orders. The army has morale problems: in some units only 50% of reservists report for duty. Polls show that more than 60% of Israelis oppose an offensive to reoccupy Gaza.
Israel has already smashed Hamas's leadership, its rocket arsenal and its ability to mount complex attacks. What remains is a ragtag guerrilla force, which Israel struggles to destroy because fresh recruits are plentiful. The IDF's chief of staff is Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, appointed for his toughness.
For over two months from early March 2025 Israel enforced a total blockade of the strip, stopping food and medicines from entering and cutting off electricity to desalination plants. Some 84% of Gaza's farmland and 71% of its greenhouses have been damaged, along with 72% of the fishing fleet. Only 1% of Gaza's pre-war chickens remain. A satellite assessment found 68% of roads damaged. Food prices have rocketed, with some items costing 700% more than before the war.
On May 5th 2025 Binyamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved a new plan: the army will reoccupy part of the enclave, razing some buildings as it goes. Palestinians will be displaced to a sliver of land in southern Gaza. Israel will let some aid into the strip, stockpiled at "distribution hubs" guarded by private American contractors. Families will come once a fortnight to collect food and some essentials. The plan makes no provision for people who are sick or unable to trek to a distribution centre. The UN estimates reconstruction of Gaza will cost $53bn over the next decade. General Zamir opposes a full occupation, warning it would endanger the hostages and that the IDF may not have enough troops.
Some of Netanyahu's far-right ministers have gloated that such conditions would drive Gazans into exile. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has called for the building of Israeli settlements throughout a depopulated Gaza. He has said Hamas must surrender, disarm and send its leaders into exile; only a quarter of its tunnels have been destroyed, he claims.
On May 26th 2025 Israel launched a distribution network using "hubs" to hand out weekly rations. Aid is brought in convoys protected by Israel and distributed by American mercenaries rather than the UN; Gazans must travel to any of four distribution hubs to collect family-sized boxes weekly. The next day thousands of hungry people overran the area and work was suspended. Jake Wood, the head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which runs the network, resigned, saying it was impossible to carry out the plan while adhering to the principles of "humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence". Days of chaos around the hubs followed, in which dozens of Gazans were shot and killed on their way to collect food. The IDF then declared the roads leading to the hubs "combat zones" and temporarily closed the centres.
The GHF was registered in Delaware two weeks after Donald Trump took office and is thought to have received $150m of funding. Its boss is Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher close to Trump. Safe Reach Solutions, an American firm, provides security at the hubs. At least 500 people are reported to have been shot dead near the centres since they opened in late May; Israel, Hamas and armed gangs have all been blamed. The GHF has distributed 42m meals since its launch but plans to expand from four to 20 centres have stalled because Israel has not let it open more.
Israel has banned all foreign journalists from independently entering Gaza for over 22 months, restricting access to brief trips with military escorts. It barred its own press corps and Palestinian journalists in the West Bank from entering Gaza decades ago. By August 2025, 186 journalists in Gaza had been killed since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists—a higher rate than in any conflict since its records began in 1992.
Around 60% of Gaza's buildings have been affected by destruction. Researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London, estimated that by January 2025 some 8,500 people had died of war-related but non-violent causes (disease, starvation, lack of medicine) since the conflict began, and that the death toll from traumatic injuries was 39-90% higher than the figures published by Gaza's ministry of health.
In January 2025 +972 Magazine reported that the Israeli armed forces' use of GPT-4, then OpenAI's most advanced large language model, increased 20-fold after the start of the war in Gaza.
In June 2025 Israel revealed it was supplying light weapons, such as AK-47s, to the Popular Forces, a militia of a few hundred fighters led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a gangster from the Tarabin Bedouin tribe in southern Gaza. Abu Shabab's group controls bits of turf in Rafah and Khan Younis. The UN says he was behind robberies of humanitarian-aid convoys in 2024, in which his gunmen ambushed dozens of lorries and allegedly killed several drivers. Avigdor Lieberman, an opposition MP and former defence minister, condemned the policy, accusing Netanyahu of "transferring weapons to clans identified with Islamic State", though there is no evidence Abu Shabab has sworn allegiance to IS.
Since October 7th 2023 Israel has spent an estimated 300bn shekels ($85bn) fighting various wars, before the campaign against Iran. The jet fuel and munitions used against Iran cost roughly 1bn shekels a day. Each interceptor launched by Arrow, Israel's ballistic-missile-defence system, costs around $3m, and the IDF usually fires more than one for every incoming missile.
On June 13th 2025 Binyamin Netanyahu dispatched wave after wave of Israeli aircraft to strike Iran. Netanyahu described it as a two-week campaign codenamed "Rising Lion", which evoked the pre-revolutionary flag of the Shah. They attacked nuclear installations at Natanz, 300km south of Tehran, and killed the top echelons of the Iranian armed forces, including Mohamad Bagheri, the chief of staff, and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the air-force chief. Israel said Iran had enough enriched uranium for 15 bombs and was weaponising its technology. Israel had already wrecked Iran's air defences during tit-for-tat exchanges the previous year. Hizbullah, once seen as the spearhead of any Iranian retaliation, no longer had the missiles or organisation to mount a serious reprisal.
Iran responded with daily barrages of ballistic missiles aimed mostly at Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing at least 24 Israelis in the first week. More than 500 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Iran, many of them civilians. Iran's facility at Fordow, in Qom province, is hidden beneath a mountain and may be beyond the reach of Israeli munitions. Donald Trump endorsed the Israeli view that Iran had been unwilling to make a deal, but continued to call on Iran to return to the negotiating table. A poll from The Economist and YouGov found that 60% of Americans opposed joining the conflict, with just 16% in favour. On June 22nd Trump announced that America had bombed Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, entering the war directly. America's bunker-busting munitions are far more capable than Israel's of penetrating deeply buried targets such as Fordow.
Trump dubbed the Israel-Iran war of June 2025 the "12-day war". Israel conducted roughly 100 missions a day—an enormous strain on its air force and treasury. To fight at such a tempo for a year would have cost about 20% of Israel's GDP, based on estimates from government economists. Netanyahu claimed Israel had "placed itself in the first rank of the world's major powers", but a country of just 10m is not big enough to act as a permanent hegemon in the Middle East.
Israel assassinated the top echelon of Iran's armed forces, including the head of its missile programme and the commander of the IRGC. Israeli jets knocked out scores of Iranian air-defence batteries and perhaps two-thirds of its ballistic-missile launchers. Of the 532 ballistic missiles Iran fired at Israel, just 31 hit populated areas, killing 28 people. Iran did not down a single Israeli jet.
The ceasefire was announced by Donald Trump on June 23rd. He had called Netanyahu and told him it was coming; having enlisted American help to strike Iran, Netanyahu was in no position to refuse. Some Gulf states are reassessing their view of Israel: the UAE signed the Abraham accords in 2020 and Bahrain followed weeks later, but overt ties now look riskier as Israel's conflict with Iran intensifies.
On June 10th 2025 Britain and a number of other Western allies announced personal sanctions on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both far-right ministers.
An estimated 48 Israeli hostages remain held in Gaza. In July 2025 talks in Qatar centred on a 60-day truce, during which half the hostages would be released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, with parallel talks on a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu presented a plan to his cabinet to force nearly a third of Gazans into a corner of southern Gaza that has been largely destroyed, where food would be distributed and people screened for Hamas membership. The plan passed unanimously despite opposition from the IDF chief of staff and the government's own legal advisers, who argued it would constitute a war crime.
The IDF denies claims by Palestinian health authorities and UN agencies that some 700 Gazans have been killed around the distribution centres, saying these numbers were "intentionally inflated". IDF soldiers interviewed by Ha'aretz said they were given orders to fire at crowds trying to get to the centres. A senior IDF officer acknowledged "misfires" and said procedures had been reviewed but denied live fire was used to control crowds. One of Hamas's demands in ceasefire talks in Doha is that the GHF centres be closed and other aid groups put back in charge.
After 21 months of war at least half of Gaza's population of 2.1m is concentrated in Khan Younis and in the tents and shacks of the "humanitarian zone" nearby in al-Mawasi, next to the Mediterranean. On the Egyptian border, Rafah, once a city of more than 200,000, has all but been razed by Israeli bombs and bulldozers.
Within hours of Bashar al-Assad fleeing Damascus in December 2024, Israeli troops occupied territory in southern Syria, stretching from the highest peak of Mount Hermon to the border triangle between Israel, Syria and Jordan at the mouth of the Jordan Valley. They dug a deep trench on the Golan to stop pickup-truck attacks of the kind that came from Gaza on October 7th. A year later the IDF had built ten fortified outposts inside Syria, described by an Israeli officer as "designed to last for years to come". Israel appointed civilian liaisons with local (mainly Druze) villages; in some it provides medical and other services. The Trump administration urged Israel to withdraw to the 1974 "disengagement" line on the Golan.
On November 28th 2025 IDF soldiers raided Beit Jinn, a village inside Syria, to arrest members of a Lebanese Islamist militia; a gunfight left 20 locals dead.
On July 16th 2025 Israeli warplanes struck Damascus, targeting the presidential palace, the defence ministry and the army command, killing at least one person. The strikes followed an outbreak of sectarian violence in the predominantly Druze province of Suwayda, where Ahmed al-Sharaa's government forces attacked Druze communities. Israel said the purpose of the strikes was to end a Syrian government assault on the Druze and to enforce the demilitarised zone it had declared around Suwayda after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Druze communities in northern Israel had demanded intervention, blocking roads and breaking through the border fence. Netanyahu appears to have calculated that the use of military force improves Israeli security and his political standing at home.
On September 29th 2025 Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu presented a 20-point plan for "eternal peace" in Gaza. Under the deal, all 48 remaining hostages would be released within 72 hours; Israel would release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences. Hamas would disarm, and its leaders could seek exile. An "International Stabilisation Force" would provide security inside Gaza, replacing the IDF, which would control the perimeter including the Egyptian border. A "technocratic apolitical Palestinian committee" would run civil government. Trump would lead a "Board of Peace" overseeing reconstruction, with figures including Tony Blair. In the long run the Palestinian Authority could return after completing reforms, and a peace process could lead to Palestinian statehood. Eight Muslim countries backed the deal. No country has definitely promised troops for the stabilisation force; Egypt, Indonesia and Azerbaijan have been mentioned.
On October 8th 2025 negotiators in Egypt signed the first phase of the plan. Hamas would release 20 living hostages; Israel would release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences. The IDF would pull back from cities in Gaza, continue to occupy around half the enclave, and open five border crossings for aid. The second phase—disarmament, a transitional authority and an international peacekeeping force—was deferred to future talks.
On January 16th 2026 the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) was launched—the only element of the second phase to be implemented. The committee has 15 ostensibly technocratic members aligned neither with Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, but Israel has not allowed them to enter the territory; their first meeting was held in Cairo. The White House has announced three layers of officialdom above the NCAG: a "Gaza Executive Board" including Hakan Fidan, Turkey's foreign minister, and senior Qatari and Egyptian officials; a founding "Executive Board" with Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner and Tony Blair; and a "Board of Peace" chaired by Donald Trump. Permanent membership of the Board of Peace costs $1bn; its charter makes no mention of Gaza and looks like a challenger to the United Nations. Netanyahu has objected to the Turkish and Qatari officials on the Gaza Executive Board because both governments have been supportive of Hamas. Neither board includes a Palestinian.
Israel has expanded the "yellow zone" it directly controls to about 55% of the strip—a flattened wasteland. The IDF is building outposts deep within Gaza that look permanent, laying water and sewage lines. Almost all of Gaza's farmland is in the yellow zone. Over 70,000 people were killed during the war; about 500 more have been killed since the ceasefire began. On February 2nd 2026 Israel reopened the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which had been largely closed since May 2024, but allowed just five patients and seven relatives to leave on the first day; around 20,000 Gazans need urgent medical treatment abroad. Israel has ordered Médecins Sans Frontières and other aid agencies to leave Gaza because they refused to provide lists of their staff without assurances that they would not become targets. The NCAG has no funding and no bank account; its members are waiting in a Cairo hotel. Mahmoud Abbas is insisting all money for the group flows through him. On February 2nd the UAE denied plans to pay for reconstruction. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled a glossy reconstruction map of the strip.
By December 2025 the second phase had stalled. No country had publicly pledged troops for the International Stabilisation Force. The names of the proposed technocrats had not been released. Hamas had reasserted its grip on the civilian population, making vague statements about disarming but taking no steps to do so. Lieutenant General Zamir called the "Yellow Line"—the boundary of the half of Gaza still occupied by Israel—a new border. Netanyahu wanted the IDF to control access to American-planned "planned communities" of prefabricated homes and screen entrants for Hamas ties. A major point of contention was Turkey's inclusion in the stabilisation force: Israel considers this a red line because Turkey has hosted Hamas leaders and imposed a trade embargo on Israel, but Donald Trump has grown closer to Erdogan and is eager to take advantage of his aspirations. Nearly 400 Palestinians were reported killed by the IDF since the ceasefire began, amid multiple ambushes and Israeli strikes. Turkey said it would participate in a peacekeeping force; Azerbaijan and Indonesia were also mentioned as potential contributors, but no Arab country had signed up. Rich Gulf states endorsed an Egyptian plan to clear rubble and rebuild but were reluctant to invest if their investment might be blown up in a future war. A Gallup poll found that 63% of Israelis would not support a two-state solution and only 21% thought a lasting peace would ever come about.
In the first opinion poll, 72% of Israelis supported the plan; only 8% opposed it. The Tel Aviv stockmarket and the shekel rose. Bezalel Smotrich called the plan "an echoing diplomatic failure" that "will end in tears"; Itamar Ben-Gvir shared his view. Both are expected to leave the coalition if the plan is implemented. Israel must hold elections by October 27th 2026.
Between 2019 and 2022 Israel held five elections, in which voters remained split over whether or not Netanyahu should be returned to office. According to a long-term public-opinion survey by AGAM Labs, a think-tank, 65% of Israelis consider themselves right-wing (up from 56% three years ago); only 13% identify as left-wing. Yet 79% were in favour of ending the war in Gaza. When asked whether they preferred normalisation agreements with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states or annexing the West Bank, only 32% chose annexation. Although more Israelis than three years ago consider their religion central to their identity, only slightly more than a quarter want the country governed by religious law.
The ultra-Orthodox community accounts for some 14% of Israel's 10m people. Its members refuse to enlist in the IDF for religious reasons. The supreme court has ruled their exemption from military service unconstitutional, but because ultra-Orthodox parties are a key part of Netanyahu's coalition, the government has not heeded the ruling. More than 500,000 Israelis served in the IDF in the two years after October 7th, most of them reservists who were away from their families and jobs for months. The resulting resentment at the ultra-Orthodox exemption could reshape political alliances.
The ruling coalition no longer has a majority in the Knesset. By law the next election to the Knesset must take place by the end of October 2026. The demands of the hard-right parties that Israel should return to war in Gaza, and of the ultra-Orthodox parties for legislation exempting seminary students from national service, are straining the coalition. Only 21% of Israelis believe in a two-state solution, but over 70% want the hostages released and the war over. The government's ultra-Orthodox partners may bring it down over a controversial law exempting religious students from military service, which has not been passed by the coalition. If Smotrich left, his fellow radical Itamar Ben-Gvir would follow, denying Netanyahu his majority. Smotrich says he will stay provided the government seeks to end the war with the defeat of Hamas.
On July 20th 2025 the IDF began a new offensive aimed at encircling Deir al-Balah, a town on the coast that had previously remained relatively unscathed. The town houses the offices of many aid organisations and shelters many refugees. On July 21st the IDF struck the staff quarters and main warehouse of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and detained one WHO employee; the WHO said the destruction crippled its efforts to sustain Gaza's collapsing health-care system.
In a planning session on July 21st Lieutenant General Zamir told his fellow generals that 2026 should be a year of "preparedness, realising achievements, returning to competency and fundamentals", and that the army should be preparing for another war with Iran—a signal that the IDF's top brass did not think the Gaza war should continue. The government wants them to fight on.
On July 26th the IDF said it would parachute food into Gaza and implement daily "humanitarian pauses", allowing international aid organisations to bring in convoys—an admission that four months of trying to replace the international aid system had failed. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said on July 29th that "the worst-case scenario of famine" was unfolding; 20,000 children had been hospitalised with acute malnutrition since April. Israeli authorities said they were allowing 200 lorries a day into the strip, still far fewer than the 500-600 that aid groups say are needed. Tom Fletcher, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, called for quicker clearances and safer routes.
On the night of September 15th 2025 the IDF launched a long-expected attack on Gaza city. Two divisions moved towards the city's central neighbourhoods under air and artillery cover, with two more held in reserve. Between 200,000 and 350,000 civilians fled south; around 600,000 remained. Israeli intelligence reckoned around 3,000 Hamas fighters remained underground in the city to carry out ambushes, while the rest—around 20,000—had escaped southward, undermining the operation's premise. Polls showed over 70% of Israelis favoured a ceasefire over continuing the war. Lieutenant General Zamir said the attack would jeopardise the hostages and that a decisive blow against Hamas could take years. By September at least 64,000 Gazans, most of them civilians, had been killed since the war began.
A change of Israeli tactics in late 2025 skewed the odds further against Hamas: as well as warplanes and drones, the IDF made growing use of driverless vehicles. Remote-controlled armoured cars packed with explosives careened around Gaza city.
By late July 2025 the IDF controlled about 70% of the strip, up from around a third in late May, pushing 2m people into zones with a shrinking share of the land. Some officers quietly conceded they did not have enough soldiers. Hamas can recruit more teenagers and hand out more Kalashnikov rifles almost indefinitely.
A UN assessment in April 2025, based on satellite imagery, estimated that 53m tonnes of rubble were strewn across Gaza—30 times as much debris as was removed from Manhattan after the September 11th attacks. The seven-week war between Israel and Hamas in 2014 produced 2.5m tonnes of debris; it took two years to remove. In February 2025 the UN estimated the war had caused $30bn in physical damage and $19bn in economic disruption; reconstruction would require $53bn. Around 60% of Gaza's buildings have been affected by destruction.
Of 35 hospitals and clinics in Gaza evaluated by the UN, six have been flattened, 11 are out of commission and only parts of 18 can be used. Just 74 intensive-care beds and 215 emergency-room beds remain. At least 1,722 health-care workers were killed during the war, about 10% of the workforce; around 80 arrested are thought to remain in Israeli jails. Israel prevents anything it considers "dual use" from entering Gaza, including surgical instruments, x-ray equipment and solar-powered refrigerators for drug storage. Before October 2023 between 50 and 100 patients left the strip daily for treatments such as radiotherapy; since then that has dropped to about 13 a day, and more than 930 died waiting to be evacuated between July 2024 and October 2025. The WHO puts the cost of rebuilding the health-care system at $7bn-8bn.
In August 2025 mainstream Israeli news bulletins that had shunned pictures of suffering in Gaza began showing footage of emaciated Palestinians. B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, two of Israel's most prominent human-rights organisations, issued parallel reports concluding that Israel is perpetrating genocide. David Grossman, one of the country's best-known novelists, told an Italian newspaper: "My heart is broken, but I must say it: it's genocide." Moshe Yaalon, a former defence minister, called infant-killing and ethnic cleansing "government policy". A survey by a leading Palestinian pollster found that 43% of Gazans were willing to emigrate at the end of the war.
Israel's system for policing possible war crimes has several tiers. The Israel Defence Forces has a Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), a team of experienced commanders which examines "exceptional incidents" on the battlefield. It is led by a former major general and six former brigadier generals and is supposed to be outside the chain of command. Before the Gaza war only 7% of the FFAM's complaints led to criminal investigations, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human-rights organisation. Cases from Israel's 2014 Gaza campaign were still being investigated nine years later.
Where evidence is deemed sufficient, the military police carry out criminal investigations and cases go before military courts. The Military Advocate-General (MAG), whose legal officers authorise operations and air strikes, is responsible for implementing the rule of law within the IDF. Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi held the post until she resigned on October 31st 2025. On November 2nd she was arrested for leaking to the press a video from July 2024 purportedly showing IDF soldiers sexually assaulting a Hamas detainee held in Sde Teiman, a notorious detention centre in southern Israel. The investigation into the assault had triggered riots by far-right activists, including members of the government, who burst into Sde Teiman and another IDF base. Five of the alleged perpetrators are now facing trial.
Netanyahu called the leak "the most serious reputational attack Israel has experienced since its foundation", using the Hebrew word for terrorist attacks. His allies are calling for the charges against the assailants, and any other soldiers accused of crimes in Gaza, to be dropped. They are using the investigation leak to attack the attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, and the Supreme Court judges who backed General Tomer-Yerushalmi throughout the war. Accusations that the general did not act alone, but had allies in the judiciary and media, are fuelling a co-ordinated assault by the far right on the "deep state" of Israel's old elites.
In the first year of the war roughly 15 soldiers were indicted for conduct on the battlefield, mostly for looting and theft. One brigadier general who ordered the destruction of a university building without authorisation received a minor reprimand and was promoted to commander of the Gaza Division.
Israel's civilian attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, is supposed to ensure that the cabinet's directives conform to Israeli and international law. She duelled with Netanyahu over his plans to overhaul the judiciary in 2023 but did not publicly challenge any of the government's war policies. On August 4th 2025 the cabinet formally voted to sack her (the decision is being challenged in the Supreme Court).
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the end of 2023. Israel argues that under international law's "complementarity principle" countries are allowed to investigate and prosecute war crimes in their own legal systems, making the ICC a court of last resort. Donald Trump's administration has sanctioned the ICC's chief prosecutor and four of its judges.
The Supreme Court backed the government's humanitarian policy on Gaza in a 64-page ruling, with its president, Yitzhak Amit, writing that Israel was "not allowed to ignore" the suffering in Gaza but placing the responsibility on Hamas.
The most notable precedent for accountability is the 1982 national commission of inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Israeli-controlled Beirut, in which Phalangist militiamen killed Palestinians in refugee camps. The commission found that Israeli officials had been aware the massacre could take place and had not acted to prevent it. Then defence minister Ariel Sharon and the commander of military intelligence were forced to resign. Netanyahu has refused to appoint a comparable commission for the current war.
Israel uses a system of proportional representation, which rewards larger parties. Netanyahu will be leading the Likud Party in a general election for the 12th time. If he wins he could become the longest-serving leader of any democracy since the second world war. In most polls his coalition of nationalist and religious parties is well short of a majority. His camp remains largely united behind him.
His main challenger is Naftali Bennett, who on April 26th 2026 merged his party with Yair Lapid's under the name "Together". The opposition is badly divided, boasting half a dozen would-be prime ministers and a disparate array of ideologies. The election is expected in October 2026. The economy has recovered from the war remarkably well, to a large degree thanks to continuing foreign investment in the Israeli tech sector and strong demand for Israeli weapons systems, especially from rapidly re-arming Europe. More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza.
For over a decade Israel's emigration rate had been fairly stable at about 40,000 a year. In 2023, the first full year of Netanyahu's current government, the numbers leaving shot up by nearly 50% to 59,365. In 2024, the first full year of the war in Gaza, departures rose to 82,774. Some 38% of those emigrating in 2024 had themselves emigrated to Israel less than five years earlier, many arriving from Russia and Ukraine after the war in Ukraine began. Those leaving tend to be younger and well educated, especially young doctors. In the past 25 years four winners of the Nobel prize in economics had either studied or taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; only one stayed in Israel after his career took off.
Israel's economic and technological edge rests on a relatively small number—around 300,000, or 3% of the population—who are key to research and teaching in science and medicine. In 2024 the tech sector provided 59% of Israel's exports of goods and services, and its workers are highly mobile. Secular Israelis with academic degrees are more likely to oppose the government.
Over 300,000 reservists were called up during the Gaza war. Despite ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, the IDF plans to keep a high level of alert for the foreseeable future, with many reservists spending another two months on duty in 2026. According to the IDF, 21 soldiers killed themselves in 2024, the highest number reported since 2011. The government has allocated 1.9bn shekels ($550m) for mental-health funding since the war began, but professionals warn this will not be enough.
In 2024 Israel signed $14.8bn of arms export deals, a record, putting a country of just 10m in eighth place among the world's arms exporters, just behind Britain. Over half of sales were to Europe, where countries are looking to Israel for battle-tested weapons as they rearm against the Russian threat. Israel's main competitive advantage is that its weapons are battle-tested and already in production.
Since 2022 Israel's defence ministry annual reports have included a section on sales to "Abraham accords countries". In 2024 these sales totalled $1.7bn, or 12% of all Israeli defence exports. The United Arab Emirates has bought two Israeli missile systems, one of which has already been deployed. Bahrain uses Israeli radar for its coastal defences. Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, is another customer.
On November 14th 2025 Morocco announced a production facility for small tactical attack drones in partnership with a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries—the first time an Israeli-designed weapon system will be made in an Arab country. Since establishing diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020, Morocco has also bought Israeli self-propelled cannons, air-defence missiles and a spy satellite.
Israel's best-known defence product is its layered missile-defence system, of which Iron Dome is the lowest tier. In 2023 Israel signed a $4.3bn contract to supply Germany with Arrow 3 interceptor batteries, which down incoming ballistic missiles while they are still outside the atmosphere; in May 2025 Germany announced it would also buy the more advanced Arrow 4. Israel has sold drones, missiles and air-defence computers to Britain, and supplies targeting systems for jet fighters used by many European and other countries. The Barak air-defence system, developed jointly with India some 20 years ago, has been used by Israel to intercept Iranian drones and by India against Pakistani missiles, and has recently been ordered by three NATO navies. American M1 Abrams tanks in four brigades have been retrofitted with the Israeli "Trophy" active-protection system, and America has fired the Israeli Spike NLOS missile from Apache attack helicopters.
The big Israeli exporters now have their own subsidiaries in most NATO member states, a strategy of selling through partnerships that was once controversial but has become the norm. This also helps sell Israeli systems beneath the radar when the political climate is less friendly. Italy recently announced it was buying two new spy-planes from an American contractor, obscuring the fact they had been developed by Israel, which supplies the main avionics. Emmanuel Macron's presidential jet uses an Israeli system to protect it from anti-aircraft missiles.
Arms exports also shield Israel from embargoes or other penalties over its conduct of the war in Gaza: the deals tie countries into long-term relationships in which they are invested in Israel for their national security. Israel buys many components from its biggest clients, including spare parts for F-35 fighters from Britain and German engines for its Merkava tanks. Although Britain and Germany have announced limits on arms sales to Israel, the controls are mainly symbolic. Israeli firms are eyeing the Golden Dome, Donald Trump's planned American missile-defence programme; American firms are expected to use Israeli know-how through strategic partnerships. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which makes the Arrow system, is central to this effort.
A majority of members of the European Union want the chance to re-examine Israel's free-trade agreement with Europe, its main trading partner. Britain has suspended talks on a new trade deal. On May 27th 2025 Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, called the civilian deaths "abhorrent". Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor and a staunch supporter of Israel, said "the current level of attacks on Gaza can no longer be justified." Germany may limit military exports or restrict their use; it sold a third of the arms Israel imported during 2020-24.
Netanyahu appointed Major General David Zini, an infantry commander with no intelligence background, as the new head of the Shin Bet, the domestic-security service. Ronen Bar, the outgoing boss, accused Netanyahu of trying to use the service for political purposes and of firing him to cover up corruption allegations. The attorney-general said Netanyahu should wait for legal guidelines, but he ploughed ahead. Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, was not informed of the appointment and put out a pointed statement that "this is not an endless war".
Some 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank among 3.3m Palestinians. Over 100km of new roads, for Israelis only, have been cut through Palestinian areas over the past couple of years. In September 2025 the government authorised 3,750 new settler homes, most in the e1 project, strategically placed to cut the West Bank in half and prevent contiguity in any future Palestinian state.
Homesh, one of the settlements dismantled in 2005 under Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan (when Israel also withdrew from Gaza), was reopened with government support. A nursery opened on September 1st 2025, marking the first return to an evacuated settlement. Bezalel Smotrich said "the children who will start their day here with laughter and singing are the true answer to anyone who thought the settlements would be uprooted." Orit Strock, the settlements minister, described the period as "a period of miracle".
Israel's operations in the West Bank increasingly echo those it employs in Gaza. Assaults on militant strongholds in Jenin and Tulkarm have become prolonged campaigns that have flattened entire neighbourhoods and displaced around 40,000 Palestinians. Settlers use violent intimidation to force members of isolated rural Palestinian communities to abandon their homes and farms, often with the tacit support of the IDF.
Since the third Gulf war began on February 28th 2026, settler violence has escalated and become more systematic. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by settlers and IDF soldiers since October 2023, according to the UN; some 60 Israelis have also been killed. At least 12 Palestinian civilians were killed in the first weeks after February 28th alone. On March 14th two boys and their parents were shot in the head in their family car by undercover Israeli paramilitary police in the village of Tammun; the shooters' account was accepted without questioning.
On March 17th settlers returned to Sa-Nur, one of the last settlements evicted by the IDF in 2005. The army seized over 120 acres of farmland from surrounding Palestinian towns to build a new road to the hilltop. Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria settlers council, called their return "historic repair". Security in the West Bank has largely fallen to the police—under Itamar Ben-Gvir—and the IDF's regional defence battalions, whose soldiers are largely settlers themselves. The two most senior IDF commanders in the West Bank were educated in settler institutions. Bezalel Smotrich has sponsored more than 100 new farms that challenge Palestinian farmers' access to land, and in a plan written in 2017 called for Palestinians to be divided across separate regions to "dismantle the Palestinian national collective". Under pressure from Arab countries, Donald Trump has publicly ruled out formal annexation, but on the ground a form of annexation is already under way.
On September 21st 2025 Australia, Britain and Canada formally recognised Palestinian statehood, frustrated at their inability to end the killing in Gaza. Some Israeli ministers have urged Netanyahu to formally annex the West Bank in response, with proposals ranging from "symbolic" annexation of some settlements to Israeli sovereignty over 82% of the territory, leaving the main Palestinian cities in isolated enclaves. Netanyahu has held back, letting his far-right partners dictate matters without deciding on a clear strategy.
Israel is a small country of 10m people. Its close friendship with America did not really blossom until the late 1960s. In all, America has given Israel some $300bn since its independence in 1948. America operates a massive radar station in Israel's Negev Desert which provides early warning of incoming missiles from Iran. It has used its veto power at the UN Security Council to block resolutions on Israel around 50 times. America has refrained from selling its most sophisticated weapons, such as F-35 stealth fighters, to any other country in the Middle East. In 2016 Barack Obama signed a ten-year, $38bn aid package, mainly to subsidise Israeli purchases of American arms, which runs out in 2028. Netanyahu has said he is not seeking the full renewal of the package, and has talked publicly about tapering American aid to zero over ten years.
Israel's GDP was roughly $540bn in 2024. It had budgeted to spend over $23bn on defence the year the war in Gaza began, including $3.8bn in grants from America. American aid, in other words, although important, is only a small share of military spending. GDP shrank by 3.3% in the first quarter of 2026 at an annualised rate after the country largely shut down during the conflict with Iran. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the shekel are buoyant; inflation and unemployment are low. Nvidia, which has 6,000 employees in Israel, is planning a new base with 10,000 more; its boss Jensen Huang recently called Israel "Nvidia's second home". Tech workers account for about 10% of the labour force, the highest share in the world, but generate over half of Israel's total exports. In December 2025 Germany signed a follow-on €3bn ($3.5bn) contract for Arrow 3 batteries, nearly doubling its investment in Israeli missile-defence technology. Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab-Israelis make up over a third of the population; only 54% of ultra-Orthodox men work, with their boys' secondary schools not teaching English, maths or science. In 2025 almost 70,000 Israelis emigrated, after a record 83,000 in 2024.
The share of Americans who back Israel over the Palestinians is at a 25-year low. In 2022, 42% of American adults held an unfavourable view of Israel; by September 2025, 53% did. By April 2026, 60% of Americans looked unfavourably on Israel, a rise of seven percentage points from the previous year. A YouGov/Economist poll found that 43% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Among Democrats over 50, unfavourable views of Israel rose by 23 percentage points in three years. Among Republicans under 50, support is evenly divided, compared with 63% for Israel in 2022. Between 2018 and 2021 the share of evangelicals under the age of 30 who backed Israelis over Palestinians plunged from 69% to 34%; pollsters think that shift has endured.
Support for Israel among self-identified American conservatives remains strong but is falling. A Pew survey published in April 2025 found that unfavourable views of Israel were most marked among young Republicans aged 18-49, a gap that may reflect the influence of social-media images of suffering in Gaza. Prominent figures in the MAGA movement, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon, have criticised America's alliance with Israel, mostly on America First grounds. A pivot point came during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, when some warned that America risked being drawn into another costly Middle Eastern conflict.
Greene called what is happening in Gaza "genocide"—a word common on the left of the Democratic Party but startling from a Republican congresswoman. Her remarks came after Israel struck the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza, killing three people; Israel expressed regret and called the strike accidental.
Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, visited the Western Wall, the settlement of Ariel and met Netanyahu in the settlement of Shiloh in August 2025, declaring the West Bank "the rightful property of the Jewish people"—signalling that much of the Republican establishment would bless annexation.
On September 9th 2025 Israeli jets struck a villa in Doha, making Qatar the sixth country Israel had bombed since October 7th 2023, after Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. The attack targeted Hamas leaders but killed only five lower-ranking members. The Mossad and Israel's generals had opposed the operation; Netanyahu ordered it anyway.
On December 26th 2025 Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state. The move was condemned by Somalia, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the African Union and the European Union. Israel is the only country in the Middle East flying F-35 stealth fighters; at Mar-a-Lago in December 2025, Donald Trump said he was considering selling F-35s to Turkey, which Israel fears would erode that advantage.
On February 28th 2026 America and Israel jointly attacked Iran, in what has been called the third Gulf war. Israeli air strikes killed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, at the outset, along with dozens of other officials. The campaign relies on Israeli theories of war: attack without warning, use overwhelming force and do not scruple to kill an enemy's leaders. Binyamin Netanyahu is the big winner from the war: his hard-right coalition firmly supports it, as do nearly all opposition leaders. An overwhelming 81% of Israelis support the strikes, though only 38% express high trust in Netanyahu, according to a survey from the Institute for National Security Studies.
Netanyahu hopes a successful outcome will convince voters that he has "changed the map of the Middle East", securing his re-election. The vote must be held by October 2026; the election is expected in October. Once the war is over, sources in his Likud party believe he will bring it forward. Qatar downed Iranian warplanes during the fighting.
Around April 8th 2026, Pakistan's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, brokered a two-week ceasefire between America and Iran. Israel was aware that talks were under way but was not party to them. The Israeli air force was preparing to send warplanes to attack Iran's power grid when Donald Trump called Netanyahu to tell him to stand them down. Israel will not be part of the negotiations in which America and Iran try to thrash out a permanent agreement, to begin in Pakistan on April 11th. The manner of the ceasefire made clear the nature of the relationship: that of superpower and client-state.
Israel did not lose a single warplane during the thousands of sorties it carried out over Iran. Its missile-defence systems intercepted the vast majority of the more than 600 missiles fired at Israel by Iran; about 20 Israelis were killed, far fewer than predicted in most military planning. From Netanyahu's perspective, the unprecedented degree of American-Israeli co-operation—joint missions, co-ordinated targets—was a strategic win. Yet Netanyahu could be transformed from partner to scapegoat: on April 7th the New York Times reported that many senior American officials, including the vice-president, the secretary of state and the head of the CIA, had expressed reservations about the war before it began.
A survey by Pew in late March found that 60% of Americans have an unfavourable view of Israel, a rise of seven percentage points from the previous year.
In a terse early-morning statement, Netanyahu said Israel "supports President Trump's decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks", emphasising that it was merely a pause. He also stressed the ceasefire did not include Lebanon, where Israel had been fighting Hizbullah. Instead of striking Iran, the Israeli air force attacked around 100 targets in Lebanon on the afternoon after the ceasefire; more than 1,000 people were killed and injured. Iran warned that if Israel continued to strike Hizbullah, it would resume its attacks on Israel.
By May 2025 co-ordination between Israel and America appeared to have broken down. Donald Trump ended America's bombing campaign against the Houthis without mentioning their attacks on Israel, and without notifying Israel's government in advance. Trump's personal representatives negotiated with Hamas for the release of Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old American-Israeli soldier held in Gaza for 19 months, against Israel's express wishes. Netanyahu was also blindsided by Trump's announcement of nuclear talks with Iran. Trump's four-day tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates pointedly excluded Israel. The Saudis made clear there would be no diplomatic engagement with Israel while the war in Gaza continued.
A penny saved kills your career in government.