Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on August 9 that Israel rejected the 15-point Gaza peace proposal put forward by US President Donald Trump's 'Board of Peace,' demanding Hamas disarm completely upfront before any phased implementation rather than accepting the plan's sequenced approach; Netanyahu also reaffirmed he would not allow a Palestinian state, a direct rebuke to the plan's independence provisions

US President Donald Trump said on August 2 that he had agreed to cancel a planned strike on Iran, subject to a rapid deal, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called to caution him against fresh attacks; Iran's top diplomat had earlier warned of a decisive response to any US-Israeli aggression

Israeli strikes killed more than two dozen Palestinians in Gaza and violated Lebanese airspace in weekend raids on August 3-4, even as Qatar said progress was made toward US-Iran talks connected to the broader regional conflict; a Board of Peace envoy met Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a day of deadly strikes and issued a statement that made no mention of Israel's territorial withdrawal

Trump's 'Board of Peace' formally announced on July 31 that Hamas agreed to disarm and Israel would withdraw from Gaza in 'carefully structured phases'; Euronews confirmed Hamas accepted the deal; Israeli far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir rejected the agreement, saying 'Israel must win'; Al Jazeera reported Palestinians remained sceptical; the deal follows 'rare progress' in Cairo mediation talks on July 30 and Trump's late-night declaration the same day that his Board of Peace had reached an agreement

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps launched at least four ballistic missiles at a US military facility in Jordan on the night of July 28-29; the US military said it intercepted the missiles; US and Saudi Arabia simultaneously struck Iran-backed militia headquarters in Iraq, killing at least 20 including six Iranian advisers, the first time Saudi Arabia has joined US offensive action in Iraq in this conflict; Iraq's government protested; Iran rejected Oman's Strait of Hormuz proposals and struck three ships in the waterway

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for a meeting with US President Donald Trump on July 28, their first bilateral since the joint US-Israel war against Iran; the meeting comes with strains in the relationship over Gaza, Iran's future, and Israel's post-war position, and Netanyahu is travelling under reported Iranian security threat

The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men when settlers attacked a village in the occupied West Bank on July 20; the Israeli army said troops opened fire after being attacked while attempting to evacuate settlers from the village; the accounts diverge on whether Israeli forces were protecting settlers or accompanying the assault

Hamas's political bureau elected Khalil al-Hayya as its new chairman on July 20, 2026, beating former leader Khaled Meshaal in a run-off by one vote; al-Hayya, a Gaza-based veteran negotiator and one of a five-member interim leadership council since 2024, succeeds Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza

Israel's parliament set October 27 as the national election date on July 12, the last date permitted by law; the Knesset is expected to dissolve on July 17; Netanyahu's far-right coalition will become the first to serve a full four-year term since 1988, and the vote is widely seen as a referendum on his leadership since the Gaza war

A new NPR analysis finds that Israel's military has expanded its territorial control within the Gaza Strip from roughly 50% at the time of the ceasefire to nearly 70% nine months later, as Israeli forces have pushed deeper into areas that were nominally covered by the truce, with Palestinians paying a deadly price in the expanded zones

An Axios exclusive on July 4 reported Trump said the Israeli PM requested a US visit for as early as the following week; the two leaders agreed on a July 3 phone call; Lebanon operations, Iran nuclear talks and Gaza are on the agenda for their first meeting since Israel's war with Iran

Israel's parliament moved toward early elections on June 30 as the House Committee advanced the dissolution bill for its first plenum reading and simultaneously advanced a Basic Law enshrining Torah study, with Netanyahu's meeting with Haredi leaders canceled amid the standoff

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced June 29 that the Defense Ministry Settlement Administration has completed groundwork for three settlements in northern Gaza and called on Netanyahu to authorize them immediately; he also called for Israel to 'complete the conquest of all of Gaza,' with Israel controlling roughly 70 percent of the territory

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar won unanimous Cabinet approval on Sunday for a proposal he called a 'moral and historical duty'; the measure goes to the Knesset for a final vote, while Turkey's foreign ministry called it a cover for Israel's own alleged crimes in Gaza

Naim Qassem called the US-brokered Trilateral Framework 'humiliating, shameful and a surrender of sovereignty,' Hezbollah supporters blocked Beirut's airport road, and Israeli drone strikes killed one person in south Lebanon on June 28, two days after Lebanon and Israel signed the deal.

Ambassadors Leiter and Hamadeh signed the Trilateral Framework at the State Department on June 26, launching two IDF withdrawal pilot zones and a Military Coordination Group; Hezbollah was not a party and threatened civil war over implementation

Washington ends three days of direct Israel-Lebanon talks with US optimism that Israeli and Lebanese officials contradict; a drone strike kills two near Nabatieh

The Israeli PM told combat officers that Israeli forces will remain in all three theatres "as long as required," a statement that undercut US-mediated Lebanon-ceasefire talks the same day

Corruption prosecutions of sitting and former leaders are simultaneously claimed as accountability and condemned as political persecution, a dual-use mechanism reshaping governments across five continents.

Permanent international criminal court based in The Hague, founded by the 1998 Rome Statute, prosecuting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, with over 120 member states.

Israel's permanent armed confrontation with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Iran's best-funded proxy force, is the Middle East's most persistent driver of regional escalation and civilian displacement.

The constitutional mechanism letting parliaments dissolve before term and hold an early vote, active in Israel, Serbia, Italy, and Malaysia as of mid-2026.

The prime minister leaves the stand calling the case a 'Stasi' operation as a verdict slips toward 2027 and an election toward autumn

A 'go home' shout at a combat-officer graduation drew scattered applause, Netanyahu ignored it, and the defence minister used the same stage to announce the IDF stays in Lebanon forever

Qassem calls the disarmament drive a 'roadmap to annihilate' as Israel vows an open-ended stay in south Lebanon and keeps striking past the ceasefire deadline

An October election looming, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich demand Hezbollah's destruction while opposition brands the US-Iran deal Netanyahu's failure

An Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs triggers ~30 Iranian ballistic missiles at Israel, the first direct exchange since April, before both pull back 'for now'

A judge fixes the date Netanyahu wanted, the latest possible; a dissolution bill that would have pulled it earlier is in play

The president pushes a mediated plea deal Netanyahu won't take, admitting wrongdoing and quitting politics, while Trump calls Herzog 'weak and pathetic'

The chief of staff raises '10 red flags' over reservist strain while Israel tallies $1.1bn+ in missile damage and 45,000 home-front claims

Q1 GDP shrank 3.3% from the Iran war, but the ceasefire sends the currency to a 1993 peak and ratings outlooks to stable, even as Smotrich fights a record defence budget