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World leaders and global media have been fully preoccupied with the US-Israeli war on Iran launched at the end of February at the instigation of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He dragged US President Donald Trump into the war, claiming the conflict would last four or five days and the Iranian regime would fall. Neither happened.
As the war entered its fifth month, the Tehran government has been strengthened by support from the majority of Iranians, a proud people with a long history. Millions resented the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei at the outset of the war and have taken to the streets in protest.
Netanyahu had also justified the war by saying it would destroy Iran’s nuclear programme. This was a false claim. Iran’s nuclear sites had been bombed in June 2025 and March 2026 and Trump declared the facilities had been “obliterated.”
The memorandum of understanding (MOU) reached on June 17th resulted in a constantly violated ceasefire. Trust does not exist in Tehran since the US has repeatedly bombed while negotiating with Iran while Washington does not accept Iran’s demands for ending the war. Both sides have carried out strikes on each other and hostilities have closed the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of Gulf exports of oil and liquified natural gas flow.
This has boosted the price of oil and threatened to disrupt the global economy. The MOU also imposed a ceasefire in Lebanon where Israel has occupied a wide border zone in the south, evicted at least one million Lebanese from the area and destroyed their villages, farmland and infrastructure. Israel has continued strikes across the country and expanded the area it occupies.
Meanwhile, Israel’s depredations in Gaza have been overshadowed and largely ignored at the international level. This has compelled Hamas to transfer its two-decade-old governance to a non-partisan technical committee. In 2007, Hamas ousted Fatah and founded its de facto administration for besieged and blockaded areas of Gaza not occupied by Israel. It has driven most of Gaza’s 2.1 million displaced, homeless Palestinians into this zone which consists of one-third of Gaza’s territory.
Israel has prevented implementation of Trump’s plan for Gaza which was adopted by a United Nations Security Council resolution. Defying the US and the UN, Israel has barred the entry into Gaza of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), headed by engineer Ali Shaath. This has forced NCAG to base itself in Cairo. NCAG has been turned into “a government-in-exile” by Israel, leaving the Hamas-appointed civil administration in charge on the ground. Hamas has said it would not set aside its weapons until Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza. Stalemate is the result.
Gaza’s Palestinian population faces growing deprivation of food, medicine and health care. The UN reports a decline in the volume of humanitarian supplies Israel has allowed into Gaza although the Security Council has mandated the acceleration of aid flows into the enclave.
Child rights agency UNICEF spoke of the need by Gaza’s children for proper nutrition, care and protection. During more than 1,000 days of warfare, children “have been killed, maimed, displaced, and deprived of the essentials that they need to survive, grow, and recover,” spokesperson Louise Wateridge told UN News. This has continued under the October 2025 truce.
During the ceasefire, Gaza has remained violent and deadly with more than 1,050 Palestinians, one-third of whom were children, killed by Israel. This amounts to an average of one Gazan child a day, the United Nations estimated. At least 73,098 Palestinians have been slain overall since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 8th, 2023, after Hamas mounted a raid into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and capturing 251 Israelis who were released in a few days in exchange for 2,058 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israel’s settlers living illegally in the occupied West Bank have attacked several sectors, seized land, damaged or destroyed Palestinian homes, disrupted water supplies, cut power lines, and smashed greenhouses. A United Nations inquiry last month reported that settler attacks have had surged since 2023 by 130 per cent. Settler organisations have recently announced their intention of establishing of more than a dozen illegal settlements in coming years.
There are already 500,000 Israelis among three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have for years accused settlers of vandalism and damaging farmland and complained to the Israeli authorities which dismiss the charges. Early in the last century, Israel’s founding fathers made their goal the colonisation of all of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people.
The crises created by the US-Israeli war on Iran and destabilising situations in Gaza and the West Bank have been largely ignored by the domestically and externally challenged US administration, although Trump can wield leverage over Israel which could stem Netanyahu’s excesses. However, Trump has a short attention span and lacks determination to devise and stick with initiatives to deal with crises at the outset. Consequently, they fester and grow increasingly serious over time until violence erupts over minor provocations.
