President Donald Trump said this week that Iran is “pretty close” to signing a peace agreement with the United States that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. But on the ground across the Middle East, events told a different story.
Israel made its deepest military incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years this week, with airstrikes killing at least nine people, according to The Guardian. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled their homes in southern Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that ground operations would continue, speaking just hours after Israel and Lebanon had agreed to implement a U.S.-backed ceasefire. The leader of Hezbollah later rejected that agreement, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal.
Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem, said the territorial escalation has “delighted far-right elements” in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, who have called for the annexation of southern Lebanon as well as Gaza and the West Bank. “Many Israelis believe the election will be a test of whether Netanyahu can convince voters that he has achieved security gains since 7 October 2023,” Graham-Harrison said, referring to the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis. Since the start of the war with Iran, thousands of Israelis have been injured and 23 killed in missile strikes from Iran and Lebanon, according to figures through April from Israel’s ambulance service.
Analysts inside Israel, Graham-Harrison said, believe Netanyahu is now seeking to broaden the conflict for his own strategic ends. “In that context returning to war in Lebanon – and Gaza – is absolutely a political and electoral strategy,” she said, pointing to upcoming Knesset elections.
In Gaza, a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that came into force last October has done little to stop the violence. Over 900 people have been killed by continued Israeli bombardment since then, Graham-Harrison reported. More than one in 10 of Gaza’s prewar population of approximately 2.3 million have been killed or injured since the war began, in what a United Nations commission has declared a genocide.
“Israel controls at least 60% of Gaza, which is now a wasteland,” Graham-Harrison said. “They’ve demolished almost everything in the area and almost no Palestinians can live there.” She described severe shortages of clean water, medical supplies and food. Israel, which has repeatedly weaponized access to food and other basic supplies, says sufficient aid reaches Gaza. Last summer a bar on food shipments caused a famine, according to The Guardian.
“It’s an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe,” Graham-Harrison said. “That’s in addition to the combat actions killing on average over 100 people each month, which in most parts of the world would be considered an active war zone.”
U.S. attention on Gaza, however, appears to have waned. Graham-Harrison reported that special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been “taken off Gaza to focus on Iran because it’s more of a priority for Trump.” The White House’s relative disengagement, she said, is driven by the war’s unpopularity at home and its damaging effect on the cost of living in the U.S.
For civilians living through the conflict, the experience is one of constant precarity and fear. Iranians told The Guardian they feel abandoned by foreign powers, enduring the fallout of a war that has damaged an already faltering economy and strengthened the oppressive regime.
“I feel humiliated,” Amir, a business owner from Mashhad, told one of The Guardian’s reporters. “This is not a ceasefire. It’s a never-ending auction between the US and the Islamic Republic over our lives and our blood.”
Graham-Harrison noted that large sections of the Lebanese population do not support Hezbollah, but that Israel’s bombing of Beirut, occupation of the south and demolition of whole villages — which Human Rights groups say should be investigated as war crimes — has created a situation in which there is “no belief that this is going to bring them freedom or prosperity.”
European Union leaders are expected to rebuke Netanyahu for his continued expansion in Gaza and Lebanon at a forthcoming Brussels summit, but Graham-Harrison said he has a long history of shaking off criticism and the EU has yet to use any of its considerable economic leverage — it is Israel’s largest trading partner.
“We see plenty of condemnation but very little practical steps that mean an improvement for people in Gaza who are living in this terrible limbo,” she said.
Many across Lebanon, Iran and Gaza are asking the same question, Graham-Harrison said: why Western democracies are allowing Israel to trample international law that protects civilians. “And particularly when it comes to European countries, why they are so vocal and committed about holding Russia to account for targeting civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, but are almost silent about similar violations when they are the targets,” she said.