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In-Depth Issues:
Poll: Decline in Palestinian Support for Hamas - Dr. Khalil Shikaki ( Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research)
Only 20% of Palestinians say that Hamas emerged victorious from the war in Gaza, according to a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and Gaza on August 5-8, 2026.
In Oct. 2025, 39% said that Hamas had emerged victorious. In the West Bank, 21% now say that Hamas emerged victorious, compared with 48% ten months ago.
If legislative elections were held, Fatah would receive 32%, followed by Hamas with 29%.
Ten months ago, 44% said they would vote for Hamas, 30% for Fatah.
This means Hamas has lost more than ten points in ten months. In the West Bank, Hamas support fell from 40% to 25%. In Gaza, Hamas support fell from 49% to 34%.
27% support the armed struggle as the best means of achieving Palestinian goals, compared with 40% in Oct. 2025.
Support in Gaza for the armed struggle declined from 34% to 21%, while support in the West Bank declined from 43% to 32%.
In the recent war between the U.S. and Iran, 45% say that they were with Iran, while 12% say that they were against Iran.
44% support and 50% oppose the two-state solution.
65% believe that the Palestinian Authority has become a burden on the Palestinian people.
Israel Aids in Search and Rescue Efforts in Colombia ( Jerusalem Post)
The IDF Home Front Command continued working alongside search teams in the rubble of collapsed buildings in western Colombia nearly a week after a powerful earthquake killed hundreds.
Israel also assisted with efforts by engineers to map and assess buildings damaged in the earthquake.
Israelis No Longer Accept Diplomatic Deals that Leave the Enemy Standing - Meir Ben Shabbat ( Israel Hayom)
Israelis today doubt the ability of diplomatic agreements to prevent Hamas from rearming and rebuilding its military strength.
The true test is what happens on the ground. Since Oct. 7, the Israeli public perceives any arrangement that does not guarantee a fundamental change in the security reality as a threat to the achievements of the war.
Diplomatic deals are seen as nothing more than a lifeline for the enemy's survival, temporary arrangements that allow Hamas and Hizbullah to rebuild their fighting forces in preparation for the next confrontation with Israel.
The continuation of the war effort against Hamas and Hizbullah entails significant costs. However, Israel may have to pay higher costs if the enemy is left standing strong.
The writer, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, headed Israel's National Security Council (2017-2021) and served for 25 years in the Israel Security Agency.
The Folly of Negotiating with Islamists - Mitchell Bard ( JNS)
Imagine that after Sept. 11, American leaders had proposed negotiating with al-Qaeda rather than destroying it.
The discussion would not have centered on dismantling its terrorist infrastructure, but on what concessions the West should make to persuade Osama bin Laden to stop attacking it.
The idea is absurd. No serious American leader suggested bargaining with al-Qaeda or ISIS to moderate their ambitions.
The U.S. hunted down and killed bin Laden and his comrades, and helped uproot ISIS and destroy its caliphate.
The lesson was clear: Movements committed to religious conquest and perpetual jihad cannot be appeased. They must be defeated.
This lesson has been forgotten by those who believe that America can appease Iran and that sanctions relief can moderate its behavior.
Iran's rulers view themselves as leaders of a revolutionary Islamic movement whose mission extends well beyond Iran's borders.
What separates them from al-Qaeda is not ambition. It is capacity: territory, an industrial base, oil revenue, embassies, a seat at the UN, and a nuclear program.
Once Rejecting Israeli Citizenship, the Golan Druze Are Now Getting Ready to Vote - Adi Hashmonai ( Ha'aretz)
Walid, 35, a resident of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, said, "For 60 years, people here were afraid to speak out against the Syrian regime, fearing harm to their relatives across the border," before mentioning the massacre of Druze in southern Syria's Sweida province by government and Bedouin forces a year ago.
"I feel we're nearing the completion of the Israelization of Druze society in the Golan - toward a new era."
In 1981, when Israel annexed the Golan, most Druze there refused to accept Israeli citizenship, declaring loyalty to Syria.
Three decades later, the Syrian civil war broke out and the number of Druze who requested Israeli citizenship steadily increased from single digits to hundreds annually. Still, by 2023, only a fifth of the Golan Druze were Israeli citizens.
But in 2024, 572 residents from the four Druze towns requested Israeli citizenship, a number that ballooned to 3,750 in 2025. In the first half of 2026, 1,444 Druze from the Golan requested citizenship.
Now 44% are citizens. The main reason was the massacre in Sweida and the Israeli airstrikes in the province and Damascus that followed.
"I think the Druze in the Golan had an epiphany, mainly because Israel was the only one that stood by the Druze in Syria," says Salim Brik, a political scientist at the Open University of Israel.
The sharp increase in Golan-Druze citizenship is probably also linked to the disaster of July 2024, when 12 children in Majdal Shams were killed by a Hizbullah rocket, he says.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Iran's Secret Plan to Escalate the War - Benoit Faucon
After President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran in mid-June, Iran's leaders moved to give the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country's regular army, expanded domestic counterintelligence operations, and ramped up production of missiles and drones. Iran attacked ships to tighten its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and expanded the battlefield to the Red Sea.
Arab intelligence officials intercepted communications between Iran and its militia allies in Yemen and Iraq to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S. The Revolutionary Guard used the calm created by the memorandum of understanding to lay the groundwork with allied militias to step up attacks if needed, sending advisers to Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to discuss the plans.
The Revolutionary Guard supervised deployments of missiles, naval weapons and drone launchers to positions overlooking the Red Sea. It also provided Yemeni militants with intelligence, target lists including Saudi ports and energy facilities, and advice on sheltering from Saudi retaliation. The Revolutionary Guard threatened Gulf states that it would destroy their energy facilities if the U.S. were to hit similar sites in Iran, sending detailed lists of targets to its Arab counterparts.
"We took full advantage of the ceasefire period," Revolutionary Guard spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hossein Mohebbi told Tasnim news agency in July. "We enhanced our capabilities, accelerated our missile production rate and improved missile accuracy." (Wall Street Journal)
- Houthis Target Saudi Arabia - Elise Labott
In July, Yemen's Houthi militia declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia. Saudi tankers in the Red Sea rerouted north to Yanbu and in August, Houthi attacks reached them there. Yanbu is the Saudi kingdom's insurance policy: the terminus of a pipeline that carries Saudi crude to world markets without ever touching the Strait of Hormuz.
That route now carries 80% of the kingdom's 4.6 million barrels of daily exports, and Riyadh is working to link other Gulf oil producers to the same line.
Gregory Johnsen, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said he considers the Houthis "more of a junior partner" to Iran, rather than a proxy. Years of war built a self-sufficiency the rest of Iran's network never achieved: their own weapons production, command structures, and political relationships.
Saudi Arabia fought the Houthis for nearly a decade, and criticism of the civilian toll helped end that war in 2022 with the group still standing. Saudi Arabia wants to finally break that leverage and strip away one of Iran's last functioning sources of regional power. Riyadh is quietly funding and pushing Yemen's fractured anti-Houthi forces toward a ground offensive, while at the same time assembling a multinational maritime coalition to secure passage through the Red Sea. (Washington Post)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Israel, U.S. Agree Hamas Weapons Will Go to U.S.-Led International Stabilization Force for Destruction, Not to Palestinian Government - Amichai Stein
Israel and the U.S. have reached an understanding that, during the initial stage of Hamas's disarmament, its weapons will be handed over to the International Stabilization Force (ISF), headed by U.S. Maj.-Gen. Jasper Jeffers, for destruction, rather than to the proposed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).
At a meeting on Monday between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials from the Board of Peace, including senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, which was also attended by senior Israeli security officials, the sides reached a series of understandings regarding the proposed Gaza framework and the steps to be implemented.
The arrangement is intended to provide a verifiable mechanism to prevent Hamas's weapons from being transferred to another Palestinian authority without first being destroyed. The talks also produced an understanding that Hamas must immediately begin demonstrating its commitment to the disarmament process. Hamas must begin handing over weapons now rather than wait for all other elements of the ceasefire framework to be completed.
(Jerusalem Post)
- Netanyahu, Kushner Agree Hamas Must Disarm before Gaza Reconstruction - Itamar Eichner
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for four hours Monday with U.S. envoy Jared Kushner to discuss a framework for ending the war in Gaza. An Israeli diplomatic official said the sides agreed that reconstruction would not begin until Hamas had been disarmed throughout Gaza.
A Board of Peace official said, "Within a few weeks, Hamas will have to show real and concrete steps that it is actually beginning to disarm....If it does so, that is a very positive step. If not, it will be clear to everyone that it does not actually intend to implement what it signed. In that case, Israel will have international diplomatic backing to act to disarm Hamas. The Israelis are going to give this a chance. Now it depends on Hamas to show whether it really intends to comply."
Netanyahu told the meeting that anyone involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre would remain a target, as would anyone posing a threat to Israeli troops. An Israeli diplomatic official said, "Kushner used the phrase, 'I won't interfere with how you protect yourselves.'"
The Israeli official added, "There was an approach that wanted to begin with pilot programs, but now there are no pilots. Hamas must demonstrate the destruction of weapons." Israel also insisted that any disarmament process must prevent Hamas from turning over defective or unusable weapons to create the appearance of compliance.
Israeli security officials presented Kushner with extensive intelligence on conditions in Gaza and Hamas's efforts to rebuild its capabilities. The presentation included intelligence that Turkey is financing Hamas.
(Ynet News)
- Peace Council Source: "There Is Agreement on Full Demilitarization of Gaza and Only Then Israeli Withdrawal" -
A source in the Gaza Peace Council referred to the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. envoy Jared Kushner, and said that "Israel professionally presented its security concerns and fears. The council takes this into great consideration."
"Everyone agrees on the ultimate goal of fully dismantling Hamas from its weapons and rule, full demilitarization of Gaza, and only after that a full Israeli withdrawal. It can be said that the direction in the meeting was positive." (Ynet News)
- IDF Locates Remains of Fallen Soldier from 1982 Lebanon War - Miriam Sela-Eitam
The remains of IDF soldier Yehuda Katz, declared missing following the Battle of Sultan Yacoub on June 11, 1982, during the First Lebanon War, have been located by the IDF, Army Radio reported on Tuesday. The remains of two other soldiers declared missing alongside Katz, Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman,
were recovered in 2019 and 2025. (Jerusalem Post)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Gaza
- The West Is Still Committed to Its Fatal Delusion about Hamas - Jake Wallis Simons
The thread running through decades of Western failure to encourage peace and prosperity in the Middle East is our assumption that deep down, the Islamists are just like us. Forgive me if I view direct talks with Hamas - itself an unprecedented diplomatic move - as just more of the same painful naivete. Can a jihadi group ever be serious about disarming?
Think, for a moment, of the level of fanaticism required to build 450 miles of catacombs in Gaza, then to invite the apocalypse upon your own heads with an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation, necrophilia and kidnap, before deploying your own families as human shields above ground. Truly, these people love death as we love life.
While they wish the most gruesome of deaths upon us, we continue to think the best of them. In the West, we still can't bring ourselves to accept how evil these men truly are. (Telegraph-UK)
- British Historian: "Hamas Must Be Dismantled" - Claire Allfree
The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore says, "The October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel...changed everything. It was years in the planning that did what it was meant to do, which was to put the Palestinian issue at the center of the world, unleash the ideology of anti-Zionism in Western universities, and nix the Saudis normalizing agreements with Israel. The only thing it hasn't succeeded in is helping the Palestinian people."
The speed and intensity of anti-Israel sentiment that has spread like wildfire through Britain took Montefiore "by surprise." "There's nowhere better to live now than Britain or America or France than at any other point in the last 10,000 years. Yet that unprecedented comfort, liberalism and freedom have permitted the hothouse of exciting but intolerant radicalisms such as 'de-colonialization,' anti-Americanism,' 'anti-Westernism,' 'Third-World-ism'...particularly in many cultural, academic and media institutions in this country."
"People absolutely have the freedom to preach the destruction of the liberal democracies that protect them. I'm not in favor of banning or cancelling anybody unless they're encouraging killing. But a lot of the people on the pro-Palestinian marches in this country, for example, were doing just that....They were also filled with extreme ideologues, who were backing Iran, and who were backing Hamas."
While Montefiore has long been a champion of a Palestinian state, he says Britain's "recognition of a Palestinian state, for instance, was a [virtue-signaling] absurdity that achieved nothing. Instead, it revealed Britain's impotence in the Middle East and it rewarded a genocidal organization that is much more nihilistic than humanitarian....Hamas must be dismantled." (Telegraph-UK)
Saudi Arabia
- Saudi Arabia's New Assertiveness - Yoel Guzansky
Since Feb. 28, 2026, Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly targeted by Iranian missile and drone attacks. Despite this, Riyadh's response remained restrained and measured. It refrained almost entirely from direct confrontation with Iran. It continued to emphasize its desire for a political solution and de-escalation, while repeatedly exerting pressure on the U.S. to halt planned strikes against Iran.
Yet, recent weeks point to a change in the way Riyadh is defending itself. Rather than exercising restraint regarding strikes carried out via Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen, the kingdom is displaying an increasing readiness to use military force against them.
The Saudi initiative to establish a multinational force in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden to counter the Houthi threat to freedom of navigation has garnered the support of 13 nations including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia is no longer content with passive defense, but rather seeks to lead a military coalition capable of taking action against the Houthis if necessary.
The coalition illustrates how Saudi Arabia is acting to construct regional security mechanisms under its leadership, mobilizing Arab, Muslim, and African states without direct reliance on the U.S., which, along with Europe, remains outside the initiative.
This shift in Saudi strategy is also reflected in Riyadh's decision to participate in joint strikes with the U.S. against pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, following their launch of drones targeting the kingdom's oil facilities and infrastructure. From Riyadh's perspective, this military response constitutes an exercise of its right to self-defense.
The writer, who formerly coordinated Iran and Gulf affairs at Israel's National Security Council, is a senior researcher at INSS. (Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University)
See also The Houthis' Unprovoked Aggression Demands International Action - Dr. Majid Rafizadeh (Al Arabiya)
Antisemitism
- Jewish Pride Is about Being Free - Liel Leibovitz
On Friday night, a maniac named Larry Montes stormed into Manhattan's Central Synagogue, shouted obscenities, spat, punched a congregant in the face, and smashed a bunch of candles before being escorted out by security.
Watch the footage from the synagogue's livestream cameras, and you'll see Montes as he runs up and down the aisle uninterrupted. You'll also see a host of congregants, men and women alike, recoiling in horror, receding deeper into the pews for safety and looking desperately for the guards to intervene and save them.
Jewish pride isn't about being safe. It's about being free. This means refusing to turn our synagogues into nightmarishly fortified bunkers, which teaches our children that Judaism is interchangeable with anxiety and fear and which signals to our neighbors that hunting Jews is simply the norm in America these days.
It means bringing in a few Krav Maga dudes to teach congregants of all ages what to do next time some pogromist rolls in and starts acting up. It means conditioning congregation membership on the willingness to get trained and volunteer to become part of an organic security detail that doesn't rely on outsourcing our safety to others.
The FBI's recently released report on hate crimes in the U.S. shows that Jews, 2.4% of the population, are the target of 64% of all religion-based hate crimes. A Jew is currently 190% more likely than a Muslim to be the victim of a hate-based attack.
Somewhere, the next attacker of Jews is watching the footage, taking great pleasure in seeing the terrified looks on the faces of helpless Jews, and taking comfort in knowing that the worst that can happen to anyone storming a synagogue is being manhandled by some paid guard reluctant to inflict too much harm. The part we can control is what happens when the next attack on a synagogue occurs. (Tablet)
Observations:
- The pilot zones in Southern Lebanon were intended to serve as a practical test of the Lebanese state's ability and willingness, through the Lebanese Armed Forces, to implement the understandings with Israel: to prevent Hizbullah's return and thwart the rehabilitation of its infrastructure.
- However, developments in Zoutar al-Gharbiyeh, the first pilot zone, point to the opposite trend. Under cover of the Lebanese Army's presence, Hizbullah apparatuses are returning to the village and re-establishing a civilian foothold there, which could serve as the foundation for renewed military entrenchment.
- At the end of July, operatives from Hizbullah's Islamic Health Organization were seen operating in Zoutar al-Gharbiyeh, including recovering the bodies of dead Hizbullah members, while accompanied by the Lebanese Army. The organization does not belong to the Lebanese state. During the war, its ambulances were used to transport Hizbullah operatives and weapons, while its medical facilities were used for military-terrorist purposes, including as assembly points and command posts.
- It was joined on July 29 by the "Help One Another" association (Wa Ta'awanu), another civilian arm affiliated with Hizbullah, to "assist the return of residents." It provides food and meals, maps the needs of the population, and participates in rehabilitation and cleanup activities in cooperation with the Lebanese Army.
- This is precisely the sphere in which Hizbullah has operated for years. Through health, welfare, education, construction and financial institutions, Hizbullah creates dependence among the population on the services it provides and establishes a civilian support structure that also facilitates its military activity.
- This highlights the central problem with the pilot-zone model: Dismantling weapons and military infrastructure is not sufficient if, at the same time, Hizbullah's civilian apparatuses are allowed to return to the area.
These mechanisms constitute the social, economic and logistical infrastructure upon which Hizbullah is able to rebuild itself.
- The pilot zone of Zoutar al-Gharbiyeh was supposed to demonstrate that the Lebanese Army was capable of replacing Hizbullah as both the sovereign authority and the provider of services on the ground. Yet the emerging picture is the opposite. Hizbullah's apparatuses are operating alongside the Lebanese Army and under its protection. The failure of the pilot zones began on the day Hizbullah's civilian apparatuses returned.
The writer is director of research at the Alma Research and Education Center.
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