Middle East

United States President Donald Trump has said that he does not intend to bomb Iran again until the November midterm elections, even though several US media outlets have reported that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to relaunch attacks before that vote.

Trump has been accused of misdirection on the issue in the past. The US launched its initial attacks on Iran on February 28, as talks with Iran were ongoing and despite Trump saying just the day before that he had not made any decision. One year previously, the US struck Iran towards the end of Israel’s June 2025 12-day war, despite Trump saying he would announce a decision about attacks “in two weeks”.

Still, striking Iran ahead of the midterm elections would be risky for the administration as the war remains deeply unpopular with Americans.

Resuming the war afterwards may have less of a negative impact on Trump, who is not eligible to run for another term as US president anyway.

Here’s what we know about Trump’s plans.

In the past two days, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications have reported claims by unnamed officials that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to attack Iran before the midterms, if authorised to do so.

On Wednesday, US publication Axios cited US and Israeli officials saying the Pentagon has instructed US Central Command (CENTCOM) to prepare for imminent major combat operations. The Atlantic also reported along similar lines.

What has Trump said?

On Thursday, Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform that he will not order a resumption of strikes on Iran before November 3, when the US midterm elections will be held.

“I want to make it clear to everybody that, while Iran is in very bad condition…we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” he said.

The president added that the US is presently “having productive discussions” with the Iranian side. However, that was also the case on February 28, the day the US and Israel first struck Iran, triggering the war.

Trump did not make any reference to preparing for potential military operations, nor did he provide more details on the state of talks.

Why might Trump be hesitant about resuming bombing before the midterms?

Trump and Republicans are worried about a voter backlash against the war at the polls. The US war on Iran is intensely unpopular domestically as Americans have had to grapple with surging prices of gas, food and other basic commodities because of the crisis in the Middle East.

Since the start of the war, surveys have shown that large numbers of Americans did not approve of striking Iran.

Now, about 65 percent of Americans say they “disapprove” of the way in which Trump has handled the Iran war overall, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Thursday. Trump stated at the start of the war that it would go on for just a few weeks, however, it is now into its eighth month.

According to Pew, most Americans now believe the war will continue for at least another year. Even Republican or more conservative-leaning voters are growing more negative about the war, its poll found.

The conflict has also severely affected Trump’s personal ratings and eroded support for Republicans. A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Thursday found that only 30 percent of his supporters were enthusiastic about voting in the midterms, compared with 48 percent of Democratic voters.

About 13 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024 say they are not sure who to vote for in the congressional elections.

Delaying attacks until after the elections could potentially shield Republican candidates from voter backlash, analysts say.

While analysts say Trump will see a good performance at the polls as approval for renewed strikes, a Republican defeat at the polls could equally further incentivise him to hit Iran again as he will calculate that he has little to lose at that point.

While that could further affect Trump’s ratings, the president is not eligible to run in the next presidential election in any case.

Will the US restart the war after the midterms?

In recent weeks, the US president has threatened to “end” the war with force after the elections as talks with Iran have dragged on.

At a Republican convention in September, he accused Iran of trying to affect the outcome of the midterms and said that conflict “is going to end immediately after the elections”.

In an interview with Time magazine two weeks ago, he also said it would be “possible” to ramp up bombing in Iran after the elections, but declined to elaborate. Analysts say his comments were designed to calm voters, while at the same time warning Iran of potential aggression after the vote.

Last week, the US military dispatched about 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines aboard several ships now sailing to the Middle East amid threats of new attacks from Trump. The vessel formation included the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group.

The deployment increases the number of US troops in the region to 20,000, alongside hundreds of aircraft and at least three carrier strike groups.

In the past, US troop build-up in the Middle East and the Caribbean has subsequently resulted in military action.

In June, Washington and Iran signed a ceasefire agreement that quickly broke down over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has repeatedly said that the US has the upper hand in the strait, citing more oil exports and Iran’s weakened economy. He has also voiced aversion to a deal with Tehran over management of Hormuz, but said he might consider it because “they’re willing to offer us anything to stop”.

Washington rejected a recent proposal from Iran to reopen the strait based on certain conditions it wants the US to meet, including the lifting of sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets and guaranteeing an end to attacks. Last week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran was considering a counterproposal from the US.

One of Israel’s top ultra-Orthodox rabbis, Dov Lando, has become the centre of controversy in Israel after comments emerged in which he denigrated Zionism.

In a recently released video recording, the 96-year-old rabbi is heard saying the ideology of Zionism caused the Jewish people to suffer “disasters”, and that Jewish Israelis may have been better off without a state.

The remarks have drawn rebukes from Israeli politicians weeks before landmark legislative elections, in which the role of the country’s growing ultra-Orthodox community – particularly over military service – is a major issue. The political alignment of ultra-Orthodox parties could also prove crucial to the formation of the next government.

So, who is Lando and why are his comments significant?

Who is Dov Lando?

Dov Lando is a 96-year-old rabbi regarded as the leader of Israel’s Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community. Born in Poland and raised in the Lithuanian-style ultra-Orthodox tradition, Lando heads a yeshiva – a traditional Jewish academy – in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak.

He is a member of Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, a council of senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis that offer religious guidance to the community, as well as the spiritual leader of Israel’s Degel HaTorah party. That party is part of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) alliance, which is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

What has Lando said about Zionism?

Earlier this week, Israeli media released a video of Lando making year-old comments that harshly criticise Zionism, military service and secular Israelis.

Lando, who has made similarly critical remarks before, is heard in the video saying that Zionism “caused the Arabs to hate us” and brought physical as well as spiritual “disasters” on the Jewish people.

“It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state,” Lando said, adding that international or Palestinian rule would have been “the best situation” for Jews.

Lando went on to castigate soldiers who adhere to Religious Zionism – a strand of Orthodox Judaism that upholds Zionism – saying “they are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah.” Many military operations, he said, are carried out “not for saving lives, but for the honour of the state”.

The veteran rabbi also had harsh words for secular Israelis, who he said have “no connection to Judaism at all”. He described them as having built “a state of apostasy and heresy”.

What has been the reaction in Israel?

Lando’s remarks have drawn fierce criticism from numerous Israeli politicians, including all major figures that have joined an opposition alliance challenging Netanyahu.

Gadi Eisenkot, head of the Yashar party who is viewed as the opposition bloc’s most likely candidate for prime minister, said Lando’s “outrageous statements” were “the embodiment of anti-Zionism”.

Yair Lapid, the head of Israel’s opposition in the Knesset, called the comments “a disgrace to every Jew”.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who leads the Together alliance co-founded with Lapid, said Lando’s remarks are “anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist” and against the Israeli military.

Netanyahu has not commented on Lando’s latest reported remarks, but he publicly condemned earlier statements by the rabbi in July, when Lando accused the Religious Zionism movement of “incitement to murder” for its support for drafting religious seminary students into the military.

Could the controversy impact Israel’s upcoming elections?

Potentially.

Members of the anti-Netanyahu opposition bloc have called for the UTJ, which Lando’s party is part of, to be cast out of any future government, and criticised Netanyahu for staying aligned with the group.

Yair Golan, head of the Democrats party, said Netanyahu is “silent because without Rabbi Lando and his emissaries, he has no government”.

Netanyahu’s “political survival is more important to him than Zionism, more than equality in service, and more than the blood of our soldiers”, Golan said.

But breaking with the UTJ would come at a huge political cost to Netanyahu, whose coalition is already in for a tough election battle on October 27 and is polling well below the 61-seat threshold needed for a majority.

UTJ is projected to win 8 seats in parliament, according to an October 5 poll by Israel’s Channel 12.

“If Netanyahu attacks Lando forcefully, he pays a price with the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) he needs to form a government,” said Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs. “If he stays silent, he hands his rivals material to tell right-wing voters that the man who speaks of Zionism and security depends on a religious leadership that doubts Zionism itself.”

Oil prices drop as Trump dismisses speculation of pre-midterm military action against Iran.

United States President Donald Trump has said the US will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections.

The US president said late on Thursday: “we are having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in a post on Truth Social. “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”

Oil prices fell early on Friday as Middle East supply concerns eased somewhat after tensions in the energy-rich Gulf region had mounted in recent weeks.

The possibility of renewed fighting had appeared to drive up oil prices in trading on Thursday. Some analysts believe Trump’s comments were an attempt to try and bring prices back down.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is reviewing the US response to its seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran will respond within the “next few days”.

He added that negotiations are continuing through mediators, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported.

Hormuz explosions

Iranian media reported “massive explosions” in the southern Strait of Hormuz on Friday, with Fars citing unnamed military sources as saying tankers using “unauthorised” routes may have struck sea mines.

On Tuesday, US Vice President JD Vance said Iran must make a “meaningful” reduction in its uranium enrichment capacity as part of an agreement to end the war. Experts say this demand may signal a softening of Washington’s earlier insistence that Tehran abandon enrichment altogether.

On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said negotiations with Washington were “futile”, accusing the US of using negotiations to attack Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Pezeshkian that Russia will “do everything” to help end the US-led war on Iran, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday.

Sanaa, Aden and Marib, Yemen – As fighting intensifies across Yemen between the government and the Houthis, millions of people are confronting another battle far from the front lines: the deteriorating living and economic conditions in the country.

With salaries for large segments of the workforce either unpaid or irregularly disbursed – and the prices of goods and services rising – Yemen’s economic struggles have been compounded by a divided banking system that has made moving money between different parts of the country increasingly complicated.

From Aden’s struggling shoppers to displaced families in Marib and unpaid public-sector workers in Sanaa, Yemenis are being forced to make difficult choices about what they can afford, and what they must go without.

Aden: Food costs swallow salaries

In Aden, the internationally recognised Yemeni government’s interim capital in the south, the problem is not so much a shortage of goods in markets as people’s inability to afford them.

Salaries have failed to keep pace with the rising costs of food, rent, healthcare and transport, leaving workers with little money left over at the end of the month.

The consequences are evident in the smaller quantities and cheaper products that now make up shoppers’ baskets, and the decisions they are forced to make about what to cut back on.

Bushra Abdullah Abdulwarith is a government employee in Aden. She earns 78,000 Yemeni riyals ($50) a month at the black market exchange rate while typical household food costs in government-held areas run about 130,366 riyals ($83), according to estimates by the Yemen Economic Tracking Initiative. And that’s before she factors in the cost of rent, transport, healthcare and other household expenses.

The economic difficulties facing Yemenis like Bushra illustrate how more than a decade of war has devastated the economy. According to the World Bank, real GDP per capita has fallen by approximately 58 percent since 2015.

The fragmentation of Yemen’s monetary institutions between the government and the Houthis – who have operated their own institutions since seizing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 – along with the disruption of oil exports, and declining international assistance have all contributed to the economic decline.

Bushra told Al Jazeera that rising prices have forced many households to give up almost all non-essential purchases and cut back on some expensive basics, particularly meat. Other families, she said, have resorted to buying food in smaller quantities, sometimes on credit or loans.

Reduced demand

The impact of rising prices is reflected not only in economic figures but also in the way people shop.

Ayman al-Maqtari, who works at a shopping centre in Aden’s Mansoura district, said that his customers now rarely buy non-essential items.

When it comes to the essentials such as rice, sugar, flour, and cooking oil, he has noticed that customers size up the price of each item before putting it in their baskets. They are also buying smaller quantities, for example, opting for a 5kg (11 pound) over a 40kg (90 pound) bag of rice.

“Many people have come to live day by day, or week by week,” Ayman told Al Jazeera, adding that more families are buying on credit when they run out of money before the end of the month.

The decline in purchasing power is also affecting commercial activity.

Across several streets and shopping centres in Aden, advertisements for discounts and special offers have become increasingly visible in shop windows and on retailers’ social media pages, as businesses attempt to attract customers and boost sales.

Weak demand, retailers say, is particularly evident for items that households can put off buying, such as clothing and household goods. A growing share of family income is spent on food, rent, healthcare and transport.

Limited pay increase

The Yemeni government approved a 20 percent cost-of-living allowance in May for public-sector employees in an attempt to ease the pressure of rising prices. But the amount is calculated based on each employee’s base salary, rather than their total pay, meaning the actual increase is relatively small for many workers.

Bushra, the government employee in Aden, said the increase has done little to improve her family’s financial circumstances. She described the allowance as “a temporary painkiller that does not reflect the scale of the actual pressure on people’s living standards”.

Her experience is far from isolated. In early October, the World Food Programme said its latest monitoring in accessible government-controlled areas showed that 74 percent of households were unable to meet their basic food needs.

One of the places where the crisis is evident is Marib, a government-controlled city east of Sanaa that is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The sharp increase in the population over the war years, in what was previously a provincial backwater, has led to pressure on the city’s housing, employment and public services.

Government employees in Marib see their salaries disappear within the first few days after being paid, labourers struggle to find more than a few days of work and displaced families are forced to choose between buying water and milk.

Salah al-Zuhaifi works for a government institution in Marib. He said the war has separated him from his parents, who live in Houthi-controlled territory.

Alone in Marib, al-Zuhaifi said that inflation had eroded much of his salary’s purchasing power.

“No matter how much you earn, it will not be enough to meet your needs,” he said.

Abu Mohammed Nasser al-Asbahi, another government employee, described a similar struggle.

He told Al Jazeera that he earns 400,000 riyals ($250) a month, but more than half of that goes towards his rent, leaving little for his other expenses.

“We don’t even get to the first one-third of the month before the salary is gone,” he said, explaining that his family spends the rest of the month relying on loans and credit from local shops.

The healthcare sector in Marib has also been affected by widespread household spending cuts.

Pharmacist Khaled Mohsen told Al Jazeera that the rising price of medicines has prompted many patients to decline parts of their prescribed treatment and purchase only what they consider most essential.

People with chronic illnesses, meanwhile, have increasingly begun reducing their medication doses to make their supplies last longer before having to buy more, which creates serious health risks.

Houthi areas

Residents of Sanaa and other areas of Yemen’s populous northwest, controlled by the Houthis – an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) – since 2014, are also facing a worsening economic and cost-of-living crisis similar to that affecting Yemenis elsewhere in the country.

Several factors are driving the crisis, particularly unpaid public-sector salaries, declining purchasing power, rising prices for goods and services, and the continuing consequences of the division of Yemen’s currency and banking systems in the early years of the war.

Many public-sector employees in Houthi-controlled areas have gone years without receiving regular salaries, with some sectors only receiving limited payments or half-salaries at irregular intervals.

Even when payments are made, they cannot cover families’ basic needs amid the rising cost of living.

Meanwhile, private-sector workers and business owners face growing pressures as a result of declining economic activity, multiple fees and levies, and a shortage of employment opportunities. The conditions have undermined incomes and job security.

The Yemeni riyal’s exchange rate in Houthi-controlled Sanaa is more stable than in areas controlled by the government. The Houthis have imposed strict monetary controls, banning the circulation of newer banknotes printed by the Yemeni government, and have also enforced a largely fixed exchange rate.

However, that does not necessarily translate into stronger purchasing power. Markets face difficulties caused by cash shortages and the division between monetary and banking systems operating in different parts of the country, including increased costs for moving funds.

That directly affects the many households relying on domestic and international remittances.

For residents in Houthi-controlled areas, the result is an economy in which the currency may be relatively stable, but livelihoods are precarious. Years of unpaid salaries and limited employment opportunities have left many families struggling to afford basic necessities, with few options beyond borrowing, cutting spending or relying on support from relatives.

Gaza City – More than 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed since Israel launched its war on the besieged enclave in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, turning whole neighbourhoods into rubble and wiping out much of its infrastructure.

For generations, Gaza’s streets, markets, schools, hospitals and public spaces formed the backdrop to everyday life. They were places where people worked, studied, shopped, met friends and family, and built memories.

Many of the city’s familiar landmarks also carried a much longer history, reflecting Gaza’s thousands of years as a crossroads of different civilisations.

The war has also changed the face of Gaza by damaging or destroying many of those historic and recognisable landmarks.

UNESCO has verified damage to 164 cultural sites since October 2023, including 128 buildings of historical or artistic interest, 14 religious sites, nine monuments, eight archaeological sites, two museums and three depositories of movable cultural property.

Among them are the Great Omari Mosque, Gaza’s oldest mosque, Qasr al-Basha, the ancient Samaritan Bathhouse, al-Qissariya Market and the Church of Saint Porphyrius complex.

Some of these places have been reduced to ruins, while others remain standing but heavily damaged. The destruction has altered not only individual buildings but the streets and neighbourhoods around them, removing landmarks that once helped people recognise and navigate their city.

This photo series contrasts archive images of some of Gaza’s most recognisable streets, markets and public buildings with new photographs taken three years into the war, showing how these familiar places have changed after years of bombardment and destruction.

Iranian media reported “massive explosions” in the southern Strait of Hormuz, with Fars citing unnamed military sources as Trump says US won’t strike Iran before midterms.

Islamic Relief calls for international action as Gaza endures deadly Israeli attacks and worsening humanitarian conditions.

Israeli attacks have killed or wounded a Palestinian in Gaza every 90 minutes on average since the ceasefire was announced in October last year, the aid group Islamic Relief says.

Islamic Relief, a United Kingdom-based charity, said on Thursday that at least 1,454 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 wounded over the year. At least 320 of those killed were children, close to one a day.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that 1,471 Palestinians have been killed and 5,189 wounded since the ceasefire, including four killed and 28 wounded in the past 24 hours.

Israel has killed at least 74,254 people since October 2023, the ministry added.

On Thursday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian southeast of Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, and an Israeli air strike on a house in central Khan Younis wounded several people, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

In the occupied West Bank, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the foot during an Israeli raid on Yamoun, west of Jenin, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Islamic Relief said Israel has used the so-called Yellow Line, which marks the area under Israeli military control, to push Palestinians out of 65 percent of Gaza, crowding its nearly 2.1 million people into the remaining 35 percent.

According to the report, an Islamic Relief aid worker in Gaza whose name is withheld for their safety said: “There is no ceasefire in reality. They target displacement camps and crowded areas, so there is still a lot of fear.”

Israel continues to block shelter materials, fuel and medical supplies, the group said.

About 82 percent of Gaza’s structures are damaged or destroyed, more than half of health services have shut down and more than 20,000 severely ill patients are denied permission to leave for treatment.

The charity urged world leaders to increase pressure to protect civilians and uphold international law.

“A ceasefire in name only cannot be an excuse for international inaction,” it said.

The Russian and Iranian presidents met in Turkmenistan ahead of regional summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Russia will “do everything” to help end the United States-led war on Iran, Russian news agencies reported.

The two leaders met in Turkmenistan on Thursday ahead of the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a group of former Soviet nations.

“You know our position. On our part, we are ready to do everything we can to help you resolve this situation,” Interfax news agency said Putin told Pezeshkian.

“We know that Iran is making real efforts to end the conflict, which broke out through no fault of its own, no fault of Iran’s,” Putin said, according to Russian media.

Putin also noted what he called a “positive evolution” in Iran-Russia relations.

In a call on Wednesday, Putin told Pezeshkian that Moscow is prepared to mediate efforts to end the war in the Middle East, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.

Putin and Pezeshkian also met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan last month.

Strategic partnership

The two countries, which are under heavy Western sanctions, have reinforced diplomatic and military ties.

Last year, Moscow and Tehran signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty” that covers areas from trade and military cooperation to science, culture and education.

Ukraine and Western countries have accused Iran of supplying Russia with Shahed drones and short-range missiles for use in the Ukraine war. Russia has also been accused of supplying data to Iran for its attacks on US targets in the Middle East.

The meeting came as Iran-US talks stand at an apparent impasse.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the US will not launch an attack on Iran before the November 3 US midterm congressional elections, saying the two countries are ‌‌holding “productive” talks about ending the ongoing war.

Diplomatic efforts to resolve Russia’s offensive in Ukraine also appear deadlocked, even as both sides intensify attacks.

For more than a decade, Yemen has been facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world.

The latest round of fighting between the government and the Houthis is worsening the suffering of millions of people.

The United Nations migration agency says it is alarmed by the speed of the displacement.

So, how difficult is it for aid agencies to operate in Yemen?

And how much further can the situation deteriorate?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Abdusattor Esoev – Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration in Yemen

Hisham Al-Omeisy – Senior Yemen Advisor at the European Institute of Peace

Ammar Al-Asaadi – Programme Manager at ZOA, an international relief and recovery organisation

Colombian President Abelardo De la Espriella had promised closer ties with Israel on the campaign trail.

Israel has announced that Colombia will open an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the latest country to establish a diplomatic mission in the disputed city claimed as a capital by Israelis and Palestinians. Most countries have their embassies in Israel in Tel Aviv.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Thursday the Latin American country’s embassy would open next week as he touted expanding relations with the region.

“Next Wednesday, we are going to inaugurate … the Colombian embassy,” Saar told attendees at a conference in Jerusalem.

An official at the Colombian Foreign Ministry in Bogota told AFP news agency the country’s Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar would travel to Jerusalem on Sunday ahead of the opening.

Colombian President Abelardo De la Espriella, who was sworn in as president in August, promised close relations with Israel during his election campaign. When he came into office, he restored diplomatic ties between Colombia and Israel. Colombia had previously severed ties with the country over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

The announcement comes as a small but growing list of countries has opted to route their diplomatic ties with Israel through Jerusalem.

Since 2018, the US, Guatemala, Paraguay, Kosovo, Honduras, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nauru and Somaliland, which has been recognised as an independent entity only by Israel, have opened embassies in the city.

Other countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel have located their embassies in Tel Aviv, as Jerusalem is not recognised by the international community as Israel’s capital.

“We will work hard because this is the diplomatic battle over the truth. And the truth is, Jerusalem was always the capital of one nation,” Saar said, dismissing Palestinian claims to the capital.

The Israeli minister said the Democratic Republic of the Congo would open its embassy in Jerusalem “very soon” and hinted at another opening.

“I think that with the possible results in Brazil, they might have the same move,” he said after right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round in the country’s presidential election.

Protesters in Colombia took to the streets of Bogota on Wednesday to rally against the new far-right government’s policy towards Israel, including the decision to open the Jerusalem embassy.

“When diplomatic relations with Israel were broken off, the message was that we would not be a nation complicit in their atrocities,” Nicolas Isaza, who took part in the protest, told Al Jazeera.

“Today our government is no longer drawing a line against the atrocities being committed in Palestine,” he added.

Israel opened its first national pavilion at Morocco’s Marrakech Air Show, joined by Israel’s top military contractors.

Israel’s Ministry of Defence says it is participating for the first time in a defence exhibition in Morocco, as it announced its first-ever national pavilion at the Marrakesh Air Show 2026.

“This marks Israel’s first official participation in the defence exhibition held in Morocco since the signing of the Abraham Accords”, Israel’s Defence Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The ministry said eight Israeli defence companies exhibited “advanced, combat-proven technologies at the show” in Marrakesh, which runs until Saturday.

The Marrakech Air Show, taking place from October 7 to October 10 this year at the Marrakech Royal Moroccan Air Force Base, is organised every two years and is meant for civil and military aeronautics and space industries to highlight their latest offerings.

“Israel’s three major defence industries, Elbit Systems, IAI, and Rafael, also exhibited, presenting solutions across the air, land, sea, space, intelligence, cyber, and digital domains,” it said.

The announcement is the latest sign of increasing ties between the Arabic-speaking North African country and Israel, since the two established ties in 2020 as part of the US-backed Abraham Accords.

Last month, Israel and Morocco agreed to upgrade their diplomatic ties, including elevating their respective missions to embassies and appointing ambassadors to both countries.

The move followed a meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers, hosted by the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

They also agreed to expand air travel, including by reinstating direct flights operated by carriers from both nations, and confirmed plans for high-level bilateral visits in the coming months.

Morocco is also one of the five countries that have pledged to send troops to Gaza, under the US-backed International Stabilization Force (ISF) as part of US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace.

Ukraine says it has received proposals from India, Turkiye, Egypt and the United States to broker talks with Russia. The offers come as the two adversaries escalate attacks on each other’s energy and port infrastructure with their war now in its fifth year.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha revealed the four proposals at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday and singled out New Delhi’s. “The most comprehensive is India’s proposal,” he said, adding that India had signalled a willingness to play a role for the first time.

None of the proposals aims to end the war. Each seeks a narrower truce, covering energy facilities, ports or commercial shipping in the Black Sea.

Here’s what we know:

What is India proposing?

India has not made its plan public. Quoting unnamed sources, however, Indian media have reported it has three parts. According to the Hindustan Times, it would aim to protect infrastructure, keep grain and energy supplies moving through Black Sea ports, and ensure the safety of commercial shipping.

The first part – mutually halting strikes on energy facilities and ports – matches what Kyiv has been demanding. Sybiha said any deal must be a complete energy truce that covers port infrastructure as well.

The second part builds on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Turkiye and the United Nations mediated in 2022 but Russia abandoned in 2023.

The third part, protecting merchant ships and their crews, is particularly important to India because Indian sailors have been killed or harmed on Black Sea routes.

The sources were quoted as saying India’s plan goes further than the other three proposals because it covers infrastructure and shipping together. A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that it incorporates elements of the Turkish, Egyptian and US initiatives. The Kyiv Post reported that Sybiha also described the plan as addressing a possible ceasefire along the front lines, although other accounts said he gave no specifics.

The proposal likely took shape during Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s first visit to Ukraine last month and in a later meeting with Sybiha at the UN General Assembly in New York, also in September. Jaishankar said New Delhi was “trying to be helpful, starting with the Black Sea safety of shipping issue”.

What do we know about the Turkish and Egyptian proposals?

Very little. Neither Ankara nor Cairo has published details. Both reportedly focus on keeping Black Sea grain supplies moving by suspending attacks on commercial shipping. Some reports said the two countries proposed a grain truce jointly while others described two separate plans.

Turkiye has done this before. With the UN, it steered the 2022 grain deal, one of the few narrow truces of the war to hold for any length of time. Ankara and the UN are now organising new Black Sea talks with a round planned for October.

Beyond its Black Sea focus, almost nothing is known about Egypt’s proposal. Its interest, however, is clear: Egypt relies on Ukraine for nearly one-third of its grain supplies.

What is the US pitching?

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Washington has proposed three steps: a mutual halt to energy strikes, a reopening of the grain corridor and a trilateral meeting with Ukraine and Russia, possibly in Abu Dhabi.

The latest effort began in early September when US President Donald Trump’s envoys visited Kyiv and Moscow and secured an agreement in principle for a trilateral meeting. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on September 5 while Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev visited the US twice in September.

The trilateral meeting has since been pushed back. It had been expected to take place in the United Arab Emirates in early October. Washington now wants it in late October, and people close to the talks blamed the delay on Russia.

Washington has also invited Putin to the Group of 20 summit in Miami, Florida, in December. “We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. The Kremlin said no decision has been made.

At the same time, the US is applying pressure to try to end the war. Trump recently signed a law giving him sweeping powers to sanction buyers of Russian energy.

He has also called on Ukraine to stop targeting Russian diesel facilities amid a diesel prices crisis in the US, where Trump faces tricky midterm elections next month. “Mr Zelenskyy has to do one thing,” he said on September 13. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.” This drew much criticism that Trump instead should focus his comments on Russia, which began the war with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

He is reportedly sceptical about his own government’s latest diplomatic initiative. People familiar with his thinking have told US media that he doubted Putin would agree to an energy truce before winter.

How have Russia and Ukraine responded?

Sybiha said Ukraine would agree to a truce but with conditions. It would accept an energy and Black Sea shipping ceasefire, but only as a combined package, he said.

He added that Kyiv is also open to an unconditional ceasefire along the current front lines. Zelenskyy backs the US-proposed meeting but stressed it needs “not only Ukraine but also the Russian side” to support it.

Moscow has been warm in tone but has committed to nothing. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would welcome India’s peace efforts while Putin said Modi has “very good ideas aimed at finding mutually acceptable solutions”, but he did not elaborate.

In private, Moscow appears to have said no. A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Russia has rejected India’s proposal although this has not been confirmed publicly. Ukraine’s agriculture minister said Russia had rejected every Black Sea ceasefire option the mediators have presented.

Why are Global South countries becoming more involved?

Food supplies, the lives of their citizens and fuel prices are all at stake.

“I think it’s clear to many countries that this war is not a localised war, but it’s a war that has these global consequences,” Fredrik Wesslau, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera.

Russia and Ukraine account for more than a quarter of global wheat shipments, and their attacks on each other’s ports helped push wheat futures to a three-year high in August.

Sailors from countries with no links to the war are being killed. At least five Indian seafarers have died in strikes on Black Sea shipping in recent months along with seven Azerbaijani crew members since June. On Saturday, a Russian strike on a Liberian-flagged ship in a port in the Odesa region killed a crew member. Ukraine, for its part, has targeted tankers it links to Russia’s shadow fleet since July.

The energy war is also being felt in global markets. Ukraine reported more than 194 drone attacks on Russian refineries this year, hitting all 11 of the largest. Bloomberg News estimated that Russia’s fuel output has fallen by more than 30 percent. With Middle East supply already down as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran, global diesel markets are more exposed to the loss of Russian supplies.

Maximilian Hess, a nonresident senior fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said energy is at least as important as grain in driving the diplomatic efforts. He pointed to a “clear frustration” among many countries over high oil prices, which reflect both the Russia-Ukraine war and the crisis in the Middle East.

“Of course, Ukrainian grain is important for them, but the oil-price factor is important there as well,” he told Al Jazeera. “I think it is those commodity-shock concerns that are pushing them to re-embrace this rhetoric, rather than anything else.”

What are the challenges ahead?

Every previous attempt at diplomacy has failed to end the Russia-Ukraine war. A US-brokered, 30-day energy truce in early 2025 collapsed amid accusations of violations on both sides. At talks in Istanbul in May 2025, Zelenskyy complained that Russia had sent a junior delegation with no authority to sign a ceasefire.

In August 2025, a meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska yielded no results despite Trump claiming to be close to a deal ahead of it.

Wesslau said Washington’s efforts have faltered partly because Trump – who had boasted he would end the war within 24 hours of taking office in January 2025 – has appeared unwilling to put real pressure on Moscow. “The Russians see this, and they conclude that they can continue this war,” he said.

Deep distrust remains. Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said: “Putin never keeps agreements.”

Moscow’s actions on the ground suggest it is in no hurry, Wesslau said  “They’re trying to strangle Ukraine, strangle the economy, and make it unliveable ahead of the winter,” he said. He added that Moscow’s occasionally softer rhetoric was aimed mainly at the Trump administration and “has always proved to be a bluff”.

Russia’s terms are another obstacle. Hess said Moscow’s demands have not softened at any point since it launched the war and at times have grown. Putin has demanded all of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, including territory Russian forces have never controlled, as well as a buffer zone in northern Ukraine. Moscow is also seeking sanctions relief and military concessions for any Black Sea deal.

“I don’t think it’s a question of who actually mediates. I think it’s really a question of the calculation in Moscow,” Wesslau said. “Fundamentally, the problem is that Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire or a peace agreement. He wants to continue the war. He believes that he can win.”

Analysts said only greater economic pressure is likely to change that calculation.

Wesslau said if Europe can close down Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, “this would be a massive blow to Russia’s war economy.” Hess said the country best placed to shift things quickly is China, rather than the US, by cutting its purchases of Russian oil. However, he added: “I don’t think Beijing is interested in doing so.”

Hess said that unless there is an outside shock, the war “is much more likely to last another four years than another four months”.

Police say the incident is not connected to ongoing investigations at the RAF Fairford airbase.

Police in the United Kingdom say they have arrested and charged a member of the Royal Navy accused of working with an unnamed foreign power after an investigation by counterterrorism police.

Teddy Young, 24, was charged with two offences under the National Security Act for allegedly obtaining protected information and preparing to transfer it for the benefit of a foreign power.

In a statement, authorities alleged that between November 2024 and May 2025, Young “obtained, copied, recorded or retained protected information, intending the conduct to benefit a foreign power… contrary to section 1 of the National Security Act 2023″.

Young is due to appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Thursday.

“These are very serious charges against a serving member of the armed forces,” Commander Helen Flanagan, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said in a statement.

“We have worked extremely closely with relevant operational colleagues within the Ministry of Defence as our investigation has progressed to ensure appropriate measures could be taken to mitigate any potential risks linked to this matter,” she added.

UK media reported that the officer was arrested at his home in Bedfordshire on Tuesday before he was taken into custody in London.

The police clarified that the case is not related to the ongoing investigation into an incident at the RAF Fairford airbase.

Sanaa, Yemen – The Yemeni government’s new military offensive against the Houthis is testing more than the balance of forces in the country – it is also testing whether the government can persuade powerful tribes in Houthi-controlled areas that the balance of power is beginning to shift.

For years, many of the tribes hostile or wary of the Iran-backed Houthis have stopped short of openly confronting the movement, deterred by their military strength and by previous failed uprisings. Those same tribes are now looking to the internationally recognised government’s newly-activated frontlines – on the Red Sea coast, Marib and al-Jawf primarily – to see if the limited advances made since the Dawn of Yemen military operation launch this week can turn into sustained gains.

The offensive by the Saudi Arabia-backed government forces follows major Houthi gains in September, when the armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) swept across the country’s Red Sea coast. The Houthis captured vital trade corridors, including the port city of Mocha and territory around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

While airstrikes have inflicted losses on Houthi forces over the past few days, pushing towards Houthi strongholds where the group has been entrenched since the war started in 2014, including Sanaa, Saada, and Amran, remains a formidable challenge.

With the government declaring an all-out war on the Houthis, pledging to recapture Sanaa, tribal distrust of the government may diminish, prompting tribes to shift positions at the right time, experts say. The role of the tribes could therefore prove critical to the government’s ability to advance deeper into Houthi-controlled territories.

On Monday, Marib governorate – the government’s stronghold in the north – saw a large tribal rally attended by tribal sheikhs and local anti-Houthi fighters from tribes such as the Jadan from Marib, Nihm from Sanaa and other allied tribes.

The rally announced a general mobilisation to support the armed forces in the battle to “restore the state and topple the Houthi coup”.

“If this tribal support translates into actual mobilisation and sustained participation in the battle, tribes will help government troops advance toward Houthi-controlled areas and the Houthi heartland, including Sanaa,” said Adel Dashela, a researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies.

Over the past decade of war in Yemen, tribes have repeatedly mobilised against the Houthis at a local level, but deep divisions and a lack of sustained outside backing have prevented the emergence of a unified tribal front. Nevertheless, tribes can potentially be a key source of manpower and influence for the government.

“Tribal fighters remain indispensable to any future campaign against the Houthis. But to be effective, their military engagement must occur through formalised state and coalition command structures, rather than as an independent vanguard,” Dashela said.

‘Wait for the right time’

Tribes in Yemen do not want to risk confronting Houthi forces without support, and they “wait for the right time” to act, Abdulsalam Mohammed, chairman of the Yemeni Abaad Studies and Research Center, said.

“The tribes seek a powerful state, and once they find the state reliable, they can side with it,” Mohammed said.

He added that tribes do not want to repeat mistakes made by tribes that had rebelled against the Houthis, and then not received enough support from the government.

“Those tribes revolted against the Houthis, and they were crushed amid the absence of the government’s effective role,” Mohammed said.

In January 2019, fighting broke out between the Houthis and the Hajoor tribe in northwest Yemen’s Hajjah, lasting several weeks. The Houthis eventually captured the Hajoor areas in March of the same year.

At the time, Saudi Arabia dropped food, medical supplies and weapons to besieged Hajoor fighters, but this did not prevent the tribe’s defeat by the Houthis.

Mohammed said that even in areas where the Houthis have local support, some tribes could gradually shift their allegiance towards the government, if they saw it as serving their interest.

“Not all tribes fighting for the Houthis are staunch supporters. Their motivations range from pragmatism to ideological loyalty and material necessity,” Mohammed said.

‘A friend of the tribe’

Over the past decade, the Houthis have weakened traditional tribal power structures in areas under their control, co-opting some leaders and replacing others with loyalists. They have defeated tribal challenges, and have withstood not only conflict with the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia, but also bombing by the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. All of that has reinforced a perception among tribes that the Houthi military capability had become “invincible”.

A tribal sheikh in northern Yemen, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told Al Jazeera that the Houthi military “supremacy” in the country over a decade-long war has “dwarfed the political and military role of the tribe”.

“Before the Houthi takeover of power, the government was like a friend of the tribe,” he said. “Today, the tribe is subordinate to the Houthis.”

The Houthis, according to him, used three tactics to tighten their grip on territories under their control: military force, financial incentives and their public identification with the Palestinian cause.

“The Houthis used military force if negotiations or financial incentives failed to win the tribes’ backing. Moreover, the Houthi military support for Palestine has earned the group additional popular and tribal support,” said the tribal figure.

As the Houthis built up enormous military and financial power over the past few years, the tribal sheikh said tribes acting alone could not match the group’s power. He also said that the government’s reported gains on some frontlines could not by themselves be taken as a sign that the Houthis were collapsing.

“A concrete government advance on the battlefields would reassure some Yemeni tribes that the Houthis have lost ground,” the tribal sheikh said. “Once this materialises, anti-Houthi and neutral tribes can feel confident and begin confronting the group.”

In the past three years, following the October 7 attacks and the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the wider region has been marked by conflict, economic turmoil, and a shattering of the balance of power.

The network of alliances maintained by Iran, long central to its regional power, has been hit hard and severely weakened. Yemen’s Houthi rebels remain one notable exception.

Israel has made gains. Many of the leaders of the Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas have been killed, while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was also assassinated in February. Israel occupies most of Gaza, where it has also killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.

Its military aggression has come at a cost, isolating it from its traditional allies and making it globally unpopular, including in the United States. The potential for more normalisation deals with Arab countries seems unlikely, at least in the short term.

Instead, Israel continues to launch attacks across the region, crossing previously held red lines – such as the 2025 attack on Doha, Qatar – and making many governments around the world view it as the primary source of unrest in the Middle East.

US not a protector

“Before October 7, the US’s entire policy in the Middle East rested on normalising Israel’s presence in the region through its so-called Abraham Accords,” HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute said, referring to the normalisation deals with several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates. “Israel’s response to the October 7 attack ended that.”

Instead, rather than a stable Middle East with Israel at its centre, the US entered into a war with Iran this year, and has since looked on as Tehran targeted US allies across the Gulf, shattering the perceived security of the US security umbrella.

Drones and missiles hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas hub and started fires near Dubai airport and at Fujairah’s oil zone. In September, the Houthis surged down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking the port of Mocha and nearby islands. Their gains tightened their grip on the Bab al-Mandeb strait, threatening a key route for global trade and energy supplies that had become even more important amid disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s been a loss of faith in the US as a singularly sufficient security guarantor,” Hellyer continued.

“This is why you’re seeing many in the region talk to other external actors, in addition to continuing, and in some cases deepening their US ties, as well as initiatives such as the Mecca security pact as states in the region look elsewhere for ways to safeguard their security,” he said, referring to the defence agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan, signed in August, agreeing that an attack on one was to be regarded as an attack on all.

Alliances

Alongside the loss of confidence in the US as a security guarantor has come a dramatic reordering of alliances and rivalries. Much of Iran’s network – most notably Hezbollah, whose reputation had long served as a deterrent against Israeli attack – appeared to buckle under Israeli pressure.

That, in turn, emboldened an Israeli military push that saw troops invade Lebanon in October 2024 and again in March 2026, and seize Syrian territory during the brief power vacuum that followed Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in 2024.

“The Middle East has always been multi-aligned. However, now it’s even more so,” Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, said of the increased leverage given to external actors, such as Turkiye in Syria and China’s involvement in negotiations over the end to war on Iran, as Beijing finds its own energy supplies under threat.

“It’s ironic, since October 7, it’s Israel that has emerged as the revisionist power and Iran almost as the status quo power,” she said of the apparent reversal in status of the two belligerents, with Tehran seemingly more focused on regaining the ground it has lost in the last three years rather than advancing beyond them.

However, none of this was to overstate Israeli influence, or liken it to a regional superpower, Vakil cautioned. “Israel may currently be the preponderant military power in the Middle East, but real power is typically classed as being able to project stability, which Israel hasn’t shown itself able or willing to do,” she said.

Clogged arteries

While Israel and the US hoped February’s attacks would swiftly topple Iran’s government, they have instead opened a new front. Tehran now wields economic leverage over Israel, the US and their partners through the Strait of Hormuz, which borders Iran and typically carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, and through Bab al-Mandeb, which is now threatened by its Houthi allies.

Whatever Tehran’s intentions, the economic pain has been uneven. The West, cushioned by emergency reserves, record US oil production and supplies from countries such as Norway, has so far avoided the turmoil of the 1970s oil shocks, when US drivers queued for petrol, even though the current disruption is on a greater scale. In April, the International Monetary Fund trimmed its 2026 global growth forecast only slightly, to 3.1 percent from 3.3 percent.

Gulf exporters, in contrast, have fared far worse. The same assessment cut its forecast for Saudi Arabia from 4.5 to 3.1 percent, and turned Qatar’s from growth of 6.1 percent into a contraction of 8.6 percent.

“It’s curious, in many ways the West’s reduced need for Gulf oil has increased the degree to which Israel has become a liability for the US,” Israeli political economist Shir Hever told Al Jazeera, referring to a diplomatic alliance between the two states long underpinned by Israel’s strategic position in an oil-rich region central to US interests.

“There’s a train of thought in Israel that the current crises may push the Gulf states into allying with it,” he said, while noting the irony that Israel had been the main aggressor in the conflicts that followed October 7. “Though that seems fairly unlikely.”

When Huda Helassa, 20, left her home in Tal al-Hawa, southern Gaza city, in the first hours of the war, she took a signed T-shirt from the Access Microscholarship Program, a United States-funded programme that provides English-language and cultural education to young people.

Her classmates had signed the shirt on September 15, 2023, during their final class, two years before she graduated on September 27.

“When we left our home on the first day of the war, the T-shirt was one of the first things that came to my mind,” Huda says.

She put it in her bag almost instinctively, wanting to hold on to something from a part of her life that had ended just days earlier.

Huda and her family first moved to her grandmother’s house in Gaza City, then were displaced south, walking part of the way, and eventually reached Rafah in the south of the Palestinian territory.

In May 2024, they were displaced again, this time to Khan Younis. When they returned to Gaza in January 2025, they found their home completely burned.

“There was nothing left of the life we had there,” she says. “No belongings, no photographs, no memories we could hold onto, just the blackened walls.”

They were displaced again in April 2025, moving to Remal and then Tal al-Hawa, before moving to az-Zawayda in September and returning to Gaza in October. They are currently in Tal al-Hawa.

For Huda, the T-shirt remains a link to the life she had before the war, a period of learning, friendships and experiences that shaped her.

Saudi civil aviation authorities say Houthi attacks on Abha and King Khalid International airports have killed three civilians, including two women, and injured 36 others.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said there were no casualties after small arms fire targeted a border post.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) says one of its posts on the Lebanon-Israel border was targeted by small arms fire, with no casualties reported.

The UN force said the incident occurred on Wednesday morning with several rounds of small arms fire targeting a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the UN-drawn border with Israel, known as the Blue Line.

“Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers,” UNIFIL said in a statement, adding that it was investigating the incident.

Under pressure from the United States and Israel, the UN Security Council decided earlier this year to set December 31 as the end of the mandate for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

UNIFIL was initially created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion, and its mandate has been renewed annually since then.

The mission was expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Proponents say it remains important to maintaining a demilitarised buffer between the two sides along the volatile Israeli and Lebanese border.

Israel has long accused UNIFIL of failing to prevent threats posed by Hezbollah and has increasingly pushed for the end of its mission since cross-border fighting escalated in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

UNIFIL currently has 7,500 peacekeepers from around 50 countries operating in Southern Lebanon.

Last month, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pressed the UN on the need to “avert the vacuum” that would be caused by withdrawing the mission from the country’s south without a viable replacement.

Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a June memorandum of understanding in the US-Iran war. Lebanon and Israel concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month.

The Israel-Lebanon deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones”.

Comments by one of Israel’s most senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis postulating that Jews may have been better off without a state have prompted controversy in the country.

In footage broadcast by Channel 12 on Monday, the 96-year-old Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, also said that soldiers adhering to “Religious Zionism” killed in Israel’s wars were dying because of what their rabbis had taught them. The remarks, made at a closed meeting at his home in Bnei Brak, have set off a political storm three weeks before Israel’s October 27 parliamentary election.

“They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah,” Lando said, adding that many military operations are carried out “not for saving lives, but for the honour of the state”.

Lando’s comment came in response to a question about admiration among some ultra-Orthodox Jewish men – who have traditionally refused the military draft – for religious Zionists who combine Torah study with military service.

His comments aren’t new – they were first published in February 2025. However, their reemergence this week comes amid an election campaign in which ultra-Orthodox military service has become one of the sharpest fault lines in Israeli politics.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that there was no legal basis for ultra-Orthodox seminary students to have exemptions from military service, and the government has since not been able to pass legislation restoring the exemptions. The issue has led to large protests on both sides of the divide.

“The question is not what he said, but why this discourse has been placed at the heart of the Israeli debate three weeks before the election,” Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Better ‘without a state’

Lando’s party is one of the two factions of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) alliance, which won seven seats during the last election in 2022, and had been part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government before its ministers resigned last year.

The bloc did continue to intermittently support the coalition government, however, and Netanyahu has been wary of removing the military exemption – despite widespread opposition to it from many in Israel – out of fear that the UTJ and similar parties would remove their support completely.

Along with his role within Degel HaTorah, Lando is also one of the spiritual leaders of Israel’s Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up roughly a third of the country’s estimated 1.45 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim.

In May, he said he no longer trusted Netanyahu and called for parliament to be dissolved.

In the footage, he goes further. “It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state,” he says, adding that international or Palestinian rule would have been “the best situation”.

Zionism, he argues, “caused the Arabs to hate us” and brought physical as well as spiritual disaster on the Jewish people. He describes secular Israelis as having built “a state of apostasy and heresy”.

The comments reflect non-Zionist and anti-Zionist positions that used to be dominant within ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but take on an overt reference to the possibility of living within a non-Zionist state, something that is even more controversial in Israel.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict studies scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Lando’s remarks drew a line between Zionism and Judaism “from inside the Jewish community itself”, at a time when the official Israeli establishment “tries to bind them together”.

They also put to the test the narrative that Jewish communities in Arab societies were in danger and threatened, and that the Zionist movement came to “save them” at the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, he told Al Jazeera. However, Khatib cautioned that the ultra-Orthodox polity in Israel “is right-wing, its leaders hold right-wing positions, and some of them have made clearly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians”.

Political ammunition

Israeli opposition leaders moved quickly after the footage of Lando emerged this week, taking it as an opportunity to attack a figure from a party within Netanyahu’s electoral bloc.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – one of Netanyahu’s main challengers in the upcoming elections – called the remarks “anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-[Israeli military]”, but aimed his fire at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who he said “back [Lando] and funnel tens of billions of shekels to him and his friends”.

Gadi Eisenkot, another opposition leader whose Yashar party has campaigned on enforcing the military draft, urged every Zionist party to pledge not to sit with Lando’s party.

Netanyahu, who publicly rejected Lando’s remarks in July when the rabbi accused the Religious Zionism movement of “incitement to murder” for its support of the drafting of religious seminary students to the military, has not yet commented.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, put it bluntly: “Netanyahu is silent because without Rabbi Lando and his emissaries, he has no government.”

Jabareen sees Netanyahu’s silence as “calculated”.

“If Netanyahu attacks Lando forcefully, he pays a price with the Haredim he needs to form a government,” he said. “If he stays silent, he hands his rivals material to tell right-wing voters that the man who speaks of Zionism and security depends on a religious leadership that doubts Zionism itself.”

Who fights and who dies

The military draft of the ultra-Orthodox, Jabareen added, has turned “from an old dispute over religion and state into a question about the Israeli [social] contract itself: Who fights? Who dies? And who gets the exemptions, the budgets and the political influence in return?”

Mohammad Abu Rumman, an academic adviser at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, said the significance of Lando’s remarks lay in the question that prompted them. The example of a young religious man who combines Torah study with military service, he said, “raises a question inside the ultra-Orthodox world itself: Why don’t we do the same?”

“When Lando describes their teaching as a distorted Torah, he is trying to close the door on emulating them,” Abu Rumman told Al Jazeera. “His words are aimed at his own audience as much as at his opponents.”

But Jabareen argued that the row exposes a rift more dangerous for Netanyahu than the familiar clash between secular and religious Israelis, because it runs through the right itself. Religious Zionists have paid a heavy human price in the war, while the ultra-Orthodox leadership still rejects conscription. Caught between those who pay the price of war and those who refuse to, Netanyahu needs both, and cannot satisfy them at once.

Whether the outrage over Lando’s comments translates into votes is less clear. Abu Rumman expects the remarks to “reinforce existing positions more than change voters’ choices”. The space where they could matter, he said, lies among right-wing voters who serve in the army and resent Netanyahu’s protection of ultra-Orthodox demands.

“If Netanyahu needs these parties to build a majority, that need will not disappear because of a rabbi’s remarks, however shocking,” Abu Rumman said. Netanyahu is also not the UTJ’s only suitor: Channel 12 reported that, frustrated by his failure to secure a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service, the party would not rule out or oppose a government led by Eisenkot.

“The Israeli right has managed to bring under one political roof two currents with almost contradictory visions of the Jewish state,” Jabareen said. “One sanctifies the state and the expansion of its sovereignty. In the other, one of its most important rabbis can say it might have been better had the state never been founded.”