This week, the prospects for peace in Gaza remained tenuous as Israel and Hamas continued to shift their positions on the next phase of the ceasefire amid continued violence against, and lack of sufficient humanitarian aid for, a Palestinian population with little shelter against dangerous storms and flooding risks. Throughout 2025, Middle East Policy has published vital analyses of the war’s effects on Gazans and the larger question of Palestine’s autonomy, as well as how the conflict shapes and is shaped by the political culture of Israel.
Readers can access our recent and archival coverage of the crisis in our special issue, The October 7 Emergencies, as well as the Early View of our winter journal and our Fall 2025 offering. If you find this newsletter useful, please forward to others you believe will benefit, and please follow us on the social media sites X, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.
As we began 2025, M.T. Samuel recounted the mass violence against and dispossession of Palestinians since October 7, 2023, castigating President Joe Biden for a policy that gave free rein to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As the war grew more brutal, he observed, many Americans had turned against Israel, even though their sympathies had spiked after the devastating Hamas attacks. Despite the shift in public opinion, “Biden’s unwavering assistance to Tel Aviv has left the United States internationally isolated in a manner not seen in decades.”
Just as important was the wider assault on Palestinians and their lands:
Israel’s retaliatory attack has not been limited to the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past year, Israeli forces have killed 702 Palestinians, “destroyed, confiscated, sealed or forced the demolition” of 1,777 Palestinian-owned structures, uprooted seven communities, and displaced 4,574 individuals.
Samuel thus reminded us that we should take a broader view of the war. In the year since his writing, these practices in the West Bank and Jerusalem have continued. According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between January and December 2025, 227 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Over the same period, Israeli authorities demolished or otherwise destroyed at least 1,384 Palestinian structures in those areas, displacing around 1,400 people and affecting tens of thousands more.
The reasons for this were made clear in Yagil Levy’s forceful takedown of Israeli society’s denial not just of Palestinian rights but any sense of the population’s agency. “This dehumanization of disregard, which fails to recognize the Gazan population, almost inevitably leads to a denial of their capacity to make a difference and challenge the indirect Israeli control over the Strip,” Levy argued. “Palestinian humanity is not merely a security imperative but an essential precondition for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and advancing toward a sustainable political settlement.”
Throughout the second year of the war, Middle East Policy examined whether and how the regional powers were affecting the conflict, and vice versa. Banafsheh Keynoush contended that Saudi Arabia and Iran should have forced an end to the war but were too consumed with competing interests, continuing their rivalry, and contrasting visions for Palestine.
The national-level dialogue and regional actions required to build a two-state solution varied considerably across the Middle East. Before October 7, Iran had only briefly supported such a resolution. It did not believe dividing greater Palestine into two sovereign territories was feasible. Instead, it favored Palestinian self-determination in one united land that included Israelis. Under this scheme, Tehran would still not recognize Israel. This adherence to a single-state solution made it difficult for Iran to find common ground with Saudi Arabia, which like some other Arab states was willing to recognize Israel in return for a Palestinian state.
The question of normalization with Israel—that is, signing onto the Abraham Accords—consumed the Biden administration over its final year. Our review essay of Bob Woodward’s War labeled as “quaint” the fixation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken that establishing Israeli-Saudi ties would resolve the war. But this “indicates that the Americans fundamentally misunderstood Israel’s goal,” editor A.R. Joyce wrote. “It does not want ‘normal relations with its neighbors.’”
This was backed up by the incisive analysis from Monshipouri et al. that “absent a substantial change in Israel’s posture, future attempts at normalization will be seen as window dressing with little or no regard for resolving the underlying causes of regional conflict.” Indeed, as Wang et al. show in an article for our upcoming Winter 2025 issue, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has obtained a substantial haul from President Donald Trump, including fighter jets and advanced AI chips, without having to commit to joining the Abraham Accords.
Finally, our coverage of the war featured analyses of Israeli politics and the potential for internal resistance. While Levy’s article on Palestinian dehumanization struck a pessimistic note, Guy Ziv found some hope in the actions of Israeli reservists. “The reservist rebellion in 2023, as well as the prominence of civil-society leaders with military backgrounds in the 2024–25 anti-government protests, demonstrate the national-security community’s substantial role in fighting for the liberal, democratic values on which Israel was founded,” he argued.
However, an analysis by Natalya Philippova in the forthcoming Winter 2025 issue suggests that the Israeli peace movement has found the country’s political culture to be far less receptive to the struggle for Palestinian human rights. “There’s so much distrust and anger within Israeli society right now,” one activist told Philippova, “that any organization that deals with peace or with Palestinians from an empathetic standpoint does face backlash from certain very strong parts of the population.” While the movement has shown resilience, the author concludes, “its influence within Israeli society has eroded.”
An Early View of the Winter 2025 issue is available now.
The Best of Middle East Policy 2025: The Gaza War
The Israel-Hamas War One Year Later: Mass Violence and Palestinian Dispossession
M.T. Samuel
Dehumanization of Disregard: The Case of Gaza
Yagil Levy—open access!
The Israeli Peace Movement in a Time of Crisis
Natalya Philippova—free to read!
Military Reservists and the Resistance to Netanyahu’s Legal Overhaul
Guy Ziv
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Conflict?
Banafsheh Keynoush—open access!
The Gaza War and the Future of the Abraham Accords
Mahmood Monshipouri, Manochehr Dorraj, John Fields
Saudi Arabia’s US-China Hedging Strategy and Its Regional Impact
Xiaoyu Wang | Salman K. Al-Dhafeeire | Degang Sun
Biden’s Gaza Failure, the Syrian Revolution, and the Folly of US Middle East Policy
A.R. Joyce
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau—open access!
The June 2025 Israeli War: Iran’s Assessment and Regional Consequences
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi—free to read!
The Perils of Nuclear Talks after the US-Israel War on Iran
Banafsheh Keynoush—open access!
From Rebuilding to Restoring Political Order: A New Agenda for Failed Arab States
Guilain Denoeux | Robert Springborg—open access!
Maritime Disruption in Yemen: The Making of a Hybrid Red Sea Order
Federico Donelli—open access!
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže
Agha and Malley, Tomorrow Is Yesterday; Gerges, What Really Went Wrong
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce
How to Address the Saudi Nuclear Program? An Israeli Dilemma
Niv Farago
Jordan’s Stability and Regime Survival Amid the War on Palestinians
Nur Köprülü | Fadi Al-Ghrouf
Gilbert Achcar, Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective; and Erik Skare, Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce
The China Factor in US-Saudi Talks for a Defense Pact
Ghulam Ali | Peng Nian
Out of Proportion: Israel’s Paradox in China’s Middle Eastern Policy
Yitzhak Shichor
Arab-Israeli Gas Diplomacy: Interdependence and a Path Toward Peace?
Gawdat Bahgat
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher | Gadi Hitman—open access!
Rob Geist Pinfold, Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits
Reviewed by Nathaniel Shils