Israel Brief: Sunday, August 9
Israel has signed nothing, and the roadmap is running anyway.
Israel has signed nothing — not the roadmap, not the document on the force that would take the ground — and the sequence is running ahead of it regardless. Tehran spent the weekend attaching war reparations and an American withdrawal from the region to the price of reopening Hormuz, and the Revolutionary Guards said within hours that none of it turns on the Oman talks. In Mecca, Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad signed a mutual-defense clause and published no text. Three days of paper, and not a line of it binds anybody to anything.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Hormuz: Iran demands war reparations and an American withdrawal from the region before it reopens the strait. See The War Today.
Gaza: Almost three years on, some four hundred of the October 7 attackers are still alive — the price of fighting around a civilian population. See The War Today.
Lebanon: A second Hezbollah attack drone reaches Israeli troops, and Northern Command orders it unpublished. See The War Today.
Judea and Samaria: Yinon Levi is charged over a route his excavator never should have cut, and the shot that followed a crowd and a hail of stones. See Inside Israel.
Elections: Erdan and Edelstein launch a party without a name, and Segalovitz quits Yesh Atid for Ra'am. See Inside Israel.
Mecca: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan sign a mutual-defense clause with no published text, and the UAE stays out. See Israel and the World.
Washington: The Senate passes Graham's sanctions bill, and the money to rebuild interceptor lines waits on the House. See Israel and the World.
Canada: A federal survey has 95.7 percent of Jewish students witnessing Jew-hatred, and McGill faces 4,000 plaintiffs. See Israel and the World.
Greece: Jerusalem tells Israelis to conceal Jewish identifiers before 36 protest locations open today. See Israel and the World.
Home front: The cabinet moves a billion shekels into defense procurement, most of it out of tech investment. See Developments to Watch.
The Guards put a missile into an Emirati tanker while Muscat drafts a route, and Hamas is pressing Gazans to kill the militiamen the roadmap says it will have to disarm in any case. Israel's side of it rests on forces nobody has assembled — 150 Moroccans in tents six weeks out, and a shortlist Rome handed Washington to certify a disarmament Hezbollah refuses.
Today: Iran's price for reopening Hormuz, the October 7 hunt Israel stopped without saying so, and a fabricated quote that reached Netanyahu's podium inside eight hours.
The Jewish State — Mitzpe's eight-session live course on Israeli history from the Mandate to October 7, taught the way the brief reads. Cohort 1: eight Sundays from Oct 11. mitzpe.org/the-jewish-state