Israel Brief: Sunday, July 26
Washington halts its Iran strikes and hands Tehran time, the coalition opens its campaign contested from within, and the diaspora takes the week's blows as Tisha B'Av ends.
Thirteen nights of American strikes stopped this week, and nothing Tehran did stopped them — Washington ran low on the interceptors it keeps across the region and blinked, handing the regime the one thing the campaign was meant to take from it: time to rebuild faster than the strikes can knock the bases down. Israel spends another week a spectator to the war aimed most squarely at it, its entry still waiting on a phone call, moving hard only where the lever is still in its hand: a brigade into Samaria, seven hundred new homes onto the hilltops before the shiva ends. The wars it cannot enforce are decided on other people's letterhead: a Gulf nuclear deal Jerusalem read about in the news, and a Hague warrant that outlived the prosecutor who signed it. And on the day the fast for every prior Jewish catastrophe ended, a man in a kippah was knifed outside his shul.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Iran strikes halted: Washington ends thirteen nights of strikes as its interceptor stocks run low, handing Tehran time to rebuild. See The War Today.
Saudi oil: Blocked at Hormuz, Iran turns the Houthis on Saudi tankers, opening a second chokepoint on global crude. See The War Today.
Samaria: A shooting near Havat Gilad kills two, triggering a brigade sweep and a blanket Palestinian worker ban. See The War Today.
Draft freeze: The attorney general asks the High Court to strike the haredi arrest-freeze law before Tuesday's hearing. See Inside Israel.
Likud primary: The party's own tribunal orders a primary as Eisenkot's new list opens a three-seat lead over Likud. See Inside Israel.
Sovereignty: Smotrich answers Friday's terror attack with 763 new homes and a Settlements Administration folded into Defense. See Inside Israel.
Saudi deal: Washington signs a civil-nuclear pact with Riyadh, then reverses by tweet to demand Abraham Accords recognition. See Israel and the World.
The Hague: The ICC's member states vote out chief prosecutor Karim Khan, though the Netanyahu warrant he signed survives him. See Israel and the World.
Mamdani: The arrest threat New York cannot enforce jumps to London and Maryland within forty-eight hours. See Israel and the World.
Casualty count: Two press watchdogs delete eight Gaza "journalist" names tied to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and a Houthi broadcaster. See Israel and the World.
Tisha B'Av: A Jew is stabbed outside his Manhattan shul as the fast ends; the assailant shouted "Allahu Akbar." See Israel and the World.
Western courts: Manchester hands a jihadist a life term, closing the sentencing gap Europe's arrests kept missing. See Israel and the World.
The shape of the week is a state acting decisively wherever the lever is still in its hand and waiting wherever the decision has moved to someone else's. At home the coalition spends a majority it may not keep past October, entrenching the exemption and the hilltops against the government that follows, while its own tribunal reminds it that Likud is not one man's property. Beyond the water's edge the reverse holds: the deals and the warrants that shape how Israel is treated are written by other hands, and the diaspora absorbs what those hands set loose.
The full brief — The War Today, Inside Israel, Israel and the World, Briefly Noted, and Developments to Watch — is free on mitzpe.org.
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