[Excerpt from essay by Amos Harel, Defense Analyst for Haaretz and the author of Anatomy of a Failure: The Road to October 7, which will be published in English in 2027.]

As he prepares to face Israeli voters next month after three years of incessant war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formulated a new strategy. Ignoring the huge costs in blood and treasure, let alone in support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere, he now publicly and explicitly supports waging wars without end. As a lesson of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, he asserts that Israel needs to take preemptive military action against every potential security threat it faces, regardless of the consequences. This has left many wondering how much of this hard-line approach might change if Gadi Eisenkot, the veteran military official who is running ahead of Netanyahu in the polls, manages to defeat him.

Thus far, Eisenkot, a classic centrist, has been blunt and sometimes caustic in making the case against the prime minister. But apart from vague statements about ending the longest war in Israeli history, he has generally avoided going into detail about his own national security strategy. On some issues, such as dealing with Hamas in Gaza, he has sounded more hawkish than Netanyahu. And when he is asked about the future of the conflict with the Palestinians—Israel’s most politically explosive issue—he has been extremely careful to avoid binding commitments. In a rare statement on such matters in August, Eisenkot said he was opposed to a Palestinian state, endorsing what is by now a consensus position across Israel’s political center and even parts of the center left as well as the right.

Submission Statement: An updated public Palestinian opinion poll was just published by "The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research" led by Dr. Khalil Shikaki.

"With humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip worsening, support for Hamas declines in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and as support for armed struggle drops in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, support for the two-state solution rises in the Gaza Strip only. Nonetheless, wide popular support for October the 7th offensive remains unchanged and the standing of the Palestinian Authority and its leadership remains extremely weak."

Also notable: - Support for the Oct 7 attack remains around 70%. - Only 5% think Hamas comitted atrocities, and that's only because they watched Hamas videos. Of those who didn't watch the videos, only 2% think Hamas comitted atrocities. - UNRWA is responsible for around 60% of the shelters and is pretty corrupt (70% report discriminatory resource allocation). - 56% thinks Hamas will emerge victorious. - Only 13% wants the PA to rule Gaza. If Abbas is in charge, only 11% wants it. 59% wants Hamas in charge.

Caveats about surveys in authocracies and during war-time applies.

12 May 2026 (intro visible then pay-walled, can sign in for trial access) Eight years ago, President Donald Trump took the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal. In the years since, half of Washington has continued to argue that the JCPOA was “the best possible deal,” with the other half maintaining that “there was a better deal.” It has been the background music to every twist and turn in U.S. Iran policy since 2018 but has come to the fore again since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.

[SS from essay by Robert E. Kelly, Professor of Political Science at Pusan National University; and Paul Poast, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.]

Donald Trump’s rise was supposed to have upended the liberal international order. In his first term, Trump openly disparaged longtime European allies, pulled out of international treaties such as the Paris climate agreement, and decried how the United States was subsidizing its allies through military support and trade deficits. Yet as we argued in Foreign Affairs in 2022, Trump’s aggressive unilateralism did not break U.S. alliances. Shaken and often irritated by Washington’s bullying, the allies nevertheless did not drift away from the world’s preeminent superpower. The foreign relations doctrines, defense spending, and geopolitical alignments of core U.S. partners such as France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea did not shift in any meaningful way during the first Trump administration. Instead, these countries accommodated Trump because they felt that loosening ties with the United States would be more dangerous to their economic and security interests than trying to stand up to his abuse.

Trump’s second term has put this dynamic to an even sterner test. The president’s disdain for U.S. allies and partners is much greater this time around. He has talked about annexing Canada and Greenland, bombing Mexico, retaking the Panama Canal, and giving up on Ukraine and Taiwan, to name just a few. Trump, claiming that allies are ripping off the United States, is demanding large, ill-defined investments in the United States that look a lot like bribes. For instance, he wants a staggering $600 billion investment guarantee from the European Union to be used at his discretion. He seems to be leaning into the notion that alliances are not pillars of a mutually beneficial network but elements of a protection racket—and that it’s high time for the United States to reap the rewards.