Israel's wars in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond

Israel is fighting on several fronts at once: in Gaza and the West Bank against the Palestinians, in Lebanon against Hezbollah, and against Iran directly. At the centre is the oldest of these disputes and the one that has never healed: two peoples and one land. Israel wants security and recognition as a Jewish state, and its present government wants to keep the territory it holds. The Palestinians want an end to occupation and a state of their own. Iran and the armed movements allied with it reject Israel's existence and fight it in the Palestinians' name.

Where it stands · September 2026

In September 2026 Israel captured a Hamas security chief in a raid in Gaza and killed a Hamas commander, as a minister sought annexation. The United Kingdom, France and Canada announced trade bans on Israeli settlements in the West Bank; the United Kingdom imposed trade restrictions on the settlements, and Israel closed the British consulate. Israel destroyed a Hezbollah tunnel network in South Lebanon. At the United Nations, Muslim nations pressed Israel on a Gaza ceasefire.

What the dispute is about

The land. Between the Jordan and the sea live about seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians. One state governs all of it, directly or indirectly; only one of the two peoples has citizenship throughout.

Security. Israelis have been attacked from every territory they left: southern Lebanon, Gaza. They conclude that withdrawal brings rockets. Palestinians have seen that negotiation brought more settlements and that quiet brought nothing. They conclude that Israel yields only to pressure.

The region. Iran has made the Palestinian cause the banner of its own contest with Israel and the United States. That has given the Palestinians armed allies and made their cause hostage to a wider war.

Every attempt to settle the second and third questions while postponing the first has failed.

How each side explains it

Israel's account

The Jewish state was attacked on the day it was born and has been at war since, with enemies who say openly that they want it gone. It withdrew from Lebanon and from Gaza and received Hezbollah and Hamas in return. On 7 October 2023 Hamas crossed the border and murdered some twelve hundred people in their homes and at a music festival and dragged two hundred and fifty into captivity: the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust. No state would tolerate that army on its border again, or the ones in Lebanon and Iran that stand behind it. Civilian deaths in Gaza are the fault of an enemy that fights from beneath hospitals and schools. Judea and Samaria are the Jewish homeland, and a Palestinian state there would be another Gaza overlooking Tel Aviv.

In our coverage

Israel's campaigns are existential self-defense after October 7 →3552 headlines
Covered by:Times of Israel · Jerusalem Post · i24NEWS · Fox News · The Times of Israel

The Palestinians' account

In 1948 most Palestinians were driven from their homes and never allowed back. Since 1967 those who remained in the West Bank and Gaza have lived under military rule, without citizenship or a vote in the state that controls their lives, while their land is taken for settlements built in breach of international law. They accepted a state on a fifth of historic Palestine in 1993 and got more settlers, checkpoints and a siege of Gaza. Since October 2023 Israel has killed tens of thousands in Gaza, most of them women and children, destroyed its cities and starved its people; the World Court is hearing a charge of genocide. 7 October did not come from nowhere.

What each account leaves out

Israel's leaves out the occupation itself and the settlers it moved into occupied land; that its present ministers say openly they intend to keep all of it; the scale of the dead in Gaza, which its own army's figures do not seriously dispute; and that it helped Hamas grow as a rival to the Palestinians who recognised Israel.

The Palestinians' leaves out the offers of statehood their leaders turned down in 2000 and 2008; the bombing of buses and cafes that destroyed the Israeli peace camp; what Hamas did on 7 October, and that it planned for the war to be fought among its own civilians.

Tehran's and its allies' leaves out that they fight to the last Palestinian and Lebanese, and that their aim is not a Palestinian state beside Israel but no Israel, which guarantees that Israelis will never feel safe enough to leave the territories.

The ledger

Israel

Wanted: there is not one Israel; the government wants the land and victory, half the country wanted the hostages home and an end to the war, nearly all want never to live 7 October again.
Did: destroyed Gaza, broke Hezbollah, struck Iran, expanded settlement.
Gained: military supremacy over every enemy.
Paid: its hostages' lives, its soldiers', its standing in the world, and a generation of Palestinians with nothing to lose.

The Palestinians

Wanted: freedom; divided over whether by negotiation or by arms.
Did: the Authority waited, Hamas attacked.
Gained: recognition by most of the world's states.
Paid

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

Judea and Samaria / the occupied West Bank
settlements / communities
terrorists / resistance
war / genocide
security barrier / apartheid wall
Nakba
hostages / prisoners, used by each side for its own
from the river to the sea

Israel's wars in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond

What the dispute is about

How each side explains it

Israel's account

The Palestinians' account

What each account leaves out

The ledger

Israel

The Palestinians

Words in dispute

Also involved

Tehran's and its allies' account

Iran and its allies

What changed the course

Know this conflict well?