Latest war news. Iran-US truce heads towards 17 August deadline with no agreement; escalation in Lebanon

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is set to meet with the Hamas leadership in Egypt as he works to push for the implementation of a peace plan. This has been confirmed to AFP by Hamas sources. “Mediators have informed Hamas that Jared Kushner will hold a meeting with its leadership, in the presence of representatives from Egypt and Qatar, before the US envoy travels to Israel to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the sources report.

Envoys from the US administration met with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators in Cairo in an attempt to take forward US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza. According to diplomatic sources, Hamas representatives were present at some of the meetings, which were also attended by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Nickolay Mladenov, the envoy for Trump’s Peace Council for Gaza.

According to reports, Kushner and Mladenov are due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday; on 9 August, Netanyahu had described Trump’s latest roadmap for peace in Gaza as “unacceptable”.
According to sources, Israel is concerned about Washington’s demand to end the targeted killings of Hamas militants in Gaza. Trump’s peace plan calls for an immediate cessation of military operations in Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas as Israeli troops withdraw. It also provides for the reconstruction of Gaza under a new Palestinian civil administration. Ars

‘God’s table is set for everyone’ and ‘no one is left with mere crumbs, for each person has their own place with the Father. In the light of this faith, inequalities, discrimination and barriers that trample upon the dignity of too many of God’s sons and daughters become unbearable.” The Pope said this during the Angelus recited at Castel Gandolfo. Pope Leo XIV then added: “We are the Church of Jesus Christ in a troubled world, a world seeking peace.”

An extremist official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has called for “30 to 40” people to be killed in Gaza every night. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s comments emerged on Sunday and were swiftly condemned internationally. He made these remarks on a podcast whilst discussing Israel’s recovery from a recent Hamas attack. Ben-Gvir criticised Israel’s recent reduction in attacks on Gaza, stating that targeted killings should be carried out. He wields significant influence over the Israeli security apparatus but cannot order military strikes. The comments have caused alarm amongst Palestinians and have been widely shared on social media. The Prime Minister’s Office has not responded to a request for comment.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special envoy, is due to meet with the Hamas leadership in Cairo shortly, in the presence of Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish officials, shortly before travelling to Israel, where he will meet Benjamin Netanyahu. This is according to Al Jazeera, citing a Palestinian source.

Kushner discussed the implementation of the ceasefire in Gaza with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi today, according to al-Sisi’s spokesperson. The meeting, held in the Mediterranean town of El-Alamein, “emphasised the need for all parties to fulfil their obligations under the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip”, said spokesman Mohamed El-Shennawy in a statement.

An Israeli attack has struck Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, injuring five people, including a child who is seriously injured. This has been reported by the Kuwaiti and Nasser hospitals, where the victims were taken. The Israeli army has stated that it targeted a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Although the heaviest fighting has subsided since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in October, Israeli forces have carried out repeated air strikes on Gaza, killing at least 1,262 Palestinians since then, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, keeps detailed records of casualties, which are generally considered reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. It does not provide a breakdown between civilian and militant casualties.

In mid-May, the Trump administration opened a secret channel of communication with the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Ahmad Vahidi, via Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. This was reported by Barak Ravid, a journalist at Axios. In a lengthy article, the journalist writes that in mid-May, US negotiators seeking to reach an agreement with Iran to end the war were faced with a problem: they could not tell whether the people sitting on the other side of the table were actually speaking on behalf of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The article cites three sources with direct knowledge of the facts. “The White House realised it needed a secret channel to the IRGC leadership,” the newspaper reports.

More than 150 Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, under the protection of the Israeli police, and held Jewish prayers there, according to Al Jazeera. Non-Muslims are prohibited from praying at the site, under the legal framework in force since 1967 in a city sacred to the three Abrahamic religions. Jews, however, are permitted to visit the compound.

The Iranian parliament has approved a series of measures that tighten control over the media and further stifle freedom of speech. The law prohibits interviews or other contact with foreign media outlets deemed ‘hostile’, including American and Israeli media and organisations funded by those two countries, according to reports in the Iranian media, as cited by Iran International.

The measure also prohibits any unauthorised contact with embassies, foreign organisations and institutions, both inside and outside Iran, unless the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is informed and grants written authorisation. The measure also targets films, documentaries, theatre productions, music and books deemed to promote an ‘anti-Islamic culture’ or to portray Iran in a negative light, stipulating that those responsible shall be excluded from the cultural sphere.

“The meeting with our brothers in Egypt forms part of our ongoing communication and diplomatic efforts with mediators, to inform them of the violations committed by the occupying power (Israel, ed.) and to ensure that it adheres to the roadmap agreed with the Board of Peace.” This was stated by Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem in a statement reported by the Arab media. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya met with the head of Egyptian intelligence, Hassan Rashad, in Cairo.

“The United States and Israel have repeatedly attacked Iran in their despicable war against the country, but they have failed to achieve any of their objectives on any front”: said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf , Speaker of Parliament and chief negotiator in the talks between Iran and the United States, arguing that “it was a clear failure for them and a political and military victory for us ”. According to IRNA, Ghalibaf added that the memorandum of understanding, signed between Iran and the United States, was “a document of honour and victory, thanks to which Iran has achieved diplomatic results”.

A number of United Nations representatives reached the outskirts of the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, to deliver food and water to the residents of the house that had been blockaded by extremist settlers earlier in the week. This was reported by the Times of Israel, which noted that a water tanker had also been brought to the scene, but the security forces did not allow it to remain there as the area remains a closed military zone.

Jared Kushner, the special envoy and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, will meet with representatives of Hamas, in the presence of mediators, following his visit to Israel. This was reported by Al Arabiya, citing sources.

Today, a Hamas delegation, led by Khalil al-Hayya, arrived in Cairo to discuss the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

From our correspondent in QUSRA (WEST BANK)

Pointing, across the road to 505, at his olive trees still laden with fruit that will never be harvested, Abdel al-Hakim Wadi suggests that here, in the West Bank, to survive one must abide by an unwritten rule: getting used to living with oppression, without giving up the fight. ‘It’s got off to a terrible start. This year is even worse than last year, which was already the worst year in the last fifty years. Not to mention 2023: in that year, there was no harvest here at all,’ he sighs, somewhat resigned. The cause of all this is not adverse weather conditions, a lack of labour or a shortage of equipment. The reason is always the same: those little white houses, or those clusters of prefabricated buildings clinging to the tops of almost every hill that encircle, like an embrace, the Palestinian village of Qusra, near Nablus, in the heart of the West Bank. The increasing attacks by settlers – often armed with M16 rifles – are all too frequently met with indifference, if not active complicity, from the Israeli armed forces who are, in theory, tasked with rushing to the scene to restore order. ‘I can’t even touch those trees. There are 85 of them, but they’re too close to the new outpost. For the past few months, the settlers have been treating the field as a security zone. And they’re armed,’ continues Abdel al-Hakim, aged 55. This is the oxymoron of this land. The outpost — illegal even under Israeli law — relies on the assistance of the security forces to obstruct what is, by law, legitimate and what the security forces are supposed to protect: the olive harvest, even in Area C. It is autumn. The olive groves that cloak the hillsides in silvery green, as well as those on the plains, just a few metres from Palestinian villages, have become battlefields. The silence of this bucolic landscape is shattered by the roar of stun grenades fired by the Israeli army; the blue sky is streaked with the black smoke of fires set by the settlers and the grey smoke of tear gas. Abdel al-Atheem Wadi, aged 53, brother of Abdel al-Hakim, lives on the highest hill in Qusra. This small village of 1,400 inhabitants is now one of the areas hardest hit by attacks from settlers. His house has only just been completed. That tall concrete wall, which blocks the view of the hills, immediately catches the eye. ‘It’s to protect us from the settlers’ raids. We’ve even been forbidden from going up onto the roof. The reason: the Israeli military base is too close, and the nearest settler outpost is less than a kilometre away.’ Living in Qusra also means watching your business go up in smoke right before your eyes. “I can’t even go to my chicken farm, just 200 metres away. Nobody has removed the carcasses: there were ten thousand of them. The same thing happened at the other seven farms,” continues Abdel al-Atheem, who then shows us the meagre harvest of the day. Two sacks of olives. Too little time was allowed for the harvest, and too few workers were authorised to pick them. “At night, the settlers poison the roots of the trees and saw off the branches; at other times, they set fire to them or uproot them with private bulldozers. It’s not uncommon for them to do this right in front of the soldiers,’ explains Ghassan Najjar, an activist from the village of Burin, fifteen minutes from Nablus. ‘Yesterday we went back to the fields to resume the harvest. They pointed their rifles at us. We left. We face extremely strict restrictions on our olive groves in Area C. But also on those in Area B, which is theoretically safer. The Israeli authorities have postponed our days’ leave — in truth, just a few hours for so many trees — until 11 November,” say the two brothers. A, B, C. Three letters sum up how the spirit of the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and implemented in 1995, has been betrayed and bent to the logic of the strongest. In 1995, three zones were created in the West Bank to set the Palestinian Territories on the path towards the creation of an independent state: Zone A, under the full civil and security control of the Palestinian Authority; Zone B, under Palestinian civil administration but with security shared with Israel; and Zone C (approximately 60 per cent of the territory) under full Israeli control. Anyone with olive groves in Zone C must apply for a permit to access them every year, often to no avail or subject to severe restrictions. Like many other families, the Wadis update their list of bereavements almost every year. A tragedy has cut short the lives of the two brothers. Four days after the massacre of 7 October 2023, settlers, fuelled by anger and a desire for revenge, stormed a house in Qusra. They opened fire: four people were killed. The third brother, Ibrahim Wasa, was killed less than 24 hours later, along with his son Ahmed, whilst driving the convoy taking the bodies back to the village. Abdel al-Hakim watches footage of that senseless death on his smartphone. He then lists those injured in the ‘Olive War’ of 2024 and hopes there will be fewer this year. The two brothers, like so many other Palestinians, rely on volunteers. This year, there are more foreign – and Israeli – activists who have rushed to defend the trees, offering themselves as human shields. The settlers have not been intimidated: the army and police have arrested and deported dozens of activists, more than 30 in the village of Burin alone. The recent truce proposed by Donald Trump and signed between Israel and Hamas is viewed by the most extremist settlers as an act of betrayal. It has thus acted as a trigger for their anger. The sense of impunity they enjoy has made them even more unscrupulous. Yesh Din — an Israeli human rights organisation that collects and disseminates information on violations of Palestinian rights in the West Bank — documented, during the 2024 harvest, 113 separate incidents of violence, harassment, sabotage of the harvest or damage to olive trees and crops, involving Israeli civilians and soldiers on land belonging to 51 Palestinian villages, towns and communities. ‘Israeli security forces appear to have played a more significant role in obstructing the olive harvest.’ And that is not all. “In around 70 per cent of cases where access to the fields was blocked, soldiers, border police officers and civilian settlement coordinators (CSCs) were present,” wrote the NGO. Footage of young settlers, their faces covered, viciously beating an elderly Palestinian woman and a Swedish activist whilst they lay on the ground on Sunday has gone viral. On the way back from Qusra, *Il Sole 24 Ore* also witnessed an attack first-hand: a convoy of settlers’ cars, between Road 458 and the turn-off for Jericho, rammed a stationary Palestinian car, smashing the door. They then used iron bars to strike another car and smashed the windows of a van. Since 7 October 2023, over a thousand Palestinians – the vast majority of them civilians – have been killed. The settlers have killed 11 of them this year alone. Yet for many Palestinians, the annual olive harvest is a special time, a celebration, a way to reconnect with nature and spend time with relatives. The olive trees. Many Palestinians have an almost reverential attitude towards these centuries-old trees: they look after them, they embrace them. They are their history, their tradition. Seeing them desecrated, poisoned, cut down, sometimes set alight or uprooted is a pain that is hard to comprehend. And yet, they know that in a year’s time they will still be there, amongst the olive trees, picking olives by hand. Adhering to that unwritten rule: to live alongside the injustices, but to resist. Just as their trees have done for centuries, with a few more scars on their bark.

Iran has offered a bounty on American soldiers. “Any Iranian force that manages to capture or kill an American aggressor will receive a reward of $30,000,” said Iranian Army Commander Amir Hatami, as quoted by the Fars news agency.

The head of the Iranian Armed Forces Committee for the Search for Missing Persons, Mohammad Bagherzadeh, stated today that “due to the ongoing sabotage and delays by the Qatari authorities, the conditions for the return of the three Iranian pilots to Iran have not yet been put in place”.

He added that “a team of experts from the Iranian Air Force is waiting to travel to Qatar to investigate the capture of the pilots by that country, after their jets crashed during an attack on Qatar in March”. Bagherzadeh had sent a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the matter. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry yesterday rejected the allegations, describing them as “misleading statements”.

Trump Travicello’s erratic foreign policy has its roots in a quagmire where bizarre ideological sludge swirls together. In our previous editorials, we highlighted the influence exerted on Trump – via Peter Thiel and JD Vance – by eccentric figures such as Nick Land, the leading proponent of accelerationism, and Curtis Yarvin, an advocate of anti-Enlightenment technocratic despotism.

Consequently, the MAGA political movement has absorbed, at least in part, these twisted authoritarian and isolationist impulses – not necessarily in their theoretical formulations, but in the underlying idea: the United States must cease to guarantee the stability of the world order and the primacy of international law (which is, moreover, viewed as a construct to be dismantled) in order to focus on strengthening its own economic and technological power, without regard for allies or submission to international institutions.

“No score will be left unsettled, on any front. We will vigorously defend our soldiers and our citizens”: this is what the Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, wrote today on X.

The Shin Bet, the internal intelligence agency, and the Cyber Directorate today warned several Israeli journalists of an increase in attempts by Iranian intelligence to hack their phones and social media accounts. This was reported by Haaretz, which states that the attempts mainly involve Iranian operatives contacting Israeli journalists under false pretences – often posing as fellow journalists – primarily via WhatsApp or Telegram.

The Israeli Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has stated that he will do “the impossible” to ensure the execution of Palestinian prisoners, adding that he hopes they will be hanged “one by one”. Speaking to Rom Braslavski, a former Israeli prisoner, Ben-Gvir stated that hanging is the method of execution provided for under the death penalty law that he himself is promoting. “I will do the impossible when the time comes,” he said. “I promise you that I will do everything in my power and that I will shake the world to ensure this happens.” Ben-Gvir also said he was “happy” that Palestinian prisoners are now suffering under harsher conditions in Israeli prisons. On 30 March 2026, the Israeli parliament passed a law providing for the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, should a military court determine that the charge is motivated by “terrorism” or “denial of the existence of the State of Israel”.

War in the Middle East – 16 August 2026

“We will not stop until our enemies, the United States and Israel, have been completely defeated in the region and Iran’s rights have been recognised.” This was stated by the General Command of the Iranian Armed Forces in a statement, as reported by Mehr.

“The US President should be concerned about his own safety rather than continuing to bluff about the Strait of Hormuz, before he ends up hiding in a food van,” wrote Ebrahim Azizi on X, an ultra-conservative figure and chair of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament.

Azizi’s comments come in the wake of recent remarks by President Donald Trump, who stated: ‘Once we have finished defeating Iran, we will declare the Strait of Hormuz to be US territory.’

Spain “strongly condemns the siege” imposed by Israeli settlers on Palestinian families in the village of Qusra, in the West Bank, and calls on Israel to intervene to protect the population living under occupation. This was stated by the Spanish Foreign Ministry in a press release issued following the violence of recent days.

In the statement, Madrid “urges Israel to fulfil its obligations as an occupying power, to prevent arbitrary violence and intimidation by settlers against Palestinians, to put an end to their impunity, and to protect the physical integrity and livelihoods of the Palestinian population under occupation, in accordance with humanitarian law”.

The Iranian Parliament is set to debate a bill today on ‘ensuring the lasting security and development of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf’, as well as another bill on ‘countering foreign interference’. According to the IRNA news agency, the first bill contains a clause that would prohibit transit through the Strait of Hormuz by ‘any vessel carrying equipment and cargo belonging to the US, Israel or countries hostile to Iran’. The broad outlines of the two bills have been approved by Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy.

Donald Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner is due to arrive in Cairo today, alongside former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Nikolay Mladenov, representative of the Board of Peace for Gaza, to discuss with the head of Egyptian intelligence, Hassan Rashad, the implementation of phase 2 of the US plan for the Gaza Strip. Israeli media report that the three are also expected in Israel tomorrow, where they will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, a Hamas delegation, led by the head of the political bureau, Khalil al-Hayya, also arrived in the Egyptian capital last night. This is al-Hayya’s first visit to Egypt since he was elected to the post last month. The Hamas delegation will also meet with Rashad.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened further attacks against Hezbollah and anyone who targets Israeli soldiers or civilians, as tensions escalate in southern Lebanon. “No score, on any front, will remain open. We will strike with full force against those who harm our soldiers and our citizens,” Katz wrote on X.

His comments come following a new wave of Israeli attacks yesterday in southern Lebanon, which, according to the Lebanese news agency Ani, killed at least 11 people. The IDF stated that it had struck Hezbollah infrastructure in response to an attack on its troops, in which three soldiers were seriously injured. The escalation is one of the most serious since the truce reached in June between Israel and Hezbollah.

After Hezbollah breached the ceasefire on Saturday, Lebanese sources reported that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) carried out numerous raids in the Ali Taher ridge area, in southern Lebanon, where an officer and two soldiers were seriously injured in an attack claimed by the terrorist organisation.

The Israeli Defence Forces claim to have killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an air strike carried out yesterday in the town of Deir al-Zahrani, in southern Lebanon. The IDF reported this on X. According to the Israeli armed forces, Ali Muhammad Fakhr al-Din, also known as Abu Hassan Alaa, was a ‘high-ranking commander’ in Hezbollah’s Badr regional division, responsible for the area north of the Litani River. In this role, he is said to have taken part in numerous attacks against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

According to the IDF, Alaa was killed in response to Hezbollah’s actions against Israeli soldiers in the so-called “Security Zone”. A few hours earlier, Israel had announced that it had killed Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan, a Hezbollah commander in the elite Radwan force, in an attack on the southern Lebanese village of Ansar.

Donald Trump has refused to express his support for Benjamin Netanyahu with 75 days to go until the Israeli elections. The Prime Minister’s coalition is currently polling at 49–53 seats, fewer than the 68 it currently holds and the 61 required to form a government. In the Oval Office, when they met two weeks ago, the tycoon asked him about the polls, Axios reported. Netanyahu hesitated and one of his advisers replied: ‘Mr President, he’s winning.’

Netanyahu’s main rival, the former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces Gadi Eizenkot, is ahead of him in the polls in most surveys: the opposition parties are projected to win between 67 and 70 seats. The Prime Minister’s aim now is to prevent the opposition from forming a government. If neither side manages to secure 61 seats, he will remain in office on an interim basis and Israel will head back to the polls. The US president, however, could still change his mind. But, with just 75 days to go until the election, time is running out for Netanyahu.

The Iranian judiciary has announced that a man, Shahram Sadeghi, was executed this morning in Karaj on charges of assaulting and injuring seven police officers during clashes between the police and demonstrators in the protests on 8 January. “Sadeghi set his car alight after the attack and fled, but he was arrested and confessed to the crime,” reads a statement from the judiciary quoted by the IRNA news agency. The man had been sentenced to death and had his assets confiscated for ‘operations in support of Israel, the US and hostile dissident groups’.

Further reading

Latest war news. Attacks in Lebanon: 11 dead. IDF: Hezbollah headquarters hit

15 August 2026