Friday briefing: How Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have found themselves caught in an escalation without end ...Middle East

Good morning. It’s been another week of brinkmanship via Truth Social and ceasefires broken before they’ve been announced.

While US president Donald Trump claims an agreement with Iran could happen soon, for those living in the Middle East it does not feel like peace is anywhere near. People have seen more bombs dropped in Lebanon this week; and the death toll continues to rise, national economies falter, and displacement abounds.

For those in the region, it means that having your bag packed, ready to flee by bus, car or even on foot to a safer place – maybe for a few days, perhaps indefinitely – has become a fact of life.

Emma Graham-Harrison spent over a decade reporting from Kabul, Beijing and Madrid before basing herself in Jerusalem last May as our chief Middle East correspondent. I spoke to her as she waited to board her flight to Zurich, where she’s been nominated for an award for her reporting from Gaza. We talked about what it’s like for people living in a region that faces constant instability while the world watches on, and other times looks away. But first, the headlines.

Five big stories

UK politics | Andy Burnham has signalled he would begin transforming the broken social care system this year if he became prime minister, he has said in an interview with the Guardian, accusing Westminster of “flinching away” from tackling difficult policy problems.

Environment | Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival.

Ukraine | The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for face-to-face negotiations in a public letter addressed directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

England news | The poorest and most nature-deprived communities in England will be further left behind in their access to green spaces if proposed changes to planning laws go ahead, a report finds.

UK news | Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received private income from subletting three cottages on his Windsor Royal Lodge estate while paying a “peppercorn rent” to the crown estate, a report into royal property arrangements has revealed.

In depth: ‘This is not a ceasefire. It’s a never-ending auction over our lives and our blood’

As the week draws to a close, Donald Trump has insisted once again Iran is “pretty close” to signing a peace agreement with the US, which would see the strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime passage through which about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes, reopen.

But many would be forgiven for thinking it doesn’t feel like peace is coming. This week saw Israel make its deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years, with Israeli strikes killing at least nine people, and hundreds of thousands forced to flee their homes in the south of the country. The strikes complicated diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran. On Thursday, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military will continue its ground operations there, just hours after Israel and Lebanon agreed to implement a US-backed ceasefire to end hostilities. Later the leader of Hezbollah rejected the ceasefire too, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

It’s a territorial escalation for sure, says Emma, which has delighted far-right elements in Netanyahu’s coalition government, who have called for the annexation of southern Lebanon, as well as Gaza and the West Bank.

But while Trump is scaling back, aware of the war’s unpopularity domestically and the impact of rising inflation and oil prices, analysts inside Israel believe Netanyahu is now seeking to broaden the conflict for his own strategic ends.

Does Israel desire a broader conflict?

“This war began looking incredibly impressive for the US and Israel,” Emma tells me – but in her view, the totally predictable blocking of the strait of Hormuz has stalled it – leaving little indication of what success might look like.

Even at the start of the war, Emma wrote about how senior Israeli defence figures believed it was wishful thinking that Israel and the US could achieve regime change in Iran. With that ostensible goal never likely to be achieved, whether Iran held on to its enriched uranium stores would be the true measure of whether the war was a success or failure.

“Now the war is in stalemate, and the thing that was most critical for Israel, the nuclear proliferation programme, doesn’t seem to be on the table in negotiations. It looks very much like it’s going to be a failure,” says Emma.

But what could be on Netanyahu’s mind are the upcoming elections in Israel’s Knesset, which my First Edition colleague Michael Segalov explained in great detail a few weeks ago.

“In that context returning to war in Lebanon – and Gaza – is absolutely a political and electoral strategy,” she adds.

An ongoing catastrophe in Gaza and global disinterest

Despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” coming into force last October, Emma explains that over 900 people have been killed in Gaza by continued Israeli bombardment since then.

And over one in 10 of the 2.3 million prewar population have been killed or injured since Israel began its war on Gaza, devastating the strip in what a UN commission has declared a genocide. Now those who remain are crammed on to a sliver of land along the coast, which we can see on the map above, while Israeli troops push back the agreed “yellow line” in order to seize even more territory.

“Israel controls at least 60% of Gaza, which is now a wasteland. They’ve demolished almost everything in the area and almost no Palestinians can live there,” says Emma.

“Part of the so-called ceasefire deal was supposed to be a lot more aid going in, but there still isn’t enough. There are severe shortages of clean water, medical supplies, food. A lot of people are still going hungry.”

Israel, which has repeatedly weaponised access to food and other basic supplies, says sufficient aid reaches Gaza. Last summer a bar on food shipments caused a famine.

“It’s an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe,” says Emma. “That’s in addition to the combat actions killing on average over 100 people each month, which in most parts of the world would be considered an active war zone.”

Yet there is little interest from the White House, despite Trump’s well-rehearsed obsession with winning the Nobel peace prize. “[Special envoy] Steve Witkoff and [Trump’s son-in-law] Jared Kushner have reportedly been taken off Gaza to focus on Iran because its more of a priority for Trump. It’s unpopular at home, and has had a damaging effect on the cost of living in the US,” says Emma.

EU leaders are expected to rebuke Netanyahu for his continued expansion in Gaza and Lebanon at a forthcoming Brussels summit but, says Emma, he has a long history of shaking off criticism, and the EU has yet to use any of its considerable economic and political leverage – it is Israel’s biggest trading partner.

The situation in Gaza does not seem to be a priority for governments around the world which are more concerned about the impact of the war in Iran on higher oil prices and inflation. “We see plenty of condemnation but very little practical steps that mean an improvement for people in Gaza who are living in this terrible limbo.”

Living day to day in Iran and Lebanon

Indeed, people are living in limbo across the region, says Emma.

“Undeniably many Iranians really hate their government – we saw that in January, then they came out in protest and were killed in very large numbers trying to get rid of it,”

But that doesn’t mean they have faith that the war will bring about a better alternative.

“Equally, they don’t believe – and history provides plenty of evidence for this – that liberation is going to come through a western bombing campaign.” Iranians need only recall the decades-long conflict and political turmoil prompted by the US-led coalition’s disastrous invasion of neighbouring Iraq.

“If you’re in Tehran, particularly if you’re anti-government, you’ve probably lost friends in January, you’re living under some bombardment, which is pretty terrifying because there aren’t air raid shelters, and you’re staring down more war, or at the worst, collapse into a failed state,” says Emma.

“You can see why people are very worried and very frightened.”

Iranians have told the Guardian they feel abandoned by foreign powers, enduring the fallout out of the war, which has damaged an already faltering economy and strengthened the oppressive regime.

“I feel humiliated,” Amir, a business owner from Mashhad, told one of our reporters recently. He had once desperately hoped for US intervention, but he now finds himself questioning that. “This is not a ceasefire. It’s a never-ending auction between the US and the Islamic Republic over our lives and our blood.”

The situation is similar in Lebanon, Emma tells me. “Large sections of the population do not support Hezbollah. But Israel is bombing Beirut, occupying the south and demolishing whole villages, which Human Rights groups say should be investigated as war crimes; there’s no belief that this is going to bring them freedom or prosperity.”

Alongside the immediate threat to personal safety, there’s the economic impact – which always hits women, minorities and poorer people the hardest – as well as the psychological drag of uncertainty.

“In Lebanon, there’s the difficulty of planning summer visits for families when international travel shuts down. And obviously, hanging over them, are generational memories of the horrors of the civil war in the 80s, and the 2006 war with Israel.”

Will elections bring about any meaningful change?

With upcoming elections in the US and Israel, some may be tempted to look for a glimmer of hope in the months ahead. Emma fears that might be misplaced. Israel’s leading opposition contender does not seem to differ meaningfully from Netanyahu politically; meanwhile, it is hard to predict how Trump will react to the midterms – whether they offer humiliation or celebration for him.

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