Bi-Weekly Brief--June 7, 2026
The pariah partnership: how can it be stopped?
Being endlessly engaged in warfare, and even genocide, does not seem to bother Israeli society. For the second year running, Israel has ranked eighth in the World Happiness Report. It is now the most disliked country among the 36 nations surveyed by the Pew Research Center and unfavorable views of Israel and Netanyahu are growing. The recently published Global Country Perceptions 2026 ranking how 132 countries are viewed by people in 85 nations put Israel at the very bottom, below North Korea.
The US is also sinking in world opinion, dropping 38 points in two years according to the 2026 Perceptions index and is “now ranked among the five most negatively perceived countries in the world, below both Russia and China in international favorability.”
Diverging priorities
The US-Israeli wars against Iran and Lebanon appear harder to stop than they were to start. A day after Trump on May 24 announced that the US and Iran were close to signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that could lead to an end of the war, the US launched missile strikes on southern Iran in what was called a “defensive” action. On the same day, fighting in Lebanon intensified, as Netanyahu ordered an offensive to “crush” Hezbollah while Iran insisted that Lebanon must be included in any peace agreement.
It appeared that Trump had overestimated his own ability to stay the course until a definitive agreement could be reached and underestimated the lengths to which Israel and pro-Israel hawks in the US would go to scuttle negotiations with Iran that had excluded Israel. In an effort to mollify Israel, Trump left the Middle East “baffled” when he stated on May 25 that it was “mandatory” for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords before a peace deal is signed. And the ‘ceasefire’ with Iran appeared hardly that as the US and Iran engaged in tit-for-tat strikes around the Strait of Hormuz in the last week of May and into early June.
With Netanyahu desperate for a decisive victory to flaunt in his impending election campaign, Israeli officials, according to one report, “are aggressively trying to pull the US away from negotiations and back into war, arguing that another round of strikes against Iran’s oil infrastructure will generate enough economic devastation and unrest to trigger regime change in Tehran.” On May 27, The Times of Israel’s founding editor David Horovitz was scathing about Trump’s leadership and the “catastrophic” MOU currently under consideration, which postpones decisions on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for anti-Israel proxy militias to an unspecified later date. His article was headlined “Reported terms of Trump’s Iran deal would confirm the war as an epochal failure.” The Israeli public appears equally dismayed by the draft agreement whose main ‘success’ would be the opening of the Strait of Hormuz which was a non issue before Israel and the US launched their war. The MOU has not been made public but on May 28 Israel’s Channel 12 outlined what was known of its key points. The notion that some sanctions would be eased before a comprehensive deal was finalized caused consternation in Israel, and Trump has reportedly demanded changes in the MOU.
Israel’s killing spree in Lebanon
As in Gaza, Israel has in southern Lebanon a ‘yellow zone’ of systematic destruction and has forced the displacement of over a million people. Also as in Gaza, it has targeted health care workers, killing more than 130 of them as the overall death toll surpassed 3,600. After Netanyahu announced on May 26 (the first day of Eid al-Adha) that Israel was “intensifying operations” in Lebanon, its forces immediately carried out more than 100 airstrikes on the Beqaa Valley and the south and engaged Hezbollah north of the Litani River, killing at least 31 people. On May 27, it reduced parts of Tyre to rubble. The June 6th New York Times reported that white phosphorus – which causes severe burns – was used in many of those attacks. The following day it struck Beirut and on May 31 it seized control of Beaufort Castle which overlooks the Litani River and southern Lebanon, with Netanyahu declaring “We returned stronger than ever.” Israel had used the Castle as a base during its 1982-2000 occupation of Lebanon before being forced to withdraw by Hezbollah.
Once again, Hezbollah is posing more of a challenge than Netanyahu would admit, this time by using explosive drones controlled by miles of nearly invisible fiber optic cables which are difficult to detect. Citing Israel’s multiple ceasefire violations, Hezbollah fired missiles at northern Israel on May 31. According to a June 1 report in the UK Independent, over the last 24 hours there were some 200 alerts warning of incoming drones and missiles in northern Israel. At least 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon since Israel’s invasion began in March.
On June1, as Netanyahu ordered attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahiya) and demanded that residents leave, Israel’s plan to broaden its military offensive hit a major bump in the road. Iran suspended participation in peace talks with the US, asserting that the ceasefire “is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.” On the same day, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council demanded an end to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and its withdrawal from southern Lebanon, with only the US dissenting. And according to Axios, in a phone call Trump reportedly harangued Netanyahu, saying “what the fuck are you doing” about the order to bomb Beirut, and words to this effect: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me, I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” (Trump later confirmed the gist of these remarks and said “I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon”). Later on June 1, Trump announced that both Israel and Hezbollah “agreed that all shooting will stop.”
But the very next day, June 2, as Netanyahu’s coalition partner Ben-Gvir and his political rivals blasted the prime minister for buckling under to Trump instead of attacking Beirut, there were reported to be some 30 Israeli drone strikes in southern Lebanon, killing eight people. Six, including two children, were members of one family. The US meanwhile shot down three Iranian drones and carried out what it called “self-defense strikes” on Iran’s Qeshm Island. A June 3rd attack on Tebnine Hospital in Nabatieh, Lebanon made it the third hospital to be targeted by Israel in less than a week, leaving nine dead and 150 wounded, most of them medical workers. Also on June 3rd, an Israeli strike hit a car near Beirut and bombarded southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah fired drones at northern Israel and Tehran launched missiles at Kuwait’s international airport and Bahrain.
Despite appearances, on the same day Secretary of State Rubio told Congress that the war has “concluded” while the House for the first time voted in favor of a war powers resolution, sending it back to the Senate. Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon (minus Hezbollah) ended their fourth meeting in Washington with an agreement that they would extend the so-called ‘ceasefire’ and establish a ‘security zone’ in southern Lebanon patrolled by the Lebanese Armed Forces. See their joint statement here.
On the following day, June 4, as Israel continued to bombard southern Lebanon killing 11 people, Hezbollah told Lebanese officials that it rejected the ‘truce’ and would continue firing on Israel as long as Israel was attacking Lebanon. Not to be outdone, Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz stated that Israel had “freedom of action, backed by the United States, to strike Beirut in response to attacks on Israeli communities and territory.”
Also on June 4, Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution was defeated after garnering the support of 90 of her colleagues. Israel’s strikes on Lebanon continued, with eight people killed the following day. On June 6, an Israeli strike on a Lebanese military vehicle near Nabatieh killed a brigadier general, another officer and a soldier belonging to the Lebanese Armed Forces that is supposed to be patrolling southern Lebanon according to the truce signed three days before. On June 7, Israel again bombed Beirut.
This latest ‘ceasefire’ seems as doomed as the one Israel and Hezbollah agreed to in Nov. 2024 that Israel violated more than 10,000 times. It could prove as fraudulent as the sham ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza under which more than 950 Palestinians have been slaughtered during an estimated 3,000 Israeli violations.
From direct military aid to fully-fledged brothers-in-arms
Even if it is having trouble winning its wars, Israel in its role as a ‘super Sparta’ is a major arms exporter, selling $19.2 billion of military-related equipment in 2025, double the amount obtained through weapons and surveillance sales five years ago. But it has been far from self-sufficient. On May 23, Al Jazeera published an in depth article about where the military-related goods used to destroy Gaza came from, including those imported by Israel after the International Court of Justice in January 2024 warned that Israel’s aggression was plausibly genocidal. The US was the largest supplier, accounting for 42% of Israel’s military-related imports during the war. Then came India (26%), followed by fifty other countries that supplied Israel with military products. Among them were countries including Türkiye and Spain that had called for arms embargos on Israel, possibly because they were fulfilling existing contracts.
However much military support Israel may get from other countries, the military aid it gets from the US is indispensable. The current 10-year-long Memorandum of Understanding giving Israel $38 billion in US military aid ($3.8 billion yearly) ends in 2028 and is being re-negotiated now. It is a time when only 16% of Americans believe the US should continue to supply Israel with weapons without new restrictions, and when The New York Times has seen fit to publish a hard-hitting op ed by US Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) urging his Democratic colleagues to get tough on Israel by “withdrawing taxpayer support from Israel and conditioning arms sales.” Van Hollen describes what he has personally witnessed during his numerous trips to the West Bank and argues that Americans “do not want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, or what human rights organizations and scholars have determined to be genocide in Gaza.” At such a time, how can a new MOU be sold to the public and Congress?
It can be disguised as an end to aid to Israel According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a plan is emerging to frame the new MOU as one in which military aid to Israel is phased out, while the military relationship between Israel and the US evolves into one of ‘fusion’: US-Israel cooperation in joint defense projects and an ever closer ‘partnership’ for ‘mutual readiness’ under which US direct support becomes largely invisible while defense integration is ‘entrenched.’ On June 2, Secretary of State Rubio confirmed in testimony before the House Appropriations Committee that a plan to wind down US aid is in the works for the next MOU. The following day, strongly pro-Israel Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) filed a non-binding resolution calling on the US to develop a new MOU ending direct military aid to Israel which would, Stutzman said, send a message “to the rest of the world that Israel is not just leaning on America…even though we have a strong partnership with them going forward, it will look different.” According to The Washington Post, Netanyahu embraced the new approach. He had called it “my plan” in a letter he wrote to Stutzman on June 1 thanking him for his “enthusiastic support” for the idea.
What could the new partnership look like? In his May 25th Quincy Institute brief, Steven Simon writes that what is being proposed “is not a reduction in American support, but a reorganization of it: shifting billions in resources from State-Department-administered foreign aid grants into general Pentagon procurement accounts, industrial partnerships, and sustainment pipeline. The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.”
That re-framing of how the US gives military aid to Israel is now underway. On May 29, Ben Freeman of Responsible Statecraft reported that Section 224 of the House version (H.R.8800) of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) “lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The US and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes ‘network integration’ and ‘data fusion.’ In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.” This move in the direction of military “fusion” is happening at a time when the threat level posed by Israel’s aggressive spying on top US officials and military personnel has been raised from ‘high’ to ‘critical.’
On June 4, after Rep. Ro Khanna failed on a voice vote to strip Section 224 from the NDAA in the House Arms Services Committee, the NDAA was reported out to the House. Rep. Thomas Massie, who lost in a Kentucky Republican primary on May 19 after Trump endorsed his opponent Ed Gallrein and pro-Israel funding of Gallrein made the race the most expensive primary in history, has said he would offer an amendment to eliminate Section 224 on the floor of the House.
If US funding of Israel shifts from State Department auspices to the Pentagon, there will be serious implications for public advocacy and Congressional scrutiny of Israel’s behavior. The Leahy law would no longer apply, and holding Israel accountable would be even more arduous than it is today. It would also be increasingly difficult to find out just how much taxpayer support Israel is receiving, while that amount is likely to grow ever larger under the ‘partnership’ approach.
In a June 5 Guardian article Eli Cohen and Ian Lustick trace Section 224 back to a 1996 policy paper by David Wurmser that was submitted to Netanyahu and signed by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and others in the Bush administration. They write that it “advocated ending the Oslo peace process, casting the US and Israel as engaged in a struggle to defend western civilization, empowering Israel to reshape the political landscape of the Middle East, and overthrowing regimes in the region, beginning with Iraq…For Israel, this means not just ruling all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but dominating the Middle East, launching wars of ‘prevention’ against all potential adversaries (including Turkey, Iran and even Egypt)…Now is the time to say what section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act really is: not an alliance with a talented and responsible ally that will help keep the US safe, but a trap being set by Israel and its lobby to bind our country to a state that, for all its past promise, has gone rogue.”
The ‘apocalyptic ruin’ that is Gaza
The killing in Gaza has been relentless as the erasure of its remaining buildings continues without respite. During the last week of May, Israel ordered residents in some of Gaza’s remaining tower blocks to evacuate before it destroyed them. On May 25, six were killed, including six-year-old Minatallah Nabil Abu Ludah and a woman, Hanan Mahmoud, in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis. The next day, Israeli hit a residential building in Gaza City killing a Hamas commander, Mohammed Odeh, his wife and two children. Other airstrikes killed five people in Al-Maghazi refugee camp after residents blocked a militia backed by Israel from entering the camp. On May 27, five children were among the ten whose lives were snuffed out by an airstrike on a residential building in Gaza City. Among those slaughtered in an airstrike on May 30 was Dr. Jamal Abu Aoun, head of the Anesthesia Department at Yaffa Hospital. On June 3, at least nine people were murdered as they slept, many charred beyond recognition, in a fiery wave of airstrikes on Gaza City. Late on June 4, naval gunboats bombarded Gaza’s coast and all five members of Ibrahim Labad’s family were burned to death when a strike set their Gaza City apartment on fire. On June 6, a further 10 people were killed, including at least six during a drone strike on a wedding tent in Gaza City.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, “this surge reflects a deliberate, gradual escalation policy aimed at imposing even harsher humanitarian and security conditions on Gaza’s population, at a time when there is no effective international pressure to curb the attacks.” The Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated that May, during which 119 Palestinians were killed, 19 children among them, has been the bloodiest month of 2026.
Much of the slaughter has taken place near Israel’s often invisible, ‘shifting yellow line’ which grabs for Israel two-thirds of the Gaza Strip – soon to be 70% according to Netanyahu in order to ‘squeeze’ Hamas. An article in the May 30 Times of Israel describes what The Associated Press witnessed when it was invited by the army to tour part of the ‘yellow line.’ Some parts of the line were not “indicated at all” and a soldier said his commander told him that it was “too much work” to demarcate the ‘yellow line.’ Other soldiers said they were given “shoot to kill” orders and that “to call it a ceasefire is a joke.”
On May 25, Drop Site News published a Forensic Architecture analysis showing how Israel is steadily pushing its ‘yellow line’ westward, and building military installations in its ever-enlarging eastern zone which it appears to have no intention of leaving.
Meanwhile, the slow genocide continues to unfold. Food rations provided by World Central Kitchen have now been cut in half because of financial pressure. Only about 37 percent of the humanitarian trucks agreed to in the ‘ceasefire’ agreement have been permitted to enter. The situation is likely to become increasingly dire due to the High Court’s unanimous rejection on May 20 of the petition by major NGOs barred by the government from working in the West Bank. They were given 30 days to submit information on their employees or wind up their affairs and leave. According to +972 Magazine, family networks are organizing councils to try to fill the void left by the collapse of humanitarian structures.
Israel’s severe restrictions on the entry of medical supplies, fuel and lubricant to run generators have brought the remaining hospitals to the brink of collapse. This is happening at a time when Gaza is experiencing a massive public health emergency caused by rat infestation, lack of clean water, sewage in the streets, severe over-crowding and corpses still decomposing under the rubble as temperatures rise.
As conditions continue to deteriorate, Netanyahu’s May 28th order to the army to take control of 70 percent of the territory seems designed to either drive Palestinians into the sea or propel the large-scale ethnic cleansing which Defense Minister Israel Katz is openly promoting. He calls it “voluntary.” In the words of British journalist Owen Jones, “If you reduce a place to apocalyptic ruin and then say its people are free to leave, that is not consent. That is violent coercion…The intention is obvious: remove Gaza’s population slowly, in stages, under the cover of Western indifference and active complicity. Not with one dramatic announcement that might provoke headlines and outrage, but through bureaucratic language, military terror and the assumption that most Western media outlets will simply look the other way.”
And the Board of Peace – if it still exists – probably will too. On May 27, the Financial Times reported that the World-Bank administered fund which was supposed to contain $7 billion pledged by donor nations and the $10 billion pledged by Trump for the Gaza ‘relief package’ was in fact empty. Instead, funds were being sent to a JP Morgan account. “Contributors have opted to use other options,” the Financial Times was told by a Board of Peace official, adding that the Board will report on its accounts “at a time deemed appropriate.”
Scramble for land the West Bank
Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza is now 59 years old. The type of dehumanizing brutality that has characterized the occupation since its beginning was demonstrated on June 5, when a soldier in Hebron fired on a family in a car that had reportedly come to a full stop as requested, wounding the parents and killing their seven-month-old baby, Sam Fahd Abou Haikal. So blatant and well-publicized was the daylight murder that the military felt compelled to express its “deep sorrow” over the shooting. Such an expression of ‘sorrow’ seems particularly duplicitous at a time when Israel is no longer disguising its intention to expropriate all or most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to conduct massive ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
On June 1, Francesca Albanese – against whom a federal appeals court has re-imposed sanctions a week after they had been removed by a lower court - and 13 other UN Special Rapporteurs issued a strongly-worded statement about the “blatant unlawfulness of the Israeli occupation” and its escalating violence. “Relentless attacks by the settler-colonial movement, carried out with the support and acquiescence of the Israeli State,” they wrote, “have become a daily terror in Palestinian lives, sowing fear, uncertainty, and profound insecurity that inevitably compels the forcible displacement of the indigenous population. The escalating violence, carried out with full impunity, serves as an instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.”
Israel, with its long record of defying the UN and cutting itself off from UN-related institutions, is unlikely to pay much heed. On May 29, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced it was cutting all ties with the office of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres because he had included Israel in his 2026 ‘ Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence,’ a move Israel called “shameful and absurd.”
Showing its disdain for the UN and international community, Israel has seized land for a military base next to the northern city of Jenin that had been classified as ‘Area A’ by the Oslo Accords, putting it under the administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority. It has also demonstrated its determination to cut the West Bank in two by seizing land for building a water line to connect the new settlements being planned for the vital E1 area. Bids for tenders for new housing units in the area are currently open even though the court has yet to hear petitions attempting to block the E1 settlement expansion. On June 5, 85 Members of the House sent Secretary of State Rubio a letter urging him to “use every diplomatic tool at your disposal to halt this process before any bids are awarded.”
Meanwhile, Israel has made it easier to appropriate Palestinian land and for Israelis to purchase it by creating an online platform for land registration that can be used by Israeli individuals and corporations, and Palestinians as well. But in order to register their land on the platform Palestinians would have to give the government the kind of information which could lead to their land being taken under the 1950 Absentee Property Law. As Qassam Muaddi writes, “The political dimension of the new platform goes beyond land grab and forces Palestinian property owners to make an impossible choice: use the digital platform and effectively accept de facto Israeli authority over land registration in the West Bank (and over the territory as a whole) or refuse to use it and risk losing property rights inherited from your ancestors for generations.”
While Israel brings the West Bank economy and its health care system to the verge of collapse, it continues its decades-long effort to break the spirit of the people by inflicting ruthless daily intimidation tactics on the Palestinian population. On June 1, Sama Safi, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American student at Bir Zeit University with relatives in Massachusetts, was seized from her home at 3 AM by Israeli soldiers. Three other female students at Bir Zeit – Natalie Abu Diya, Jolan Abu Awwad and Laila Khalil – were also detained. Given the horrendous conditions in Israel’s prisons where the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit since Oct. 7, 2023, concerns are growing for the welfare of Sama Safi, who suffers from a critical medical condition. Sen. Chris Van Hollen has issued this video statement demanding her release. You can raise your voice here.
Words of courage and hope
Soon Sen. Van Hollen and the others in Congress who have stood up for Palestinian rights might have a new colleague who knows Gaza at first hand from his experience there as a surgeon witnessing genocide in 2024 and 2025. After serving as a US Army surgeon, Dr. Adam Hamawy overcame a well-funded smear campaign to win the New Jersey primary on June 2. He spoke to Democracy Now! from Gaza in 2024 and did so again after his primary victory on June 5 – see his interview here.
As a new doctor, the Lebanese student Leen Ezzeddine, graduated from Harvard Medical School, she gave a speech that was especially courageous in a year in which universities have largely been silenced. She spoke of the US missile that leveled her family home and talked about the “profound contradictions” that she had experienced over the past few years. “In the very classrooms where we learned to recognize dehumanization as a danger to medicine, we were told to stay silent as Gaza unfolded before us, funded by our own tax dollars and materially supported by this university’s own endowment.” But amid the disillusionment, she found something even more powerful - “a movement of students refusing to trade their conscience for comfort.” You can listen to her inspiring words here.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
Note: during the summer the Alliance will be sending out short ‘Water Facts’ rather than Bi-Weekly Briefs.
