Middle East caught in escalation spiral as global powers focus elsewhere

The week ended as it began: with promises of peace that dissolved before the ink dried. Donald Trump announced once again that Iran was on the verge of signing an agreement with the United States, one that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restore the flow of oil and liquefied natural gas that roughly a fifth of the world depends on. But in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran itself, the people living through the actual conflict felt no closer to safety. If anything, the distance between what diplomats were saying and what was happening on the ground had grown wider.

Israel conducted its deepest military incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years this week, killing at least nine people and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in the southern part of the country. The strikes were so significant that they complicated the very diplomatic efforts Trump was touting. On Thursday, Israel's defence minister announced the military would continue ground operations in Lebanon. Hours earlier, Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a US-backed ceasefire. The leader of Hezbollah rejected it entirely, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal. It was a pattern that had become routine: agreements announced and abandoned in the same news cycle, leaving ordinary people in a state of perpetual readiness, bags packed, waiting to flee.

For those watching from outside the region, the escalation might have seemed like a tactical shift in a war that had already consumed enormous resources and attention. But analysts in Israel saw something different. Netanyahu appeared to be broadening the conflict deliberately, a calculation that served his political interests as much as any military objective. The far-right elements in his coalition government were already calling for the annexation of southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Elections in Israel's Knesset were coming, and returning to active warfare in both Lebanon and Gaza looked, from a certain angle, like an electoral strategy.

The war that had begun with what seemed like clear objectives—regime change in Iran, the elimination of Hamas—had stalled into something harder to define. Senior Israeli defence figures had always believed that overthrowing Iran's government was wishful thinking. The real measure of success, they had argued, would be whether Iran could be prevented from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Now, with the war in stalemate, that critical issue barely appeared in negotiations at all. What had looked impressive at the start was beginning to look like failure.

In Gaza, the humanitarian situation had become almost abstract in its scale of suffering. A ceasefire had supposedly taken effect in October, yet more than 900 people had been killed by continued Israeli bombardment since then. One in ten of Gaza's prewar population of 2.3 million had been killed or injured. The survivors were compressed onto a narrow strip of coastal land while Israeli troops pushed back the agreed boundary lines to seize more territory. Israel now controlled at least 60 percent of Gaza, which had been reduced to what one correspondent described as a wasteland. Almost everything had been demolished. Almost no Palestinians could live there anymore.

The ceasefire agreement had promised a surge in humanitarian aid. It had not materialized. Clean water was scarce. Medical supplies were insufficient. Food was rationed. Israel, which had weaponized access to basic supplies before—a ban on food shipments the previous summer had triggered famine—maintained that adequate aid was reaching the territory. The reality on the ground told a different story. Over 100 people were being killed each month in combat operations alone, a rate that would be classified as an active war zone almost anywhere else in the world. Yet the White House had largely moved on. Trump's special envoy and son-in-law had been reassigned from Gaza to focus on Iran, which mattered more to the administration because of its impact on oil prices and inflation at home. Gaza was unpopular domestically. It was damaging the cost of living. So it was deprioritized.

The European Union was expected to rebuke Netanyahu at an upcoming summit in Brussels, but he had a long history of absorbing criticism without consequence. The EU, despite being Israel's largest trading partner and possessing considerable economic and political leverage, had never used that power. There was plenty of condemnation. There were almost no practical steps that improved the lives of people in Gaza, who found themselves in what one correspondent called a terrible limbo—neither at war nor at peace, neither safe nor free to leave.

Across the region, people were living in that same limbo. In Iran, many citizens despised their government, and in January they had poured into the streets to protest. They had been killed in large numbers for doing so. But that did not mean they believed a Western bombing campaign would liberate them. History offered too many cautionary tales. The US-led invasion of Iraq had triggered decades of conflict and political chaos. If you were in Tehran now, particularly if you opposed the regime, you had probably lost friends in the January crackdowns. You were living under bombardment with no air raid shelters. You were staring down the possibility of more war or state collapse. Iranians told reporters they felt abandoned by foreign powers, caught in a conflict they had not chosen, watching their already fragile economy deteriorate while their oppressive government grew stronger. One business owner from Mashhad named Amir, who had once desperately hoped for American intervention, now found himself questioning that hope. "This is not a ceasefire," he said. "It's a never-ending auction between the US and the Islamic Republic over our lives and our blood."

Lebanon faced a similar trap. Large sections of the population opposed Hezbollah, but Israel was bombing Beirut, occupying the south, and demolishing entire villages in ways that human rights groups said should be investigated as war crimes. There was no belief that this would bring freedom or prosperity. Beyond the immediate threat to safety, there was the economic devastation, which always fell hardest on women, minorities, and the poor. There was the psychological weight of uncertainty—the inability to plan, to travel, to live normally. And there were the generational memories of Lebanon's civil war in the 1980s and the 2006 war with Israel, traumas that hung over the present moment like a shadow.

With elections approaching in both the United States and Israel, some observers looked for hope in the months ahead. Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian's chief Middle East correspondent, was less optimistic. Israel's leading opposition figure did not differ meaningfully from Netanyahu on the fundamental questions. Trump's response to the midterms was unpredictable—whether they would bring him humiliation or celebration remained to be seen. What was certain was the impact on the people who had to live through this day after day, with a packed bag, waiting for the next wave of displacement, the next broken ceasefire, the next promise that would not be kept.