This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 2 episode of “The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi.”
It’s just over 50 days until Israel’s parliamentary elections, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life. Which, for Netanyahu, is saying something. He’s Israel’s longest-serving leader, having held power for 19 of the last 30 years across three stints as prime minister.
But more complicated than the political fight is a legal fight: Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial continues. As prime minister, he’s pushed for a pardon from Israel’s president and tried to fire Israel’s attorney general, who is overseeing the case.
If he’s out of power, he would have no such leverage. Experts say Netanyahu’s re-election strategy is an attempt to paint himself as a wartime leader and to harness a rally-around-the-flag effect. To that end, he’s leading Israel’s military in conflicts on multiple fronts.
To Israel’s south, strikes on Gaza have continued despite the declaration of a ceasefire with Hamas 11 months ago. Gaza’s health ministry reports that over 900 people have been killed by Israeli forces this year. According to UNICEF, more than 300 children have been killed since that ceasefire was announced last year. The Israeli military has said its strikes are targeting members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Last month, Israel formally and very publicly rejected a 15-point plan set out by President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which called for a phased withdrawal of the country’s troops from Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas. On Wednesday, Israel’s defense minister said he is seeking Trump and America’s backing to start forcibly expelling the entire Palestinian population of Gaza.
Meanwhile, to the north, Israel continues to occupy a significant portion of southern Lebanon. Some Israeli leaders, including the far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, have publicly declared they want to annex parts of the country permanently. Smotrich previously promised that areas of southern Lebanon would resemble the destruction of cities in Gaza.
And Israel’s war with Hezbollah continues. While the U.S. has brokered deals between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah has not been a party to those talks and has repeatedly rejected both the talks and the ceasefires.
According to the United Nations, more than 350,000 Lebanese citizens remain displaced since the beginning of March, when full-scale fighting resumed. The humanitarian relief organization Save the Children reports that more than 4,300 people have been killed since then, including 257 children.
Violence in the West Bank has also escalated dramatically in recent weeks. The U.N. warned in July that attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank had reached an all-time high. The U.N. said settlers “frequently attack families, burn mosques and destroy and confiscate property.” An analysis from The New York Times found that more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks this year alone in the West Bank, double the rate of that in 2025.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has documented 66 Palestinian communities in the West Bank that have been completely expelled since Oct. 7, 2023. The latest is Khirbet a-Taban, which was entirely demolished by Israeli authorities on Wednesday, displacing all 76 of its residents.
Another far-right member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who himself is a West Bank settler, has called for Israel to fully annex the territory.
Last month, Israeli settlers attacked three homes in the village of Qusra, one of which is owned by a Palestinian American. The Associated Press reported that dozens of settlers surrounded the homes for five nights, threw stones and blocked the inhabitants from leaving as they ran out of food and water.
That Palestinian American, Loui Ridi, spoke to The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast about what he was facing. Ridi said he was “under siege by Israeli settlers.”
“The settlers want my family, the neighbor’s family, to leave so, simply, they can steal the houses and take over. They want the entire land, the entire mountain, all the houses,” he said.
Those attacks in Qusra drew unusual and perhaps unprecedented condemnation from U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel, who said the “actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting.”
This week, after settlers burned down a mosque in the village of Bizzariya, graffiti in Hebrew at the scene revealed a message for the ambassador: “Regards to Huckabee from the terrorists.”
According to reporting from Reuters and Al Jazeera, Israeli forces working alongside settlers demolished Palestinian homes in the towns of Birzeit, Nablus and Burqa on Tuesday.
Over the weekend, NBC News correspondent Matt Bradley and his team were attacked by a group of masked settlers while interviewing a Palestinian woman, Aida Ahmed Abdullah, in the town of Jalud. A video of the confrontation shows masked men attacking the NBC crew and their car with sticks and rocks.
The situation in the West Bank has become so untenable that this past week, even Netanyahu himself criticized some of the settler attacks.
Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky, who has covered the region for decades, called what is unfolding a “panorama of disaster.”
Allison Detzel contributed.
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