Research
June 24, 2026
The Iran war has diverted diplomatic attention away from Israel-Palestine amid worsening conditions on the ground. Israeli settlement expansion and violence continue in the West Bank, and the Israeli military continues to kill civilians in Gaza, while reconstruction and governance efforts there are stalled.
The war has further reshaped regional politics in ways that complicate diplomatic efforts to improve the situation in Israel-Palestine. A growing divergence among the Gulf states—particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—has complicated efforts to provide unified incentives to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make progress in improving the situation on the ground.
A silver lining to this otherwise catastrophic situation may be that governments now more fully realize that failure to address the structural inequities in Israel-Palestine risks perpetuating and further regionalizing the cycle of violence.
