Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap! 

As the world’s attention turns to the war between Israel and Iran, Israel’s attacks on starving Gazans awaiting aid have only intensified. Ahmed Ahmed and Ibtisam Mahdi reported on the near-daily Israeli massacres at food distribution sites inside the enclave, which have killed over 400 in the past month alone — what Palestinians have dubbed “The Hunger Games.”

Amos Brison spoke to Iran expert Ori Goldberg to make sense of Israel’s motivations in opening a new front with Tehran. For Goldberg, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s gambit in striking Iran was to realign the world behind Israel — but he believes Israel already overreached and can only avoid getting bogged down by dragging the West into the conflict.

As Israelis awoke early last Friday morning to discover that their country had started a war with Iran, Palestinians in the West Bank found that the Israeli army had placed them under lockdown. Shatha Yaish reported on Israel’s closure of hundreds of gates to seal Palestinians inside towns and strand them on roads — proof of annexation in all but name.

Last Saturday night, an Iranian missile loaded with explosives struck a large house in Tamra, a Palestinian city in northern Israel, and killed four members of one family. As Baker Zoubi wrote (originally published on Local Call), the tragedy has highlighted the systemic discrimination in Israel’s civil defense infrastructure, where Arab towns disproportionately lack public shelters and adequate aerial protection.

And Orly Noy interviewed Lior Sternfeld (originally published on Local Call), a historian of modern Iran, who argued that everything Israelis think they know about Iran is wrong: Israel’s regime change fantasies ignore realities inside the Islamic Republic and risk repeating historic mistakes.

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