Every bomb dropped on Gaza was, in some part, paid for by American taxpayers. The United States has provided Israel with more military aid than any other country—over $3.8 billion annually under a long-standing agreement, with tens of billions more approved since October 2023. That makes the current crisis in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon not just a Middle East story but a U.S. foreign policy story, one where Washington holds more leverage than it has chosen to use.
The roots of the current conflict go back to 1948, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” More than 400 villages were depopulated during the war surrounding Israel’s founding. Decades of occupation and settlement expansion followed, much of it enabled by U.S. diplomatic cover at the United Nations.
Since October 7, 2023, when roughly 1,200 Israelis were killed in an attack by Hamas and its aftermath, over 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by direct fire. And the killing has not stopped since the October 2025 ceasefire. Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in continued Israeli strikes in the nine months since the truce was signed. Israel has violated the agreement on a near-daily basis, including more than 260 consecutive days of documented strikes, shootings, and demolitions as of mid-July. In the words of one Gaza City resident who lost a relative in a recent strike: the ceasefire is an illusion.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, the deadliest stretch since the UN began tracking fatalities in 2005. Israel’s 2024 offensive in Lebanon killed more than 3,445 people.
The International Court of Justice ruled in January 2024 that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel was plausible enough to warrant emergency measures. Human Rights Watch has documented what it describes as war crimes and collective punishment. Israel disputes the genocide framing, citing Hamas’s continued rocket fire and its right to respond to October 7.
Shifting Political and Public Landscape
This isn’t a static debate. Two developments this month suggest that U.S. leverage over Israel is no longer a theoretical lever but has become instead a live political question. On July 15, over 100 House Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted for an amendment to cut off military aid to Israel entirely. The measure failed, but 103 votes in favor marks a dramatic break from a Democratic caucus that has historically treated unconditional support for Israel as settled policy.
That vote reflects a broader shift in public opinion. A Pew Research survey conducted in May 2026 found that Americans’ favorability toward the Israeli people has fallen from 56 percent to 52 percent in a single year, while unfavorable views of the Israeli government have climbed to 62 percent—the highest ever recorded. Among adults under 30, favorability toward Palestinians (58 percent) now significantly outpaces favorability toward Israelis (32 percent), a reversal driven largely by young Democrats.
That shift hasn’t gone unnoticed in Israel. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that the Israeli government has spent at least $50 million—part of a 2026 public-diplomacy budget exceeding $700 million—on an American influence campaign using AI-generated text messages, conservative media partnerships. It is working with a firm run by longtime Trump adviser Brad Parscale to reverse this decline in U.S. opinion. Even U.S. Vice President JD Vance has accused Israeli officials of trying to manipulate American public opinion to keep the current conflict going.
Paths Forward
Two shifts in U.S. posture could change the trajectory, and both now have more political oxygen than they did even a year ago. The first would be to condition military aid on documented compliance with the laws of war. The United States applies this standard, at least on paper, to other recipients of American weapons through the Leahy Laws. Enforcement, not new legislation, is the missing piece, and the House vote suggests that real appetite for it is building.
The second shift would involve backing, rather than obstructing, international accountability mechanisms. This would allow the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court proceedings to move forward, paired with real diplomatic weight behind enforcing the ceasefire and a negotiated path to Palestinian self-determination alongside guaranteed Israeli security.
Neither is likely under an administration that has moved to sanction ICC officials. But leverage that goes unused doesn’t disappear. It sits available for the next Congress, or for sustained public pressure to pick up. The numbers suggest that pressure is growing whether or not Israel’s own influence campaign succeeds in slowing it down.
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Gaza, the West Bank, and the Weight of an Unfinished History
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at FPIP.