Sherihan al-Bayyari fled from her home in Gaza City, with her husband and six children, two weeks ago, when Israel ordered residents of the town to seek safety further south in the Gaza Strip.

With nowhere else to go, she is now living in a school classroom with 60 other evacuees, her family space marked off by lines of laundry – unwashed for lack of water. And essential supplies are running short.

“There is no water at all. Can you imagine I haven’t had a drop of water since morning?” Ms. Bayyari says. Like many other mothers, she is feeding her children plain flatbread – an empty sandwich – for their main meal.

“At night I sleep on a school desk,” she says, complaining that she and tens of thousands of families like hers are being “pushed to the brink.”

“We cannot endure these inhumane conditions. There is no dignity,” she adds. “If this situation continues, it will be an absolute disaster.”

Meanwhile, Israeli jets and tanks pounded Rafah and neighboring areas of southern Gaza with an intensified barrage. Missiles and tank shells exploded almost every minute for extended periods on Thursday as the Israeli government turned down calls for a “humanitarian pause.”

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

A Palestinian woman who fled her house amid Israeli strikes holds a pan as she takes shelter at a tent camp at a United Nations-run center in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 26, 2023.

Muezzins who normally call the faithful to prayer now tell them over loudspeakers to pray at home because moving in the streets is too dangerous. They also name the day’s deceased and ask residents to pray for them. “Death has never felt closer,” said one young Palestinian woman as the ground shook beneath her feet.

Very limited convoys of food and medicine continued to trickle into Gaza on Thursday, but as fuel shortages shut down water pumps, bakeries, and hospitals – and curtailed aid delivery – United Nations officials and local residents said the humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave is rapidly deteriorating.

“The aid delivered to Gaza so far is barely making a dent. We need more, and we need it now. We need it to include fuel,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council earlier this week.

“Without fuel, our humanitarian operation will stop. No fuel means no hospitals functioning, no desalination of water, and no baking,” he warned. Many evacuees in southern Gaza reported that their water supplies had run out on Wednesday. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said its fuel supplies, which it had been sharing with other U.N. agencies, were exhausted as of Thursday evening and that it was halting life-saving services.

Stampedes for water

The Israeli authorities have refused to allow the entry of fuel on the grounds that Hamas militants might steal it; U.N. officials say is critical to maintain minimum living conditions. Amid a Gaza-wide blackout, UNWRA, the leading humanitarian agency in Gaza, said Wednesday it would be forced to suspend its services late Thursday.

A convoy of 12 trucks carrying food, medicine, and sanitary wipes entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing from Egypt on Thursday. They brought about 2% of the goods imported each day prior to the current war and Israel’s imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, home to 2.2 million people.

Palestine Red Crescent Society/Reuters

Members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society distribute aid to people in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Oct. 25, 2023.

That move followed a harrowing attack by Hamas militants on Israeli civilians in a surprise raid on Oct. 7 that left 1,400 Israelis dead, the overwhelming majority of them civilians.

As of Thursday afternoon, Israel’s bombardment had destroyed or damaged nearly 50% of homes in the Gaza Strip, and killed more than 7,000 people, including 2,900 children, according to Palestinian health officials.

For the time being, U.N. agencies are handing out small amounts of humanitarian aid, but only in the far south of the strip, where hundreds of thousands of evacuees are sheltering in packed private homes, hospitals, and schools. And distribution is disorderly, residents say.

This week, trucks have delivered canned tuna, canned beef, soup, bread, jam, tissue paper, and soap to the school where Ms. Bayyari is sheltering with her family. Families as large as 10 people were issued with a single 12 oz. can of corned beef or a 6 oz. can of tuna to share among them.

The arrival of a water truck at the school sparks a near stampede, Ms. Bayyari says, as hundreds of people race with yellow jerry cans to communal tanks to fill up whatever they can. Earlier this week, she was not one of the lucky ones who were handed mattresses and blankets. There were not enough to go around, she says.

“Alive, but far from OK”

Hiba Mahmoud says she has been in a race for survival since an Israeli missile strike destroyed her family compound at the Bureij refugee camp in the heart of Gaza City, killing several of her young nieces and nephews.

Ms. Mahmoud and her husband, both dentists, and their three children of ages between 2 and 10, first sought refuge at an UNRWA school in the camp, along with 20 other relatives. But as thousands more people crowded into the school and its grounds, they overwhelmed the sanitary facilities; living conditions became unbearable, according to Ms. Mahmoud.

Three days ago, she and her family left the school to seek refuge at her sister’s home in Rafah, which is also packed with evacuees and has little water.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Palestinians who fled their houses amid Israeli strikes take shelter in a tent camp at a United Nations-run center in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 23, 2023.

“We barely have any access to water,” Ms. Mahmoud says, “We constantly urge our children to ration every drop. We simply don’t have enough. Every night I spend here, I fear contracting a disease.”

For a brief moment, she has access to the internet on her phone. She takes advantage of the opportunity to send a simple Facebook message to her parents in Germany: “I am alive, but far from OK.”

The U.N. World Food Program warns that fuel, food, and water supplies are running low, and that of the 24 bakeries it supplies with flour, only four were operating as of Thursday and were expected to shutter once their generators ran out of fuel. 

The overwhelming majority of Gaza’s shops and bakeries have closed, however; at the few vegetable stands still open, shoppers queue to buy locally grown onions and sweet peppers, picked before the war or, on rare occasions, local green apples and seasonal dates.

Despite the constant risk of missile strikes and the fact that he has little left to sell in his unlit supermarket, Jamal Abu Taha comes in each day to open the Al Nour Market.

When electricity supplies to Rafah were cut off last week amid a Gaza-wide blackout due to the lack of fuel, Mr. Abu Taha gave away all the perishable items he had left in his refrigerators, including chickens, yogurt, cheeses, and milk, to residents in need.

Today, what was once Rafah’s largest supermarket is down to its last few dry goods.

The near-bare shelves are scattered with the odd container of powdered milk; walnuts; bags of lentils, chickpeas, and pasta; and a few cans of beef and tuna. Mr. Abu Taha’s last sack of sugar sits on an otherwise empty shelf.

“We are on the brink of water and fuel crises,” he says, “and now a food crisis.”

The wholesale warehouses on which shops like his rely are completely empty, Mr. Abu Taha and other grocers report. And when he runs out of goods altogether?

“That’s it,” he says. “God only knows what is next.”

Alyssa Pointer/AP

Kenneth Chesebro (left) confers with his lawyer during a motions hearing in the election subversion case Oct. 10, 2023, in Atlanta. Mr. Chesebro is one of three former Trump attorneys to plead guilty in the Georgia election case.

Sidney Powell promoted the false assertion that in November 2020, some U.S. voting machines secretly switched ballots for then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden, subverting the election.

Kenneth Chesebro helped organize slates of fake Electoral College electors to wrongly claim Mr. Trump had won key states that he actually lost.

Jenna Ellis drafted memos insisting that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to halt Mr. Biden’s victory, a theory widely disputed by legal experts, as well as Mr. Pence himself.

In August, these three lawyers were all charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as co-defendants with Mr. Trump in her sweeping Georgia election interference case. But over recent days, all have pleaded guilty and accepted plea deals, potentially reshaping the case’s legal context and boosting prosecutors’ efforts to flip more defendants into cooperators.

The full stories that Ms. Powell, Mr. Chesebro, and Ms. Ellis might tell at trial remain unknown. Their 2020 election efforts appear to be only tangentially related to one another.

However, their accounts could help connect the dots between various aspects of the alleged plot to overturn the vote – a sprawling racketeering conspiracy that lies at the heart of the Georgia charges.

“They connect parts of the conspiracy together,” says Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

Sidney Powell (right) and Rudy Giuliani, members of President Donald Trump's legal team, speak during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington. Ms. Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges over efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia.

Dwindling number of defendants 

When Ms. Willis first filed her election case on Aug. 14, its scope surprised many legal experts. Based on Georgia’s expansive RICO anti-racketeering law, it contained 41 criminal counts and targeted 19 criminal defendants. By contrast, the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith targets only Mr. Trump as a defendant, with six unindicted and unnamed co-conspirators.

But in recent weeks one benefit to prosecutors of Georgia’s bigger approach has become apparent: Worried by their legal exposure, some lower-level defendants have pleaded guilty, creating pressure on others higher up the ladder to do the same.

Ms. Willis’ case is now down to 15 defendants. Last month Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanors. Then last week Ms. Powell similarly pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. She was followed in quick succession by Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Ellis, who both pleaded guilty to a felony.

All avoided a prison sentence.

It is quite possible that this was part of Ms. Willis’ plan from the beginning, says Caren Morrison, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New York and now a Georgia State University law professor. Ms. Willis may not have really wanted to bring 19 people to trial, but to shrink and bolster her case with testimony from flippers.

“That’s the beauty of RICO. You can tell a complete story, and it’s also a way of getting more witnesses and building a stronger case,” says Professor Morrison.

It is likely the case will get narrower still. On Wednesday, CNN reported that six additional defendants have discussed plea deals with Fulton County prosecutors. 

Some experts counter that the plea deals actually reveal a weakness at the heart of the Georgia case.

So far, none of the deals have required the pleaders to acknowledge they are guilty of the central RICO conspiracy to overturn the vote, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and columnist for National Review. Instead, they have accepted responsibility for much lesser infractions.

Ordinarily prosecutors require the first cooperators in big cases to plead guilty to the major charges, with sentencing leniency, wrote Mr. McCarthy earlier this week.

“Willis wildly overcharged the election-interference case and is now picking off some defendants on minor charges,” he wrote in National Review.

John Bazemore/Reuters

Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleads guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings inside a Fulton County courtroom, Oct. 24, 2023, in Atlanta.

Who might plead guilty next?

In a sweeping criminal case, each flipped defendant can create a time dilemma for others. First movers get the sweetest deals. Subsequent pleaders often get steadily stiffer terms. In addition, the defendants left standing need to consider the information flippers might have. If it implicates them, does that mean the risk of going all the way to trial is greater?

“They all need to be wondering, I suspect, what each one of these witnesses is prepared to say when testifying under oath, what each is willing to share, documents, emails, that the government does not yet have,” says Kay Levine, a professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta.

Ms. Powell, for instance, was charged in Georgia in connection with an incident of unauthorized access to sensitive election equipment in Coffee County following the 2020 election. She allegedly dispatched a team from the Atlanta data forensics firm SullivanStrickler to download data from voting machines that she thought might be designed to secretly switch votes.

Former Coffee County elections director Misty Hampton remains a charged defendant in the Georgia RICO case. She was present in the county election office when the team was admitted on Jan. 7, 2021. She was also caught on video the next day allowing two men who were active in challenging the election outcome into the office for hours.

Ms. Hampton would be a likely flipping target for prosecutors. According to CNN, she has been in touch with Ms. Willis about a possible deal.

Mr. Chesebro was charged in the Georgia case with organizing fake Electoral College electors, an effort that spread across the nation to six other states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He might be able to provide information on whether other defendants who were participants in the scheme – Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer, and former Trump White House aide Michael Roman – knew it was illegal.

Mr. Roman has also been involved in plea talks, according to CNN.

Seth Wenig/Reuters

Former President Donald Trump attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court, Oct. 25, 2023.

Inside information

Ms. Ellis and Ms. Powell together might be able to provide prosecutors something of high value: inside information on the thinking of the highest-ranking defendants, up to and including Mr. Trump himself.

“It seems to me that Sidney Powell ... and Jenna Ellis were in the room where it happened, where important conversations took place,” says Professor Levine.

Ms. Powell, for instance, was a key participant in a raucous Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in which she argued for an executive order to seize voting machines and the appointment of herself as a special counsel to investigate election fraud allegations. White House lawyers argued heatedly against these ideas in front of President Trump.

Ms. Ellis worked closely with former Trump lawyer and current Georgia defendant Rudy Giuliani to organize an appearance before Georgia legislators after the 2020 election in which presenters rolled out a litany of wild, false claims, including the assertion that 10,000 dead people had voted.

In her tearful appearance in court Tuesday at which she pleaded guilty, Ms. Ellis said, “I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information.” That seems a finger pointed directly at Mr. Giuliani.

It might also implicate John Eastman, a Trump lawyer and Georgia defendant who wrote a central memo arguing that then-Vice President Pence could overturn the results of the electoral certification of Mr. Biden’s victory during a joint session of Congress.

Mark Meadows, former Trump chief of staff, has also spoken at least three times with federal special counsel Mr. Smith’s prosecutors after being granted immunity to testify under oath, ABC News reported this week. He testified that he repeatedly told President Trump that claims of significant voter fraud coming in were all baseless, according to ABC. Mr. Meadows remains a defendant in the Georgia case. 

In the end, the value of the Georgia plea deals will be judged by how important the testimony of flippers is and how it lands with a jury if the prosecution opts to put them on the witness stand.

“If their testimony is powerful, we could say in hindsight the prosecution got the best of these deals. ... If they’re not providing the assistance [prosecutors] might like, we might be looking at these pleas a little differently,” says Shane Stansbury, a former federal prosecutor and distinguished fellow at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina.

When it comes to politics, childhood friends Angie Russell and Robin Callahan don’t agree on much.

Ms. Callahan, a retired teacher who lives in Virginia Beach, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 because she couldn’t bring herself to vote for former President Donald Trump. Ms. Russell, also retired and living in Lynchburg, says she was “Trump all the way.” Both plan to vote the same way next year, when the two men are expected to face off in a rematch.

But when it comes to the prolonged speakership fight that paralyzed Capitol Hill for almost all of October, the two friends walking along Virginia Beach’s boardwalk are equally dismayed. 

“It makes us wonder: How can you solve any of the problems going on in our country or the world?” says Ms. Callahan.

“We look weak, and our enemies see that,” says Ms. Russell. 

Wednesday’s election of Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson as House speaker put an end to the unprecedented drama, allowing Congress’ lower chamber to finally open for business. After three weeks of infighting, Republicans on Capitol Hill were eager to put the whole episode behind them. 

“The American people, at one time, had great pride in this institution. But right now, that’s in jeopardy,” Mr. Johnson said in a speech on the House floor. “We have a challenge before us right now to rebuild and restore that trust.”

That might be easier said than done. 

In interviews with almost two dozen Republican and Democratic voters in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, many acknowledge that memories are short, and they will likely be focused on other issues come Election Day 2024. And some Republicans here see the ousting of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the election of a more conservative replacement as a positive outcome, despite the painful process. 

But there’s also no doubt that the ordeal left a bad impression – and, in the short term at least, may make voters less likely to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. In this swing district that voted for President Biden in 2020 and then in 2022 replaced a Democratic representative with GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans, voters agree much will depend on where the House GOP goes from here. If the infighting continues or leads to a government shutdown next month, when the current funding is set to run out, Republicans’ narrow majority could be in jeopardy.

A useful analogy, says Republican pollster Whit Ayres, may be the government shutdown of 2013 led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The 16-day shutdown at the hands of Republicans in October of that year caused the party’s favorability ratings to drop by 10 points. But they had a year to recover, and in November 2014, Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate. 

“It’s hard to imagine that this chaos at the moment is going to have a substantial effect on the midterms. The Trump trials may have more of an effect,” says Mr. Ayres. “It all depends on what happens between now and then, and what kind of job Speaker Johnson does. Can he keep the government open, get aid to Ukraine and Israel, and secure the border? It all depends on how he defines his role. His constituents are now the entire country and not a deep red district in the deep South.”

Alex Brandon/AP

Rep. Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, takes the oath to be the new House speaker from the dean of the House at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 25, 2023.

Vulnerable crossover districts?

More conservative than Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Johnson is already being attacked by Democrats for his role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. If he leads his conference further to the right, it could make things more difficult for the dwindling number of moderate Republicans – particularly the 18 who represent “crossover” districts, or districts that Mr. Biden won.

When GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a swing district in New York, voted for Mr. Johnson on the House floor Wednesday, a voice from the Democratic side of the aisle said, “Bye-bye.” 

Before Mr. Johnson was elected, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a hard-line conservative who is a popular figure among the GOP base, lost three successive speaker votes on the House floor in part because 11 holdout Republicans from crossover districts refused to support him. Several of those members – including Ms. Kiggans from Virginia’s 2nd District – received threats over their stance. 

“I was a helicopter pilot in the United States Navy. ... Threats and intimidation tactics will not change my principles and values,” Ms. Kiggans posted on X, formerly Twitter. 

Explaining her vote against Mr. Jordan in another X post, Ms. Kiggans said she couldn’t support someone who would cut the defense budget or shut down the government as a negotiating tactic, given the district she represents. 

With the largest concentration of military personnel outside the Pentagon, Virginia’s 2nd District feels the impact of actions in Congress more immediately than most. If the federal government shuts down, it affects Virginia Beach’s almost 97,000 active-duty military members and their families. And Congress’ response to the current wars in Europe and the Middle East are also salient, say residents. One of the aircraft carrier strike groups stationed in the eastern Mediterranean amid the Israel-Hamas war – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – came from the Virginia Beach coastline.

Still, some of Ms. Kiggans’ constituents were unhappy about her votes against Mr. Jordan, which they viewed as a slight to the conservative movement.

“I wish Matt Gaetz had had more of a plan for who should replace McCarthy, but it’s a shame about Jim Jordan because he would have been such a good speaker,” says Bob Totty from Chesapeake, who recently retired from health care sales. “I know thousands of people were calling into her office supporting him.”  

His wife, Deb Totty, was also disappointed with her congresswoman’s votes.

“She turned out to be the same as the rest of them in Washington,” says Ms. Totty, a retired special events coordinator. 

When asked about the blowback that Ms. Kiggans might be getting at home over everything that went on in Washington this month, former 2nd District Rep. Scott Taylor just laughs.

“I know for a fact that Kiggans is getting grief because I know the district well,” says Mr. Taylor, a Republican who held the seat between 2017 and 2019. “It’s not easy for her,” he adds. “She’s a freshman congresswoman.”

Still, Ms. Kiggans may have complicated her message somewhat by voting first for Mr. McCarthy, then for acting Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, and finally for Mr. Johnson. “She didn’t do herself any favors by being wishy-washy,” Mr. Taylor says. “I guess the whole process was wishy-washy.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Deb and Bob Totty, retirees from Chesapeake, Virginia, pause from a walk on the Virginia Beach boardwalk, Oct. 25, 2023. They hope newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson will “shake things up” in Washington.

The case of Virginia Rep. Kiggans

Mr. Taylor, who was elected to Congress the same year as Mr. Johnson, says he has already texted his friend congratulations. 

“Mike is a good choice. He’s a sensible guy. He’s more conservative than McCarthy, but if you don’t agree with him, he’s never disrespectful,” says Mr. Taylor. If Mr. Johnson is able to avoid a government shutdown and demonstrate a steady hand, he predicts “it won’t affect Kiggans or others next year.” 

Even if there is a government shutdown, the bigger threat to Ms. Kiggans might be a primary challenge to her right. The district was reconfigured to be more Republican during the 2020 redistricting – creating a threat that “absolutely” increased in the wake of the speakership fight, says Mr. Taylor. 

At the same time, Ms. Kiggans might gain some votes on the other side of the aisle. Some Democratic and independent constituents here say they were pleased with her votes against Mr. Jordan.

Steve, a retired CEO who lives in downtown Virginia Beach and declined to give his last name, voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and then Ms. Kiggans in 2022. Despite finding the whole speaker fight “disappointing,” he says he thinks Ms. Kiggans handled it well, “doing the best she can.” He also hopes the GOP will face a reckoning for all the chaos it caused.

“I hope there are repercussions for all the Republicans in Congress because they are all a part of this mess,” he says. “The Republican Party is no longer the party that I know.”

Whether swing voters like Steve will carry this sentiment over into Virginia’s state legislature elections next month remains to be seen. 

At the Virginia Beach GOP headquarters, Carol Hickman and two other volunteers assemble yard signs for a Republican state senate candidate, while in the background a TV plays Mr. Johnson’s acceptance speech. Ms. Hickman says she was “dismayed” that the House was effectively immobilized for three weeks. In the end, however, she says she would rather have Republicans take the time to choose the right person for the job. 

Hopefully Republicans learned the “difficult lesson” that if you vote someone out of a position, you should have a backup plan in place, says Ms. Hickman. Now, it’s about looking forward.

“Every single Republican should take this to heart: You have a job to do.”

In Israel’s conflict-ridden 75 years, there have been countless military raids and operations, but only eight campaigns were officially considered a war.

The current one between the Jewish state and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is the ninth, immediately declared as such after the Palestinian militant group’s devastating Oct. 7 cross-border assault into southern Israel.

After nearly three weeks of retaliatory airstrikes and shelling on Gaza, and ahead of a threatened ground operation, Israeli military officials, analysts, and even the general public maintain this war will be drastically different from almost all that have come before.

In many respects, it already is. For the first time in decades, Israel is actively countenancing a prolonged campaign and is signaling to both its foes and citizens that it is willing to pay a heavy price to achieve its stated objective: the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing force in Gaza.

The messaging from the government doesn’t mince words.

“Victory will take time; there will be difficult moments. ... Sacrifice will be required,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week in parliament.

And for now, the Israeli public seems unflinching. A snap poll taken in the wake of the Hamas attack by Agam Research, an Israeli firm, showed over 92% of Israeli Jews supporting a ground offensive into Gaza against Hamas.

Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Amid several freshly dug graves, people mourn Cpl. Dvir Lisha, 21, who was killed following the infiltration by Hamas fighters from the Gaza Strip, at his funeral at Israel's Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem, Oct. 15, 2023.

Israeli media have, for weeks now, been airing morale-boosting interviews with soldiers and reservists in staging grounds all across the country. The message from them is uniform: “This is a battle for our home.”

A society only recently described as brittle as a “spider’s web,” in the words of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, now appears ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.

“For years it did seem like Israeli society put the idea of quality of life over the collective,” says Danny Orbach, a professor of military history at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “Israel was richer, more Western, more liberal.”

All of that has apparently changed after Oct. 7, he adds.

The shift, Israeli officials and analysts explain, is due to both the scale of the death toll suffered on that fateful “Black Saturday,” as Israelis now call it, and the barbarity of the Hamas atrocities committed.

The initial Hamas attack inflicted the heaviest loss of life, certainly in a single day, in Israel’s history: 1,400 killed, the vast majority civilians, and over 220 taken captive back to Gaza including children, women, and older people.

According to government health officials in Gaza, some 7,000 Palestinians have been killed inside Gaza, making this war, on both sides, the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948.

“Oct. 7 was an earthquake,” says Meir Elran, a retired Israeli brigadier general and expert on civil-military relations at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. In a matter of weeks “Israeli society has undergone a major psychological change – it’s furious, it wants revenge ... and the public is saying, ‘Whatever it takes.’”

Ammar Awad/Reuters

Residents of Tel Aviv show support for and solidarity with the families of hostages being held in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 21, 2023.

Yet the ground invasion by the massed Israeli armor and infantry divisions that in the first days of the war appeared imminent has yet to materialize. The reasons for the delay are multifaceted, according to several Israeli and U.S. sources with knowledge of the matter.

The Biden administration has requested that Israel provide it more time to deploy American military assets to the Middle East in anticipation of a possible regionwide escalation with Iran and its allied militias, including Hezbollah.

The United States has also urged Israel to allow more time for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the exit of foreign nationals (including U.S. citizens) from the besieged territory, and the possibility of additional hostage releases, beyond the four women so far.

Complicating matters, Israel has yet to finalize a coherent “exit strategy” and postwar plan for Gaza, a key U.S. request and the topic of frenetic Israeli deliberations both inside and outside official bodies.

The Israeli military has in the interim continued preparing its troops, especially rusty reservists, training them for the urban battles to come after years spent on policing and counterterror duties in the West Bank, according to one person familiar with Israeli thinking. And one Israeli military officer, when pressed at a briefing on the delayed ground invasion, insisted that “the air force is striking [Hamas] hard and preparing the ground for our land forces” when the time comes.

But Israeli officials including Mr. Netanyahu have been clear: A major ground offensive is coming, with the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, saying this week that the military was “ready for the [ground] maneuver, and we will make a decision with the political echelon regarding the shape and timing of the next stage.”

Even Israeli officials and officers admit that taking on a well-equipped and dug-in foe like Hamas would be extremely time-consuming and bloody – including to Israeli forces.

Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

An Israeli soldier searches a house that was raided during the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas fighters from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Holit in southern Israel, Oct. 26, 2023.

“This war was imposed on us and is already a huge wound in Israel society,” adds Mr. Elran, the retired brigadier. “Military fatalities are not the primary thing [the public] are thinking about.”

Already among the Israeli dead are more than 300 soldiers and some 50 police personnel, including some two dozen from fighting after Oct. 7 – around Gaza, in the West Bank, and against Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon frontier.

This war’s toll has already outstripped the monthlong 2006 campaign against Hezbollah, in which 121 soldiers fell. Israel’s previous military occupation of a “security zone” in southern Lebanon claimed the lives of some 400 soldiers – over the course of 15 years.

A grassroots movement by mothers of soldiers ultimately pushed the government to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000.

According to Professor Orbach, societies are ready to “invest crazily” if they believe a goal is both worthwhile and achievable. The late stages of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, he says, met neither criterion, and therefore the public turned against the slow drip of “our boys” coming home in body bags.

Now, with Hamas in Gaza, things are diametrically different, he adds.

“Israelis truly believe that destroying Hamas is an objective that can be met, and that it’s essential for the future of the state. That’s why they’re willing to sacrifice fatalities,” Professor Orbach says.

Lisi Niesner/Reuters

An Israeli soldier in the armored corps stands near tanks near Israel's border with Lebanon, in northern Israel, Oct. 19, 2023.

Mr. Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials have said the war is necessary not only to eliminate the threat of Hamas and allow traumatized survivors to return to their shattered communities in southern Israel, but also to send a message to the wider Middle East.

“Iran has created a ‘ring of encirclement’ around Israel” via its allied militias and proxies “from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond,” Professor Orbach says. “You’ve already had the depopulation of entire regions” on the Gaza and Lebanon borders. “If you don’t deal with Hamas now, you’ll then have to deal with the rest of the ‘ring.’ Israeli society intuitively understands this.”

And, over the course of the last three weeks, Israeli society has responded. Over 300,000 military reservists have mobilized, with one recent Bangkok-to-Tel Aviv flight allowing passengers – mostly military-age males – to sit and sleep in the aisles. Some Israel Defense Forces reserve units have recorded over a 100% response rate for duty, according to Israeli military officers.  

“I have no problem dying,” said one baby-faced paratrooper last week to Channel 12’s “Uvda” program, the Israeli version of “60 Minutes.”

“You know why? Because they’ll do it again, when? Another time, another few years?” he continued. “I don’t want to die, I love life. ... But if it’s for this objective, and to make history, then I’ll fight.”

Mr. Elran rejects comparisons between the nation’s current move and that which existed during prior military campaigns.

“There has never been a war like this,” Mr. Elran says. “It started differently, and will be conducted differently.”

Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Donald Tusk, leader of the largest opposition grouping, Civic Coalition, gestures after the exit poll results are announced in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 15, 2023.

Something extraordinary has just occurred in the battle between democracy and autocracy, which U.S. President Joe Biden has called our century’s defining political struggle.

Millions of voters in Poland have banded together to boot out their ruling autocrats.

News of the unexpected Oct. 15 election result has been overshadowed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza following Hamas’ killing and abduction of hundreds of Israeli civilians.

But it matters, and not only for Poles. It has implications for Poland’s partners in the European Union and the NATO military alliance, including the United States.

And it carries twin lessons: that autocrats can be defeated at the ballot box, but that the longer they are in power, the tougher it becomes to restore a functioning democracy.

Along with two other NATO allies on Europe’s eastern flank – Hungary and Turkey – Poland had become part of a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon known as “electoral autocracy.”

Czarek Sokolowski/AP

Protesters gather outside the presidential palace to call on Polish President Andrzej Duda to not delay the formation of a new government after an opposition bloc won the most votes in a national election, in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 24, 2023.

Their rulers didn’t seize power. They were democratically elected.

Yet step by step, they set out to undermine democratic norms and institutions – judicial and media independence, freedom of association and dissent, free and fair elections – with a view to remove any serious prospect that they might be voted out of office.

They also buttressed their hold on power, especially at election time, with narrowly nationalistic messages painting political opponents, and minority communities, as alien and untrustworthy.

And the playbook seemed to be working.

Despite a united push by opposition politicians ahead of Hungary’s election last year and a similar effort during Turkey’s election campaign last spring, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan again prevailed.

But now Poland has spoken with a fervor that surprised not only pundits but also opposition politicians themselves.

It wasn’t easy. The ruling Law and Justice Party, also known by its Polish acronym PiS, used the full force of state-funded news media to amplify its campaign messages and to denigrate dissenting voices when they were heard at all. It portrayed opposition figures as not truly Polish – beholden to Germany, Russia, or the European Union, which has been withholding funds in response to the way PiS has packed the judiciary with pro-government judges.

Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters

Supporters of Poland's ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) gesture in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 15, 2023. PiS remained the largest single party, but it got barely a third of the vote in the Oct. 15 election.

Still, while PiS remained the largest single party, it got barely a third of the vote.

The three opposition parties – one of them in the center-right, another on the left, and the largest in the middle – won 54%, giving them a parliamentary majority.

How did they do it?

To start with, they decided against forming a single party, as opposition leaders in Hungary and Turkey had done. Instead, while adopting an umbrella commitment to rescue and restore Poland’s democracy, they ran separately to maximize the breadth of their appeal.

But the main reason was that they galvanized a huge surge of grassroots opposition to the PiS autocracy, especially among women and younger voters.

Overall voter turnout was over 74%, topping Poland’s first post-communist election in 1989.

The first lesson from the result was indeed that voters could slam the brakes on the PiS drive to dismantle democratic norms and institutions.

And the prospect of an assertively democratic Poland, which borders Ukraine, was especially welcome in Washington, amid concern that Western backing for Kyiv might flag in the months ahead.

Yet the second lesson – how much harder it becomes to repair the damage to democracy, the longer the autocrats have been at the helm – is also becoming evident.

Czarek Sokolowski/AP

Poland's President Andrzej Duda (left), shakes hands with opposition party member Barbara Nowacka as the top opposition leader, Donald Tusk, looks on, at the presidential palace in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 24, 2023.

The opposition alliance has wasted no time in declaring its readiness to form a government, led by Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and head of the EU’s council of ministers, who heads the centrist Civic Coalition party.

But Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, is a PiS supporter. He has indicated that he will give PiS the first shot at assembling a majority coalition, even though it now lacks the parliamentary seats to do so. That could push back the transition until as far as December.

Even then, a Tusk-led coalition will have to reckon with the president’s power to veto legislation. And PiS has also embedded hand-picked judges throughout the court system and put party loyalists in other key institutions, including the news media.

The pro-democracy parties will hope that the scale of their election victory will discourage the president from trying to block policy changes – especially since those changes would help persuade the EU to start unblocking the billions of dollars in support it has been withholding.

The hurdles that the opposition alliance will face in restoring democracy underscore the challenge facing other countries where democracy’s foundations have been eroded.

Still, Poland’s example may also suggest something else: that voters eventually tire of the angry divisiveness that is a key tool in the electoral autocrats’ toolbox.

Significantly, the party that outperformed election expectations most dramatically was Mr. Tusk’s center-right alliance partner, the Third Way.

Its central message? That Poles must step back from the polarization and division that PiS promoted, and rebuild national unity.

Reuters

Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is congratulated by Republican members of Congress on the outer steps of the House of Representatives after being elected the new Speaker Oct. 25.

After three weeks of trying, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives rallied behind the selection of a new speaker, but not out of any consensus on policy matters. The majority party remains fragmented into factions and factions within factions. The GOP lawmakers appear instead to have been drawn together by a different gravitational force.

“I believe that they trust Mike Johnson,” Dusty Johnson, a Republican representative from South Dakota, told a British journalist yesterday. He recalled how, when he arrived in Congress as a new member four years ago, “Mike Johnson came to my office ... and talked to me about how important civility was in this place, how even when we disagree with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we should try to do it as people who have good faith and good intention with decency.”

The American experiment in democracy was designed by its founders to forge consensus from what the late Arizona Sen. John McCain called “this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, restless ... good and magnificent country.” Rules govern the legislative process, but the hard-knuckle work of fellow citizens governing together more often depends on softer currencies of humility and respect.

The most conspicuous example of such trust-building is the affection forged over decades between President Joe Biden and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell during Mr. Biden’s time in that chamber. “There is a personal relationship that – transcends isn’t the right word – but that is different from their philosophical leanings,” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine observed earlier this year. “And my experience has been that personal relationships count in this setting.”

Mr. Johnson’s election to lead the narrowly divided House offers a new opportunity to test that observation. The Louisiana Republican and his leadership counterpart, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, share almost nothing in common on major issues. As an outspoken skeptic of the 2020 election results, Mr. Johnson starts with a deficit of trust across the aisle. Yet the two leaders may find a ready adhesive in shared values. Both speak in tones of civility. Marshall Jones, the Democrat who ran against Mr. Johnson in his race for Congress in 2016, described his former opponent as “a good listener” in an interview with the Louisiana Illuminator yesterday.
In his last speech in the Senate in 2017, Mr. McCain spoke of democracy’s “principled mindset.” It hinges on “humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us.”
After three weeks and three false starts, the House has a new leader. Mr. Johnson is not the policy moderate Democrats hoped would emerge. But his hand on the gavel may signal a renewal of warmth that Washington needs.