REMAKING THE MIDDLE EAST

A year after Oct. 7, Israel's list of targets had extended to Lebanon. Where experts see the region going next

- YASMEEN SERHAN

FOR MONTHS AFTER OCT. 7, 2023, THE WORLD was newly focused on Palestinians’ aspiration to a nation of their own, the nub of their long conflict with Israel. In the U.S., public sympathy toward Palestinians had already been growing over Israel’s decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territories. That feeling climbed as the Gaza death toll grew to more than 41,000.

Now, a year since Hamas perpetrated the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, massacring 1,200 people and kidnapping 251, the world’s attention is back on Israel’s conflict with Iran—the contest that had earlier displaced the Palestinian question as the fulcrum of the Middle East. But the region is changing at the speed of missiles.

Analysts, and recent history, on what lies ahead:

GAZA: ISRAELI TROOPS REMAIN

The so-called day-after plan, in which Gaza could be rebuilt and its inhabitants returned to their homes, remains as elusive as the cease-fire that would return the remaining hostages. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that Israel retain a military presence in the Philadelphi corridor that separates Gaza and neighboring Egypt, a plan that is opposed by Cairo. He has also ruled out a role for the Palestinian Authority, which controls portions of the West Bank.