The Israel-Hamas war is shifting quickly. Find the latest coverage from Vox here.

Genocide is often referred to as the “crime of crimes,” a designation developed after the Holocaust and reserved for a very specific form of mass atrocity that deserves the highest condemnation. It should be unthinkable that Israel, home to the descendants of many Holocaust survivors, would perpetrate such a crime, and yet it has been accused — by human rights groups, academics, and even South Africa — of committing genocide in Gaza.

Those accusations aren’t new. They became more widespread shortly after Israel responded to the October 7, 2023, attack by Gaza-based militant and political group Hamas with a bombing and ground campaign that left more than 5,000 dead in the first weeks of fighting. But in the year since the war in Gaza began, the question is whether the evidence supporting these claims has grown.

Editor’s note, October 7, 5 pm: While our podcasts will continue to cover the conflict in the Middle East, this page will no longer be updated with new episodes. You can listen to our shows wherever you find podcasts.

The Israel-Palestine conflict goes back decades, but this latest war has taken an unprecedented toll in terms of the number of people killed, and represents a significant step back from any hopes of securing a two-state solution and a permanent peace. Vox podcasts have spent the past year covering the conflict in depth, offering our listeners context and clarity about the history of the conflict, a deeper understanding of the players in Israel and Palestine and on the world stage, and the toll of Hamas’s attack and Israel’s retaliation on the people in the region.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamist militant organization and Lebanese political party, has been in conflict with Israel since its founding decades ago. Now the death of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday, threatens to take that conflict to a new and even more destructive level.

The Israeli military carried out a massive airstrike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut on Friday in an effort to target the reclusive Nasrallah, who has led the militant group for more than three decades. At least six people were killed in the strikes and more than 90 were injured, with the toll expected to rise. Israel had reportedly been tracking Nasrallah’s movements for months, and struck before he had the opportunity to escape.

More than 450 people were killed and 1,500 injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the country’s capital, Beirut, on Monday. The airstrikes mark a significant and threatening escalation of hostilities following an apparent Israeli attack that used explosive pagers (and other electronic devices) to kill members of the Shia militant and political group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah have regularly traded rocket fire over Lebanon’s southern border with Israel for years. However, since Israel launched its war in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’s attacks in Israel on October 7, Hezbollah — a Hamas ally — has increased the tempo of rocket launches, and has hit targets deeper within Israel. Israel has increased its attacks as well, and as a result, more than 110,000 Lebanese and about 60,000 Israelis are internally displaced.

Additional explosions, reportedly involving thousands of walkie-talkies, went off in Lebanon Wednesday, a day after hundreds of pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria in an attack that apparently targeted members of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Islamist militant organization and Lebanese political party.

Israel was reportedly behind both attacks, though it has not taken public credit. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate. The Lebanese government has characterized the pager attack as “criminal Israeli aggression.” It comes amid rising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel as the war in Gaza rages on without any end in sight.

CNN reported that at least 20 people were killed and 450 were injured in the latest round of attacks involving walkie-talkies. At least 12 people were killed in the pager attack, including members of Hezbollah and two children, according to CNN. More than 2,800 were injured, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, with over 300 people in critical condition, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Most of the injuries were to the eyes, face, and hands; hospitals in Beirut have been overwhelmed with patients and are asking the public to donate blood.

The Israeli military launched the largest, deadliest West Bank attack of the year on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people, including a high-ranking militia commander, over the course of several days. Violence in the West Bank — perpetrated by the military, Israeli settlers, and Palestinian fighters — has been steadily accelerating over the past 10 months.

Since the October 7 Hamas raid on Israel, at least 660 Palestinians and 15 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, according to the United Nations. It’s a smaller number than the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza over the past 10 months, but it is still a reminder of how intense ongoing violence in the West Bank is.

The US claims that progress has been made on a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas — and that the Israeli side has already accepted a framework the US calls a “bridging proposal” that would end the nearly 11 months of brutal fighting in Gaza.

The announcement is reminiscent of one President Joe Biden made in June; then, he seemed to suggest Israel had created a promising ceasefire proposal. That proposal ultimately went nowhere, and Israel pushed back on Biden’s description of the plan.

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik is stepping down after protests over the war in Gaza roiled the university community and spread to campuses nationwide, and in Europe, last spring.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in a letter announcing her resignation Wednesday. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s war in Gaza created a rift between moderates and progressives in his party. Now that he has stepped aside in the 2024 presidential race, the question is whether Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would chart a different path forward as president.

One early signal that she might: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress on Wednesday, and Harris did not preside in her role as vice president due to a previously scheduled event she chose to attend in Indianapolis. A slew of congressional Democrats (not just progressives) decided not to attend in protest of Netanyahu’s strategy in Gaza.

Israel seems like it might be winding down the intensity of its war in Gaza — just as another fight it’s waging is winding up.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated in a television interview on Sunday that he intends to move some of the country’s forces to the northern border to fight the Lebanon-based military group Hezbollah. Were it not for the war in Gaza, that conflict might have already been capturing the world’s attention. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is also visiting Washington this week in part to discuss the implications of that escalation with US officials.

Nearly 40 Palestinians in Rafah will die each day due to traumatic injuries if Israel continues and escalates its incursion, according to a new analysis by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Humanitarian Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That’s a total of 3,509 people killed by just violent traumatic deaths — not including sickness or hunger — by August 17.

The report underscores the dire conditions in an area that was supposed to be the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing the carnage in Gaza and the urgent need for Israel and Hamas to agree to the ceasefire proposal currently in negotiations. US President Joe Biden recently announced Israel has a ceasefire plan it has endorsed, but Israeli leaders have disputed this claim, creating confusion about whether passing the deal is actually feasible.

President Joe Biden announced a ceasefire proposal to end Israel’s war in Gaza on Friday that he said was devised by Israel, urging Hamas to accept it and Israel not to renege.

But what has followed in the days since is a series of conflicting statements from Israel and the Biden administration, leaving the state of the negotiations uncertain. The White House seems to think a deal is close. But Israeli officials have suggested that Biden misrepresented their proposal and that they won’t stop fighting until Hamas is completely destroyed.

Former President Donald Trump hasn’t said much publicly about the war in Gaza, despite implementing hardline pro-Israel policies while he was in office. But what he has said has put him squarely in line with a GOP base that is beginning to lose interest in the war, even as it maintains support for Israel.

And recently, he’s begun taking an increasingly hostile stance against Palestinians and their supporters in the US.

As the US continues to stand by Israel amid its widening offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is considering arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders accused of grave crimes in the course of the war.

The ICC’s top prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced Monday that he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and the leaders of the group’s military and political wings, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri and Ismail Haniyeh.

The US Department of Defense has completed a temporary pier off the Mediterranean coast of Gaza to deliver urgently needed aid — an important goal, but really only a $320 million bandage on the humanitarian crisis 2.3 million people are currently facing.

The US military announced that on Thursday at 7:40 am Gaza time the pier had been attached to land; trucks began moving supplies Friday. The World Food Program is coordinating aid delivery.

Amid the chaos of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the United Nations’s humanitarian office has altered how it reports fatalities in the conflict — sparking another round of debate over the toll of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory in response to the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

The overall reported death count likely remains very similar to what was previously known: around 35,000 people have been killed. But not all of those people’s identities have been confirmed — and among those that have, there has been a marked decrease in the number of women and children killed in the conflict and an increase in men as a proportion of those killed compared to previous estimated totals. Thousands more remain unidentified, meaning the numbers will change again as health authorities gather that information.

Israel’s operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that houses more than a million displaced Palestinians, may have finally forced the Biden administration to do something it has been hesitant to do: withhold some military aid from Israel.

The administration has been reluctant to restrict military aid to Israel in any way despite federal law requiring that it do so when members of a foreign military to which the US is providing aid commit gross human rights violations — something international organizations and individual nations have accused Israel of.

Israel has reportedly been using AI to guide its war in Gaza — and treating its decisions almost as gospel. In fact, one of the AI systems being used is literally called “The Gospel.”

According to a major investigation published last month by the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine, Israel has been relying on AI to decide whom to target for killing, with humans playing an alarmingly small role in the decision-making, especially in the early stages of the war. The investigation, which builds on a previous exposé by the same outlet, describes three AI systems working in concert.

Israel has begun an aerial and ground offensive in Rafah, the largest city in Gaza that has remained outside of Israel’s direct operational control.

While Israel and the US are claiming it is a limited operation, it’s nevertheless raising fears that the long-threatened, full-scale offensive into the city that houses over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians could be imminent.

A core demand at the heart of the protests over the war in Gaza currently roiling college campuses across the US and around the world: that universities divest from Israel. That means withdrawing funds their endowments have invested in companies that are linked to Israel.

Their demands have revived a long-running debate about whether universities should even consider ethics in their investment decisions and whether there is an ethical approach to divestment from Israel, or if these institutions should simply maximize returns. There is also a question of whether these divestment demands, which have been criticized by some pundits as overly broad, are feasible to meet or will even be effective.

Israel’s decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in the country signaled an escalation in an already hostile environment for journalists covering the war in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously called Al Jazeera a “mouthpiece for Hamas,” accused the Qatar-based news network of threatening Israel’s national security and used powers granted under an emergency law to shutter the outlet. He has not identified what specifically about Al Jazeera’s coverage the government believed crossed that line.

Protests over the war in Gaza erupted on Columbia University’s campus in mid-April, inspiring demonstrations at other universities across the country as well as in Canada, Australia, and France.

But as those protests — many of which center on encampments and demands that universities divest from Israel — have grown, so too have intense crackdowns involving local law enforcement.

Protests against the war in Gaza have spread to college campuses across the country in the days since students at Columbia University were arrested last week, evoking images of historical student protests that were met with similar backlash.

Recent protests have not yet reached the scale of the major student protests of the late 1960s against the Vietnam War or the 1980s against South African apartheid. But on campus, they may be “the largest student movement so far” of the 21st century, said Robert Cohen, a professor of social studies and history at New York University who has studied student activism. In recent decades, there were mass protests against the Iraq War, as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and after the killing of George Floyd, but they were primarily happening off campus.

Last week, the country watched one of the biggest escalations in campus unrest this year unfold, when dozens of New York City police officers clad in riot gear entered the grounds of Columbia University and, on the orders of university president Minouche Shafik, arrested more than 108 student protesters who had built a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus. The students are calling for the school to divest from companies and organizations with ties to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Though Shafik said at a congressional hearing she had taken the steps to make all students feel safe amid a reported rise in antisemitic rhetoric on campus, students said the administration put them in danger by authorizing a “notoriously violent” police unit to forcibly remove them, and NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell later described the arrested students as “peaceful.”

Is Israel a “settler colonial” state?

That charge has been the subject of fierce debate in recent months amid the continuing Israeli assault on Gaza after the October 7 attacks by Hamas.