分类： politics

In a sweeping new move to force solar manufacturing supply chains onto U.S. soil, the Trump administration has formally proposed a 15% tariff and mandatory minimum import prices on polysilicon and all its derivative solar products, capping a 14-year U.S. effort to erode China’s decades-long dominance of the global clean energy sector. The new trade restrictions grow out of a national security investigation launched by Washington in July 2025 under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, a legal framework that allows the U.S. to impose trade barriers on imports deemed a threat to national security.

The proposal marks the final pillar of a long-running U.S. strategy that stretches back 14 years to reshape the global solar industry. Since 2012, successive U.S. administrations have deployed anti-dumping probes, escalating tariffs, and targeted tax incentives to gradually push Chinese solar manufacturers out of their home production bases and toward establishing operations in the United States. The new tariffs are explicitly designed to close the remaining loophole: forcing firms that have already built U.S. assembly plants to source raw polysilicon and core components domestically, creating a fully integrated solar supply chain within U.S. borders.

According to a Thursday Reuters report citing anonymous administration sources, the new restrictions will apply across the entire solar production chain, covering polysilicon, wafers, cells, modules, and finished solar panels. The 15% tariff will specifically target polysilicon derivatives, while binding price floors will set a minimum cost for all imported solar inputs.

Beijing has already issued fierce pushback against the measure. In a formal statement, the Chinese Embassy in Washington called on the U.S. to immediately abandon the Section 232 tariff plan and resolve trade disagreements through equal, constructive dialogue. “China firmly opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to unjustifiably suppress Chinese companies,” a embassy spokesperson said. “Protectionism will not enhance U.S. competitiveness. What the U.S. has done seriously impedes normal economic and trade exchanges between Chinese and American companies and serves the interests of no party, including American businesses and consumers. China will continue to firmly safeguard the lawful and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”

Chinese industry analysts and commentators have been equally critical, with many framing the sequence of shifting U.S. solar policies as a predatory “pig-butchering scam” — a term borrowed from a common online fraud scheme where scammers lure victims into investing before cutting off contact and seizing their assets. Critics argue the Biden administration first used generous federal tax credits under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to lure major Chinese solar manufacturers into investing billions of dollars to build new factories on U.S. soil, only for the subsequent Trump administration to abruptly slash those credits, tighten eligibility rules, and impose new tariffs that effectively trap Chinese firms into selling their assets at a loss.

This policy shift is codified in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump on July 4, 2025. The legislation sets strict new rules for solar manufacturers to access federal tax credits: to lock in the full benefit, companies must have broken ground on their U.S. factories before July 4, 2026, with a four-year grace period to complete construction. It also enforces rising domestic content requirements: for modules to qualify for credits, 50% of components must be U.S.-sourced in 2026, rising to 60% in 2027, 70% in 2028, and 80% in 2029. Inverters follow a similar schedule, starting at 50% domestic content in 2026 and increasing 5 percentage points annually to 65% by 2029. Most notably, the act bars tax credits entirely for any U.S.-based entity that is classified as a Prohibited Foreign Entity, a designation that applies to any firm where Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or North Korean interests hold 25% or more equity, directly or indirectly.

Chinese industry experts warn the new measures will not deliver the domestic growth the U.S. is seeking, while raising costs for U.S. consumers and manufacturers. Huo Jianguo, vice chairperson of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, told state-affiliated newspaper the Global Times that the Trump administration has grossly overextended the national security justification for tariffs. He argued that rash protectionist moves disrupt global supply chains, fail to boost U.S. competitiveness, and harm the interests of all parties involved. Lu Jinbiao, a member of the expert committee at the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, added that the policy will do little to increase U.S. polysilicon production, but will significantly raise input costs for American solar manufacturers. He noted that the impact on major Chinese producers will be relatively limited, as most have already shifted their primary export focus to markets in India, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian nations.

Still, many Chinese observers acknowledge that 14 years of escalating U.S. trade pressure has started to erode China’s dominant position in the global solar sector. A Shaanxi-based columnist writing under the pen name Clear Mind documented that since 2025, leading Chinese solar firms including Trina Solar, JinkoSolar, and Boviet Solar have been scaling back and exiting their newly built U.S. operations, with some facilities put up for sale just one week after starting production. While the physical production lines and equipment remain in place, high operating costs and lost tax credits have left the facilities unprofitable, forcing Chinese firms to sell at steep discounts. The core issue, Clear Mind explained, is the abrupt phase-out of tax credits: prior U.S. policy offered hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax savings for large U.S.-based module plants, enough to offset the higher cost of domestic production, but the new 2025 legislation accelerated the phase-out and locked out most foreign-invested firms.

A timeline of 14 years of U.S. policy shows a deliberate incremental strategy to shift solar production away from China. After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, local government support helped Chinese solar firms rapidly expand, capturing 50% to 60% of global cell and module production by 2012. That same year, the Obama administration imposed the first round of anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese solar products, but a major regulatory loophole allowed Chinese firms to easily bypass the restrictions by routing production through third countries. In 2018, the first Trump administration imposed broader tariffs that forced most Chinese manufacturers to shift assembly operations to Southeast Asia. In 2022, the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered generous subsidies to encourage Chinese firms to relocate production to the U.S. By 2025, China still controlled 95% to 98% of global wafer production, 85% to 92% of global cell output, and 80% to 85% of global panel assembly. After returning to office, the second Trump administration rejected the Inflation Reduction Act as a waste of public funds, imposed new tariffs on panels made in Southeast Asia, and implemented the strict new construction deadline and domestic content rules in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Guangdong-based commentator Tanshuo Renjian noted that U.S. trade enforcement has effectively chased Chinese producers across the globe over the past decade and a half. After U.S. tariffs pushed manufacturers out of Southeast Asia, many shifted production to Ethiopia, where solar exports to the U.S. surged from near zero to roughly $300 million in the second half of 2025 — only for the U.S. to extend anti-dumping investigations to the East African nation shortly after. Despite the persistent pressure, Tanshuo Renjian noted that Chinese firms have consistently adapted and found new pathways to operate.

The U.S. tariff announcement coincided with China’s implementation of new tightened exit-entry regulations, set to take effect September 15, which some outside commentators initially misinterpreted as a broad restriction on citizen travel. In reality, the new rules are specifically targeted at stemming the outflow of highly skilled engineers with expertise in advanced clean energy technologies, including cutting-edge N-type solar cell production. Under the new regulations, any individual deemed to pose a risk to China’s national industrial or technological security can be barred from exiting the country. Industry analysts note that the rules mean Chinese solar technicians who take jobs with U.S. solar firms could be barred from re-entering China after temporary trips home, effectively forcing them to leave their positions in the U.S.

In a sharp new escalation of trade and tech rivalry between the world’s two largest economies, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday introducing sweeping new trade restrictions on imported polysilicon — the critical raw material at the heart of both semiconductor manufacturing and solar energy production.

The new measures, which will go into effect this coming December, include a 15% across-the-board tariff on polysilicon and its related downstream products, alongside mandatory minimum import pricing for all incoming shipments of the material. The action was framed as a national security response following a months-long investigation into overseas polysilicon production, and comes as the U.S. continues to ramp up efforts to counter growing Chinese dominance in advanced technology supply chains.

Trump confirmed he approved the recommendations put forward by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who first proposed the combination of tariff and minimum pricing rules. Alongside the import restrictions, the administration also announced it will roll out new financial incentives designed to stimulate domestic polysilicon production, in a bid to reverse decades of declining U.S. market share in the sector.

In justifying the policy, Trump argued that decades of open trade policies have allowed foreign competitors to erode the position of American polysilicon manufacturers. He noted that U.S. global production share plummeted from 50% in 2005 to less than 2% by 2024, even as the material has grown increasingly critical to both military technology and consumer electronics. Today, China controls nearly the entire global supply of polysilicon, holding a near-monopoly position that the Trump administration argues poses a profound national security and economic risk.

China currently stands as the world’s top polysilicon producer, with the sector serving as a foundational pillar for both its booming chip manufacturing industry and its fast-growing renewable energy sector. The new restrictions are explicitly designed to shield U.S. domestic manufacturers from intensifying competition from Chinese chip and polysilicon firms, a core point of ongoing friction between Washington and Beijing.

The policy is expected to deliver immediate benefits to the two major U.S.-based polysilicon producers: Hemlock Semiconductor and German-headquartered Wacker Chemie, which operates large production facilities within the U.S. As global competition for leadership in artificial intelligence intensifies, control over semiconductor supply chains — starting with core materials like polysilicon — has become a central battleground for both the U.S. and China.

In an official statement following the signing of the order, the Chinese Embassy in Washington condemned the move, accusing the U.S. of abusing state power to target legitimate Chinese businesses. The embassy emphasized that the new restrictions seriously disrupt bilateral trade relations, and warned that Beijing will take all necessary measures to protect the interests of its domestic companies. It also pushed back against the U.S. protectionist approach, noting that trade barriers will do nothing to improve American long-term competitiveness.

Analysts interviewed by China’s *Global Times* framed the new tariff as the latest step in a steady escalation of U.S. efforts to cut China out of global critical technology supply chains. The move comes on the heels of a series of prior U.S. restrictions targeting Chinese tech imports, including bans and limitations on drones, humanoid robots and a wide range of other advanced technology products originating from China.

A high-profile interview between staunchly pro-Israel Democratic Senator John Fetterman and comedian-podcaster Jon Stewart has reignited debate over the growing ideological divide within the U.S. Democratic Party regarding U.S. policy toward Israel, as progressive voices calling for accountability for Israeli actions in Gaza gain electoral traction across the nation.

In the recorded Tuesday conversation, Fetterman, who represents the critical swing state of Pennsylvania in the Senate, made clear that he is willing to sacrifice intra-party support rather than soften his unwavering backing for Israel, a stance that has put him sharply at odds with a rising wave of progressive Democrats who advocate for Palestinian rights. The Pennsylvania senator acknowledged that his unapologetic support for Israel following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel has made him increasingly unpopular among members of his own party, but emphasized that this was a deliberate choice he stands by.

Fetterman’s hardline position emerges at a moment of notable shift within the Democratic coalition. Just one day after the interview, on Wednesday, progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated a pro-Israel opponent funded by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Michigan’s Democratic primary, bringing him one step closer to becoming the first Muslim U.S. senator in American history. Even former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel, whose father was a member of the 1948 Irgun militia linked to violence against Palestinian civilians, has publicly acknowledged that the Democratic Party must move away from its longstanding posture of unconditional support for Israel.

Though Fetterman aligns with most Democratic policy priorities, he has been an ideological outlier on all matters related to Israel since taking office in January 2023. The 56-year-old senator has publicly condemned the widespread 2024 college campus protests calling for an end to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, a campaign that multiple holocaust experts and the United Nations have labeled a genocide. He has also backed former President Donald Trump’s hardline policy toward Iran and remains fully committed to sending unlimited U.S. foreign aid to Israel, which he describes as an irreplaceable “special ally.”

When Stewart pressed Fetterman on whether there was any action by Israel he would criticize, Fetterman replied simply: “No.” He pushed back on claims that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, arguing that only the Jewish people have experienced a “true genocide” and claiming that if Israel sought to eliminate all Palestinians, it would have done so already. When Stewart noted that more than 22,000 Palestinian children have been killed in the campaign and asked if actions such as displacing 2 million Gazans into a fraction of their original territory and imposing a crippling siege can be justified as self-defense, Fetterman focused solely on the violence of the October 7 attacks, repeating unsubstantiated claims that Hamas fighters raped Israeli civilians — a claim that no international organization has ever documented with direct first-person or eyewitness evidence.

The conversation also saw Stewart push back against Fetterman’s conflation of antisemitism in the U.S. and criticism of the Israeli state. Stewart, who is Jewish, pointed out to Fetterman that “The Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing.” Fetterman also complained that the term “Zionist” is now used as a slur by some within the Democratic Party and questioned why student protesters do not target Iran for its domestic crackdowns on dissent — a point Stewart countered by noting that the U.S. does not send billions of dollars in annual military aid to Iran, instead imposing harsh sanctions on the regime.

Fetterman repeated the common claim that Hamas steals all humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, a claim that contradicts public statements from the former Republican head of the World Food Programme, who confirmed last year there is no evidence of Hamas systematically stealing or attacking aid convoys entering the enclave.

Observers noted multiple unusual moments during the 75-minute interview, where Fetterman struggled to recall talking points and often veered off-topic, appearing unable to fully structure responses to Stewart’s questions. These difficulties align with well-documented health challenges Fetterman has faced: three months before his 2022 Senate election victory against celebrity candidate Mehmet Oz, Fetterman suffered a major stroke. During the campaign, he struggled with verbal articulation in public appearances and his high-profile debate with Oz. Despite these challenges, he won the seat with 51% of the vote. A month after his 2023 swearing-in, Fetterman revealed he was suffering from clinical depression and spent two months in inpatient care, a decision widely praised by both parties as a courageous step in destigmatizing men’s mental health struggles.

The interview also covered broader tensions within the Democratic Party, with roughly half of the conversation focused on the growing unpopularity of the Democratic establishment, the rise of progressive democratic socialists who have energized young and working-class voters, and the economic status quo that has alienated many swing voters from centrist candidates. Fetterman argued that candidates embracing democratic socialist platforms cannot win general elections in key swing states, a framing Stewart pushed back on by pointing to El-Sayed’s policy platform — which includes banning corporate money from politics, raising taxes on billionaires to fund housing, education and universal healthcare — calling Fetterman’s labeling of progressive candidates as communist or socialist sympathizers a “caricature.”

Fetterman denied labeling all progressives communists, but singled out popular left-wing political commentator Hassan Piker, who has endorsed El-Sayed and appeared at campaign rallies with him, arguing that Piker’s support for Palestinian rights amounts to being “pro-Hamas.” Fetterman concluded by arguing that the party has a responsibility to “police its own ranks” to avoid nominating candidates who will cost Democrats winnable swing state seats in upcoming national elections.

Fresh official data from the UK Home Office has reignited serious concerns about the discriminatory impact of the country’s divisive Prevent counter-extremism strategy, after revealing that nearly one in five people referred to the programme between October 2024 and September 2025 had recorded autism diagnoses or suspected cases.

An independent analysis of the newly released dataset shows that 1,833 of the total 9,957 referrals logged over the 12-month period were linked to autism: 1,199 were confirmed diagnoses, while an additional 634 were marked as suspected cases. The annual referral total itself marks a historic high, the highest recorded since the programme began tracking national data in 2015, representing a 39% jump from the previous year’s figures for England and Wales. Overall, 36% of all people referred to Prevent during the reporting period had at least one recorded mental health or neurodivergent condition, with autism the most frequently documented neurodiverse trait across all cases.

Jacob Smith, a policy and advocacy officer at human rights group Rights and Security International, told Middle East Eye that the sharp rise in autistic people entering the Prevent system is “particularly concerning” and lays bare long-standing structural flaws embedded in the government’s counter-extremism framework. “We’ve known for years that autistic people are overrepresented in Prevent referrals, but the scale of this increase over the last 12 months is especially worrying,” Smith explained. He added that Prevent has faced accusations of systemic bias and discrimination since its launch: the programme initially disproportionately targeted British Muslim communities, and while demographic patterns have shifted over time, Black and Asian people are still vastly overrepresented in referral data, a trend that has now spread to neurodivergent groups including autistic people.

Alongside the autism findings, the data revealed a 20% year-on-year rise in referrals linked to far-right extremism. Demographic breakdowns confirm that Asian people account for 18% of referrals where ethnicity is recorded – twice their share of the general population of England and Wales. Black people are also overrepresented, making up 8% of referrals compared to just 4% of the overall population. Despite repeated government warnings that “Islamist extremism” remains the UK’s top domestic security threat, referrals categorized under this label have fallen to just 8% of all active Prevent cases.

Smith argued that the overrepresentation of marginalized groups stems directly from the programme’s vague, subjective referral structure. Public sector workers across the UK are legally required to refer any individual to Prevent if they are deemed to pose a potential terrorism risk, a mandate that leaves huge room for implicit bias to shape decisions. “Prevent is designed in an extremely vague way that leans almost entirely on referrers’ gut instinct,” he said. “This effectively encourages bias, whether intentional or unconscious, to creep into decision-making. That, to me, is the core reason we consistently see certain groups overrepresented in the system.”

The Home Office data also shows that the share of cases involving autism actually rises as cases move deeper into the Prevent process. Roughly 23% of cases reviewed by the multi-agency Channel panels – the bodies that assess radicalisation risk and approve de-radicalisation support – involved recorded autism, and that figure climbs to 24% for cases formally accepted into the government’s de-radicalisation programme.

These statistics are the second set of official Prevent data to include mental health and neurodiversity tracking, following the rollout of the new Prevent Case Management Tracker (PCMT) system in 2024. The Home Office acknowledged that the new system has improved how conditions are recorded, but cautioned that data quality is still evolving. The department also stressed that the figures do not prove any causal link between neurodivergence and susceptibility to radicalisation. “It is important to note that these findings describe associations within the data rather than causal relationships,” the official report reads. “The analysis does not indicate that being neurodiverse or having a particular mental health condition increases or decreases the likelihood of progressing through the Prevent or Channel process.”

Even so, Smith warned that the current system actively reinforces harmful, criminalizing stereotypes about autistic people. “A lot of the framing used by Prevent points to core autistic traits – for example, hyperfixation – and implies that these characteristics make autistic people more likely to pose a security risk,” he explained. “Instead of addressing the underlying bias in the system, they are doubling down by using autism diagnoses themselves as an explanation for overrepresentation.”

Under Prevent’s operating structure, after an initial screening and assessment, referrals deemed to carry a risk of radicalisation are passed to a multi-agency Channel panel, chaired by local authorities. These panels are tasked with evaluating an individual’s risk and deciding whether to approve a tailored support package to address perceived radicalisation. Of the 1,100 Channel cases accepted in the year to September 2025 with recorded ethnicity, 76% were white, 14% were Asian, 5% were Black, and 4% were categorized as other ethnicity.

Crucially, Smith added, even referrals that do not result in any further action can leave people facing long-term negative consequences. “As we documented in our 2024 report *Caught in the Web*, information about Prevent referrals – including cases that are dropped, found to be mistaken, or made with malicious intent – is shared widely across policing bodies, security services, immigration authorities and other public sector agencies,” he said. “While much of Prevent’s work operates behind closed doors, there is a very real risk of lasting harm for people who are referred, affecting not just their interactions with police but their access to all kinds of public services.”

For almost 30 years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has anchored his political power on a foundational alliance with ultra-Orthodox Jewish political parties, a partnership that has kept him in office through multiple terms. But as he prepares for one of the most competitive elections of his decades-long career, that long-standing governing coalition faces unprecedented strain, with the decades-long dispute over mandatory military conscription for ultra-Orthodox men pushing the partnership to a breaking point. The escalating conflict has laid bare deep fissures within Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, leaving political observers questioning whether his two most reliable allies—United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Shas, partners since his first term as prime minister in 1996—could abandon his bloc to align with a rival government. “There is deep disappointment and anger across the ultra-Orthodox public about their current standing,” Pnina Pfeuffer, director general of the Ultra-Orthodox Public Organisation, a civil society group focused on the community, told Middle East Eye. Pfeuffer notes that the future political alignment of ultra-Orthodox parties is now so uncertain that a break from Netanyahu is no longer a far-fetched scenario—including a potential shift to a government led by Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s most formidable challenger in years. “Eisenkot is not viewed as anti-ultra-Orthodox by the community,” she explained, referencing the former Israel Defense Forces chief’s reputation among religious voters. Avi-ram Tzoreff, an Israeli historian and human rights activist specializing in Jewish cultural, political and religious history, says the growing rift between Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox allies has opened unexpected new pathways for Israel’s opposition. “There is clearly a rupture between the ultra-Orthodox community and the right-wing bloc,” Tzoreff told MEE. Echoing a common slogan chanted at anti-conscription protests, Tzoreff added: “The ultra-Orthodox as a political force have made their position clear: they would rather die than be drafted. The alliance between ultra-Orthodox parties and the right is no longer a foregone conclusion.” Tzoreff argues that an Eisenkot-led opposition bloc could leverage these internal divisions to break apart what he calls the Israeli right’s “unnatural political alliance” with the ultra-Orthodox. For opposition parties aiming to oust Netanyahu, he says, a full rethink of traditional coalition-building strategies is necessary. “Once political alliances are structured around the question of ultra-Orthodox military conscription, it becomes far harder to build broad, inclusive coalitions,” he explained. “If the centre-left wants to take power, it needs to redefine how it draws the boundaries of its political camp.” The long-running exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from compulsory military service has existed for decades, allowing the group to focus on full-time religious study at yeshivas. But the issue exploded into Israel’s most divisive political flashpoint after the launch of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has seen hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilized for active duty. The unprecedented demand for military manpower has massively intensified public pressure to end the long-standing exemption. Netanyahu’s governing coalition has repeatedly failed to pass new legislation to regulate ultra-Orthodox conscription, triggering mass protests organized and backed by UTJ and Shas, and leading to the detention of dozens of ultra-Orthodox men charged with draft evasion. Last year, lawmakers from both ultra-Orthodox parties resigned from their cabinet posts to protest the coalition’s failure to advance a draft law that met their demands, though they continued to cooperate with the government on core legislative priorities. The dispute has also split Netanyahu’s own Likud party, where multiple sitting lawmakers have characterized attempts to pass a new conscription law that preserves most exemptions for ultra-Orthodox communities as an unacceptable concession to the alliance partners. Dan Illouz, a Knesset member who left Likud last month over the issue, told Israeli outlet Ynet that the right-wing bloc “has become idolatry” that “undermines our ability to advance right-wing economic and security policy,” including guaranteeing the Israeli military has sufficient personnel to meet its operational needs. For their part, ultra-Orthodox leaders have openly questioned their decades-long partnership with Netanyahu in recent months. In May, Rabbi Dov Lando, the influential spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah—one of the two factions that make up UTJ—publicly declared that “we no longer have trust in Netanyahu,” adding that the party was no longer politically “committed to him.” Last month, a senior Degel HaTorah official told Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that “there is no such thing as a right-wing bloc anymore,” noting the party would open coalition negotiations with any political bloc that agrees to meet its core demands on conscription. Beyond the immediate tensions within Netanyahu’s coalition, the conscription dispute has laid bare deep ideological rifts among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox leadership over the country’s military campaigns and the role of the secular state. While most opposition parties across the political spectrum agree that ultra-Orthodox men should be required to serve, analysts say the debate also reflects starkly diverging views on Israel’s war in Gaza and broader regional military engagement. Those differences were thrown into sharp relief last month, when 96-year-old Rabbi Lando delivered an unusually harsh rebuke of the Religious Zionist movement, whose supporters have played a high-profile role in both the Gaza war and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. “They wage wars not for the sake of rescue, only for the sake of the state’s honour,” Lando said, accusing Religious Zionists of being “evil” and murderers. His comments drew widespread condemnation from across Israel’s political landscape, including from Netanyahu, who called the remarks “awful” and rejected them outright. But Lando’s statements are consistent with his long-held ideological positions. Last year, he claimed Religious Zionists had “brought physical disasters, not only spiritual ones, upon the Jewish people,” arguing that Zionist actions had left Arabs hating Jews “like never before.” Pfeuffer argues that Lando’s remarks should not be read as a direct political challenge to Netanyahu’s coalition. “Rabbi Lando is expressing an ethics-based position on the situation, not a political one, and as evidence, he never demanded leaving the government over the war,” she told MEE. Instead, she says the comments reflect a long-standing ultra-Orthodox worldview that distances the community from the Israeli state’s core military ethos. “The ultra-Orthodox don’t perceive the war as their own,” Pfeuffer said, noting that over the course of the nearly 10-month conflict, “life continued fairly normally” in ultra-Orthodox communities across Israel and the occupied West Bank. Even without immediate political fallout, Pfeuffer says Lando’s intervention is significant because it offers a clear alternative to the dominant Israeli narrative surrounding the war. “It represents moderation and restraint, which stems from a perception that our place in this land is not guaranteed and that we need to live alongside our enemies,” she explained. Tzoreff echoes that analysis, noting that Lando’s comments stem from a deeply held theological position rather than a tactical political move. “If you send someone to kill in the name of the honour of the state, you’re actually elevating the theological status of the state at the expense of Torah study,” he said. “This isn’t just a random statement. It was released to the media, and even if it doesn’t currently have broad public traction, its purpose was to build support for this position over time.” Even so, Lando’s anti-war, anti-conscription position sits uneasily with a broader shift toward the right among parts of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox electorate. According to Pfeuffer, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has made significant inroads among traditional Shas and UTJ voters, complicating the political calculations of ultra-Orthodox party leaders. “Part of Shas’s constituency aren’t classic Shas voters—they could vote for Ben Gvir or Likud, because they don’t live strictly ultra-Orthodox lives. Therefore, Shas needs to show that it is part of the right-wing bloc and aligned with Netanyahu,” she explained. While Pfeuffer notes that Shas remains far more committed to Netanyahu’s coalition than UTJ, Tzoreff says the party has steadily drifted toward the far right since the 2013 death of its founding spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Shas, he says, has “undergone a process of Ben Gvirization,” as hardline religious figures such as the late Rabbi Meir Mazuz have gained increasing influence over the party’s policy and ideological direction. “Rabbi Ovadia was a bulwark against moving rightward,” Tzoreff explained. “Since the revered spiritual leader’s death, Shas has been struggling to set clear red lines. The party’s leadership, similar to other parties, doesn’t act to lead public opinion, but acts to please it.” Tzoreff says this rightward shift extends beyond Shas, pointing to increasingly close ties between ultra-Orthodox communities and Israel’s settler movement, as well as the growing adoption of nationalist rhetoric within many ultra-Orthodox communities. He also notes the strengthening of links between settlers and ultra-Orthodox communities in the occupied West Bank, alongside the growing acceptance of the idea that Torah study itself contributes to Israel’s national security. “But on the other hand, there’s a strong movement against military conscription,” he added. For Israel’s opposition parties, Tzoreff argues, this internal contradiction within the ultra-Orthodox community creates a unique political opening. “The role of the centre-left is to divide and conquer within the right-wing bloc,” he said. Rather than automatically ruling out cooperation with ultra-Orthodox parties, he says Netanyahu’s opponents should pursue pragmatic engagement with the group. “They need to consider partnership with the UTJ and Shas not out of idealization of the ultra-Orthodox, but because there is a political opening that can be exploited,” he added.