Military pillar: added Defense Minister Katz's repeated refusal (most recently August 12) to withdraw from security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza despite declared US pressure, and a contingency plan announced by Katz and Netanyahu in September for a broad military campaign in the West Bank against Palestinian Authority officials should an October 7-style attack be detected (a declared plan, not an executed operation).
Settlement: added the E1 tender (1,234 units, August 18) and a joint statement from 17 countries calling it "unacceptable" (August 20), with the UN Secretary-General describing the plan as an "existential threat"; added ACLED's record settler-violence data for the first half of 2026 (a 63% rise, more than 460 incidents in June alone), Netanyahu's internal description of the violence as a "metastasizing cancer," and Finance Minister Smotrich's explicit statement at a party event encouraging Palestinian "emigration," alongside Israeli journalist Gideon Levy's commentary supporting the same reading.
Palestinian economy: added the correspondent-banking crisis between Israel's Bank Hapoalim and Discount Bank and the Palestinian banking system (a threatened cutoff in August-September, delayed to end of 2026 after US-European pressure).
Internal cohesion: added the Israel Democracy Institute's finding that 73% of Jewish Israelis aged 18-24 now identify as right-wing, a propaganda children's book from Ben-Gvir's party distributed at schools, and an AI-generated video of prisoners; and added a Financial Times report (September 2026) on the rise of religious nationalism within the Israeli military (disproportionate representation in infantry and reserve leadership, the case of reservist Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir's warning of "eroding discipline").
American alliance: added Aisha Wahab's congressional win despite more than $2.5 million spent against her by AIPAC-linked committees, and Ilhan Omar's primary win without a serious lobby challenge this cycle.
Narrative battle: added Israel's INSS research (May 2026) recommending government intervention against what it calls Wikipedia bias, presented as evidence of Israeli institutional anxiety over losing control of the knowledge layer, not as confirmation that the underlying claim is true.
Gaza and the "day after" plan: added Netanyahu's formal public rejection of the US president's 15-point plan (August 9-10) and his statement that there will be no Palestinian state as long as he is prime minister.
Design: added a prominent "Version Archive" button on the homepage next to the study and changelog buttons, after access previously required searching the footer.
Comprehensive review: every page on the site (not just the four known spots) was programmatically checked to ensure the version number and update date are consistent everywhere they appear, after the previous update revealed spots that had been missed.
New sources: added ACLED, Financial Times, The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and the Israel Democracy Institute to the source index (now 23 sources total).
Excluded after discussion: a claim that US federal debt has surpassed 150% of GDP as an inevitable collapse threshold (the actual figure is 101-134% depending on the measure, and no rigorous source sets 150% as a defined threshold), and a statement by historian Ilan Pappé predicting the imminent collapse of the Zionist project (a recurring personal prediction made repeatedly over several years, not a verifiable data point, excluded on the same standard applied earlier to the Sheikhs Jarrar and Yassin predictions).
Correction: the 2025 net migration figure was wrongly recorded as a preliminary estimate of 37,000; that figure turns out to be the Taub Center's projection for 2026, not a 2025 number. The final official 2025 figure, released by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics in early 2026, is a negative balance of about 20,000 (69,300 residents left against only 19,000 who returned, plus 24,600 new immigrants). The figure was corrected in the main study and on the "migration balance" data page, with the previous text kept visible at each spot as a declared correction, not a silent deletion.
Update: the "internal cohesion" section had described the 2026 election as "conjectures, not facts"; the Knesset dissolved itself 62-0 on July 17, 2026, and the election is legally set for October 27, 2026, with a new centrist party led by Gadi Eisenkot ("Yashar") overtaking Likud in Kan polling. The previous text was kept visible in an update note.
Additions: the "Was Iran's nuclear program destroyed?" page was given context on the February 28-April 8, 2026 war (900 strikes, the assassination of Khamenei, none of the four stated goals achieved) to match the main study, which already documented it.
Settlement: 54 settlements formally approved in 2025 against just 5 in 2024, 363 outposts as of April 2026, a $2.79 billion financing agreement with the Samaria Regional Council, and the UN Human Rights Office's (OHCHR) description of settler violence as an "all-time high," with partial 2026 figures (18 killed as of July 20, 700 displaced in the first four months).
Gaza: the death toll was updated to 73,384 (as of August 8, 2026; Gaza Ministry of Health) with the previous UN-compiled figure (72,600) kept visible for comparison, and an independent academic estimate from a field survey published in The Lancet Global Health was added.
Economy: the record Wiz and CyberArk tech acquisitions (March 2026), and the IMF's projection that Israel will outperform every G7 economy in 2026.
Regional normalization: Netanyahu's reported wish (Haaretz) to lock in a Saudi deal before the October election, and Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, and Turkey blaming Israel for stalling the Gaza plan (August 16, 2026).
Consistency fix: added Gallup to the Arabic-language source list at the foot of the study, which had previously listed it only in English.
Corrected the assessment of the June 2025 Iran strikes after US intelligence assessments contradicted the official account. Added the February 2026 war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the depletion of American interceptor stocks. Added Section 224 of the US defense bill. Removed the three-scenario table as insufficiently grounded. Split the conclusion into two parts: what the data say, and the author’s reading. Read the full v2.1 as published.
Added six sections: the demographic balance between the river and the sea, economic control, the human and urban cost, regional normalization, the battle of narratives, and the transformation of American politics. Added the annexation track and settler violence. Published the full English version.
First version: seven pillars, the era matrix, Ben-Gurion’s pillars, and the historical comparisons.