An Israeli organization called V15 has been conducting a vigorous “Anyone but Netanyahu” campaign in advance of the March elections—while being careful not to endorse any particular alternative candidate. Adi Ben Hur examines V15’s organizers and sources of funding, and concludes that something is amiss:

[D]espite the strident denials, the people behind [the V15] campaign are a long list of known Labor activists. They understand that Labor’s uncharismatic leader, Isaac Herzog, can’t do the job alone, and so they’ve decided to lend a hand. V15 is funded by the resource-rich One Voice, which is based in the U.S., where it’s known as the Peace Network Foundation, supported by a holding company known as Peaceworks, which is run by a businessman named Daniel Lubetzky. The organization is defined as an “international organization” whose goal is “solving” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . .

Even if all this activity is technically legal, it’s still very problematic. What makes it worse is the massive funding from foreign governments. Democracy means rule by the people, and the intervention of foreign countries is nothing short of subversion. . . . Christina Taylor, in charge of grants to One Voice in the U.S., said . . . that One Voice had received two grants from the U.S. State Department in 2014. Taylor claimed that the money was not meant to assist intervening in Israeli elections. The present heightened activity and presence of V15 in elections makes this disavowal dubious, to say the least.

In addition, the list of “partners” to One Voice on the English website includes the European Union, the U.S. State Department, and the British Labor and Conservative parties. Strangely, none of these last appears on the Hebrew-language website.

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.