Last week, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox leaders, together with the Israeli government, reached a compromise—years in the making—over the ever-controversial issue of non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall. The agreement, authorizing the expansion of the space allocated to non-Orthodox prayer, is a significant achievement, argues Ben Sales, though it has yet to be turned into a reality:

What’s historic here are not the particulars of the deal but the fact that it was made [at all]. For nearly three decades, a coalition of women’s-rights advocates and non-Orthodox Jews waged a fight against Israel’s Orthodox establishment. Now, the sides have signed a peace treaty—with the government’s imprimatur. Save for a breakaway faction of Women of the Wall, every party involved has endorsed this deal.

When it comes to [questions of] religion and state [in Israel], that’s really rare. No recent religious legislation—from the expansion of military conscription to 2014’s failed conversion reform—achieved this level of consensus.

But the agreement won’t mean much until it’s implemented, which is why I’ll [only] believe in the expansion when I see it.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.