Two of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top rivals announced they would join forces in an upcoming election to oust his coalition government, with a focus mainly on domestic issues such as military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox.

But on issues like Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, the joint party led by right-wing Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid is expected to pursue a security posture similar to that of Netanyahu — who heads the most right-wing government in Israel’s history — meaning Israel’s foreign policy would remain largely unchanged.

The new party, called “BeYachad” meaning “together” in Hebrew, has not released a formal policy platform. But below is what is known about their positions on regional conflicts, based on recent public comments.

Iran

Bennett, 54, and Lapid, 62, have staunchly backed Netanyahu’s decision to jointly attack Iran with the US, reflecting broad public support in Israel for the war.

At the start of Israel’s aerial bombardment in Iran, Lapid told Reuters in an interview that it was a “just war against evil.”

Both Bennett and Lapid have since criticised Netanyahu, 76, for what they describe as a failure to achieve Israel’s main objectives in the war, including toppling Iran’s government.

However, neither man has called for a resumption in fighting since the April 8 ceasefire.

A source close to their new party described Bennett and Lapid as “hawkish” and “tough on Iran”.

They are also “pragmatic and understand the need for diplomatic agreements and the work that happens after the military use of force to achieve strategic goals,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe their party’s priorities.

Lebanon

Bennett and Lapid have also both staunchly supported Israeli military operations in Lebanon while questioning an April 17 ceasefire that has failed to halt fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah.

Shortly before Israel’s military invaded southern Lebanon in March, Lapid said that Israel must take whatever steps were necessary to protect Israelis.

After the ceasefire with Hezbollah was announced in April, Lapid said the only solution was the permanent removal of the threat to northern Israel.

Bennett sharply criticised the ceasefire, saying in an April 17 Facebook post: “One can already count backwards towards the next round. Hezbollah began this morning to rebuild southern Lebanon and is becoming stronger with missiles ahead of the next round.”

Gaza

On the war in Gaza, where Israel continued to carry out deadly strikes despite a ceasefire last October, both Bennett and Lapid criticised Netanyahu for not fully destroying Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attack.

In January, Lapid said Netanyahu’s government had achieved the “worst possible outcome” in Gaza, saying that Hamas still has tens of thousands of armed fighters. Hamas retained control of a sliver of territory on Gaza’s coast under the ceasefire.

In a Facebook post this month, Bennett said Netanyahu’s policies — including allowing some aid into the enclave after restricting all humanitarian supplies for three months in 2025 — had helped Hamas regain control.

“This is with the help of hundreds of aid trucks that Netanyahu’s government brings them every day,” Bennett wrote.

Netanyahu has cast Israel’s devastating military assault that destroyed much of Gaza and killed more than 72,000 Palestinians as a success.

He has held out the possibility of resuming a full-scale war if Hamas fails to disarm under a US-backed process, something the group has thus far rejected.

Palestinian statehood

With public opinion polling showing that most Israelis oppose the formation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, a Bennett-Lapid government would be unlikely to bring a major policy shift on the Palestinians.

Netanyahu opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state, and his government accelerated settlement building plans in the West Bank, in what ministers in his government said was part of a bid to destroy any future for Palestinian independence.

In 2022, Lapid, who like many in Israel’s political centre and left are not outright opposed to Palestinian sovereignty, said that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the right thing to do.

When asked by US broadcaster ABC during a 2024 interview why he opposed a two-state solution, Bennett said he believed it would lead to violence against Israelis.

On the West Bank, Netanyahu, Bennett and Lapid all spoke forcefully against settler violence toward Palestinians.

Such attacks escalated under Netanyahu, who critics accused of allowing settlers free rein to burn Palestinian villages and harm villagers. Netanyahu’s office denied this.

India named veteran politician Dinesh Trivedi as its next high commissioner to Bangladesh on Monday, in a rare appointment of a non-foreign service officer as New Delhi seeks to reset ties with its eastern neighbour.

Ties between the countries soured after a popular uprising forced Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to New Delhi in 2024, where she remains.

Trivedi’s appointment highlights India’s push to rebuild trust with Bangladesh as it faces stiff competition from China for influence and business.

Trivedi, 75, a former railways and health minister, joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2021 from a regional party in West Bengal, a border state that plays a key role in India’s ties with Bangladesh and where Modi has been seeking to expand his party’s influence in ongoing local elections.

“He is expected to take up the assignment shortly,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement about Trivedi.

Relations between the two countries began improving only after an election in February brought Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power, replacing an interim government that had veered strongly towards China.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister visited Delhi this month seeking increased fuel and fertiliser supplies, closer energy cooperation and eased travel restrictions, but one of the biggest sticking points remains India’s refusal so far to extradite Hasina.

The man accused of shooting a US Secret Service agent as he tried to breach security at a Washington dinner attended by President Donald Trump is facing federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president, a judge said in court on Monday.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, also faces firearms charges in a three-count complaint.

Allen wore a blue prison jumpsuit at his first appearance in Washington federal court, two days after authorities said they foiled an attack at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, an annual black-tie gathering of journalists and politicians.

“He attempted to assassinate the president of the United States, Donald J Trump,” prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine said in court.

Allen has not yet responded to the allegations. Seated at the defence table flanked by US Marshals, Allen said he would answer all questions truthfully and that he had a master’s degree in computer science.

US Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaughordered Allen detained while the case moves forward. Sharbaugh scheduled another hearing over Allen’s continued detention for Thursday.

‘Friendly federal assassin’

Allen left a manifesto with family members referring to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and discussing plans to target senior Trump administration officials, who were present in the hotel ballroom.

Blanche said his targets likely included Trump himself.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday described the Saturday night attack as the third major assassination attempt against Trump, after two attempts on his life in 2024. She compared the rhetoric in the manifesto to criticism of Trump by his political opponents.

“Much of the manifesto of the would-be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many,” Leavitt said. “The entire Democrat Party has made their pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist.”

Prominent elected Democrats have condemned the shooting.

Allen booked a room at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the dinner took place, and travelled from California to Washington by train, officials said.

The shooting on Saturday rattled the press dinner, a prominent event on Washingtons social calendar, sending attendees scrambling under tables and prompting law enforcement to whisk senior officials out of the room. Trump, who was set to deliver remarks later in the evening, was rushed off the stage by security personnel after shots were fired.

Secret service agent struck

The suspect allegedly fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent at a checkpoint inside the hotel before being tackled and arrested, according to authorities.

Video footage Trump posted online showed the suspect sprinting through a hallway outside the ballroom.

US officials have said the suspect was subdued just inside a security perimeter and have touted his takedown as a law enforcement success. But the incident has revived concerns about the safety of Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during his 2024 presidential campaign, and other US officials.

The Secret Service agent was struck but a tactical vest stopped the shot, and the agent was released from a hospital hours later.

Allen, who authorities said was armed with a handgun and multiple knives, in addition to the shotgun, was also taken to a local hospital to be evaluated following the shooting.

Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla will arrive in the United States later on Monday for a four-day trip, a tour which has taken on even greater prominence after the White House Correspondents’ dinner shooting and amid acrimony between the close allies.

The state visit, by far the most high-profile and consequential of Charles’s reign, marks the 250th anniversary of the US declaration of independence from British rule, and is the first visit to the country by a British monarch for two decades.

It begins with a private meeting with self-proclaimed royal fan US President Donald Trump, and includes an address to Congress and a lavish dinner at the White House.

Press dinner shooting just days before visit

But the long-planned trip has become enmeshed in the political spat between the two countries over the US-Israeli war on Iran, which led Trump to voice deep displeasure with the British government for failing to support the offensive.

The shooting on Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, with the president and officials in his administration the likely targets according to the US acting attorney general, has cast a further pall over the visit.

Buckingham Palace said the trip would still go ahead as planned following discussions between British and US authorities to determine if the incident would impact on the royals’ plans.

“The king and queen are most grateful to all those who have worked at pace to ensure this remains the case and are looking forward to the visit getting underway tomorrow,” a palace spokesperson said on Sunday.

Trump has criticised UK over Iran stance

On arriving in Washington, the king and queen have a private tea with the president, an unabashed lover of the British royal family who regularly describes Charles as a “great man”, and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump.

The 77-year-old king, who is still undergoing treatment for cancer, will address Congress the next day — just the second time a British monarch has done so.

The royals will then head on to New York, where they will commemorate those killed in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks ahead of the 25th anniversary, while the queen will also mark the centenary of children’s stories featuring Winnie the Pooh.

The US trip concludes in Virginia with the king meeting those involved in conservation work, a nod to his half-century of environmental campaigning.

The government of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is hoping the visit will shore up the future of the two allies’ “special relationship”, which is at its lowest point since the Suez Crisis in 1956.

Britain’s ambassador to the US, Christian Turner, said the visit would underscore the shared history, sacrifice and common values between the two countries, adding that the approach would be a very British one of: “Keep calm, carry on.”

While Trump has eased his criticism of Britain in recent days over its response to the Iran war, an internal Pentagon email has set out how the US could review its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands as punishment for its lack of support, once again straining ties.

One issue off the table during the visit is the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Royal sources have said it was not possible for the royal couple to meet any victims of Epstein during the tour, as some have requested, to avoid impacting on any potential criminal cases.

Charles’ brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, whose reputation and royal standing has been destroyed over his links to the late US sex offender, is currently facing police inquiries over his connections. The former Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing.

The conflict in the Middle East has disrupted supplies of crucial raw materials and pushed up prices of the printed circuit boards (PCB) used in almost all electronic devices, from smartphones and computers to AI servers, industry sources and executives said.

The disruption is a fresh blow to electronics manufacturers which are already grappling with soaring memory chip costs and highlights the broadening impact of the Iran war that has wreaked havoc on supply chains, plastics, and oil supplies.

Iran struck Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex in early April, forcing a halt in production of high-purity polyphenylene ether (PPE) resin a critical base material used to manufacture PCB laminates.

SABIC, which accounts for approximately 70 per cent of the world’s high-purity PPE supply and operates in the Jubail complex on the Gulf coast, has been unable to resume output, severely tightening the availability of the material worldwide, according to one source. Shipping in and out of the Gulf has also been severely disrupted by the war.

PCB prices have been climbing since late last year, driven by a growing appetite for AI servers. Demand has been accelerating sharply since March as manufacturers scramble to secure raw material supplies and soften the impact of skyrocketing costs, three industry sources told Reuters.

In April alone, PCB prices surged as much as 40pc from March, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a recent note. Cloud service providers are willing to accept further increases as they expect demand will outstrip supplies over the coming years, they added.

The global PCB industry is projected to increase by 12.5pc to reach $95.8 billion in 2026, according to a recent report from Prismark.

Daeduck Electronics, a South Korean PCB maker whose customers include Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and AMD, has begun discussions with customers over price increases, a senior executive at the company told Reuters.

The executive, who declined to be named due to sensitivity of the subject, said his priority has now changed from meeting customers to suppliers, as the waiting time for chemical materials such as epoxy resin have stretched to 15 weeks from three weeks previously.

The sharp rise in PCB prices was also driven by a shortage of other key materials, including glass fiber and copper foil, according to one source. Copper foil prices have surged as much as 30pc so far this year, with the rally gaining momentum in March, the source added.

Copper accounts for around 60pc of total raw material costs in PCB manufacturing, according to Victory Giant Technology, a major Chinese PCB supplier for Nvidia. The Chinese firm warned earlier this month that the Middle East conflict could push up prices for key materials including resin and copper.

Multi-layer PCBs can cost around 1,394 yuan ($204) per square metre, with higher-end models for AI servers costing around 13,475 yuan, according to Victory Giant.