Iran launched a major missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, just hours after the Jewish state began a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán convened a meeting of the government’s National Security Cabinet and also condemned the Iranian attack in a post on X.
Historically, so-called ‘October surprises’ have influenced election outcomes, particularly when they involve national security or military engagement that provides little room for candidates to respond and little time for voters to digest before heading to the polls. A broader conflict in the Middle East could become a significant liability for Harris’s campaign, especially if US forces get drawn into the fighting.
The Hungarian government and Jewish communities, along with thousands of ordinary Hungarians, have shown full support of and solidarity with the State of Israel and the Jewish people in a number of ways since 7 October. We have listed the most important ones on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Hungary–Israel relations.
Over the weekend, the Israeli Defense Forces found the bodies of six Israeli hostages killed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. In their initial reports major international media outlets were reluctant to spell out Hamas’s responsibility in their headlines, unsurprisingly for those who have been following the conflict and the media coverage attentively from the beginning of the war. This most recent example highlights the mainstream media’s growing tendency to deny or distort reality when it suits them.
The escalation has raised concerns of a broader conflict in the region, as Israel declared a 48-hour state of emergency and placed restrictions on public gatherings and transport across the northern regions. Both sides have signalled that further actions may be taken, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to protect the nation at all costs, while Hezbollah indicated that their response to ‘Israel’s provocations’ was only beginning.
The situation in the Middle East is becoming increasingly tense, with escalatory developments taking place one after the other. This week, Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a precision strike. In response, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered a direct attack on Israel.
The threat of escalation in the Middle East is growing following Saturday’s deadly strike by Hezbollah on an Israeli-controlled settlement in the Golan Heights. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has even gone so far as to threaten Israel with an invasion.
In an official statement of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Hungarian government expressed its disagreement with the recent findings of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, according to which Israel’s presence in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem is ‘unlawful’, while Israel’s ‘policies and practices’ in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including ‘the maintenance and expansion of settlements’, amount to the ‘annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.’
The level of escalation in the Middle East has risen significantly after Israel struck a Houthi-controlled port in Yemen over the weekend, marking the first such attack since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out last October. The retaliatory strike follows a deadly drone attack by the Yemeni Houthis on Tel Aviv.
In December last year a new law created a distinct category for ‘EU minorities’ in Ukraine (such as the Hungarian and Romanian ethnic minorities) that now have access to more privileges than for instance the Russian minority. Later, as a sign of goodwill to better relations, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó visited Ukraine. Now, with the meeting between Orbán and Zelenskyy the two country’s relationship is officially warming up. If in the long-term Budapest does manage to considerably contribute to peace between Russia and Ukraine, as it clearly intends to, it might have a long-lasting positive impact on bilateral relations.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
