Israel’s third election season in the past year started out fairly blasé in early January, but it was jolted awake this week by two major developments. First, caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped his petition in the Knesset for parliamentary immunity from criminal prosecution, which means the high-profile trial of the three cases against him could start even before the election takes place. Second, US President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited peace plan to forge a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The new U.S. Mideast peace plan is an effort to take the comatose peace process in a bold new direction. This is no “land for peace” approach, like the one tested in the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which resulted in the strip becoming a rocket launching pad for Hamas. Instead, Palestinians are being presented with a series of steps establishing a path for sovereignty.

Iran’s hard-line establishment is trying to ensure through a state propaganda campaign that the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its assassinated commander are not forgotten. Major General Qasem Soleimani — the late commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force — was targeted and killed by a U.S. air strike in Baghdad on January 3. Since then, Tehran’s conservative clerics and hard-line media have been paying tribute to the memory of “Martyr Soleimani,” as he’s now referred to in Iran.