World roundup: July 31 2026
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Spain, Honduras, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
July 31 (or thereabouts), 751: An Abbasid army defeats an imperial Tang Chinese force at the Battle of Talas in Central Asia. Arab and Chinese armies had by this point bumped into one another several times in that region, but Talas proved to be fairly decisive in terms of establishing Islamic over Chinese primacy. The main reason for this isn’t so much the battle as the subsequent An Lushan Rebellion in China, which the Tang survived but in a substantially weaker state with much less control over their imperial periphery. Talas was also once believed to have been instrumental in the transmission of paper-making technology from China to the Arabs and thus on to the West, but this seems to be overblown.
July 31, 1941: The invading Wehrmacht defeats the Soviet Red Army at the Battle of Smolensk, part of World War II’s Operation Barbarossa. Though a fairly stunning German tactical victory, leaving over 400,000 Soviet soldiers killed or wounded and over 300,000 captured, strategically Smolensk contributed to the overall collapse of the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The stiff Soviet resistance caused German leaders to slow down their advance on Moscow, which gave the Soviets time to strengthen their defenses around the city and contributed to the attrition of the German army. The subsequent Battle of Moscow ended in a significant Soviet victory.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The question of the day seems to be where things stand now that Hamas and Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” have apparently concluded an agreement that would see the former disarm. The answer, as far as I can tell, is pretty much the same place they stood before the deal was announced. Although Trump referred to it as “a big step for the Middle East” on Friday, informing reporters that “people are really impressed by it, and they're surprised by it,” the two parties that will actually have to participate for the agreement to work don’t appear to have materially changed their positions. Hamas is still insisting that it won’t disarm until the Israeli government fulfills its obligations under the October “ceasefire” agreement, while the Israeli government is still insisting that it won’t fulfill those obligations unless Hamas disarms. Same as it ever was, more or less.
