What can Britain learn from Israel on ending lockdown?

Israel has been the world’s whole-country experiment to establish how, and how fast, Covid vaccination can return life to normal (as much as life is ever normal in a country where there is constant tension over the rights and future of Palestinians).

I am in Jerusalem, trying to understand the implications for stability in Israel and peace in the Middle East of a new government where prime minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to any kind of Palestinian state, and the alternate PM Yair Lapid passionately believes a two-state solution is the only answer.

I’ll return to that in later reports, though the short answer – according to members of the government – is that nothing formal or constitutional can and will change during the uncertain life of this coalition to bring peace with the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank.

That said, the government will continue a process started by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of normalising relations with the external Arab world (Lapid is set to do something next week never before done by an Israeli minister, which is that he is making a formal visit to the UAE).