Middle East

Qatar is the Middle East’s mediator-in-chief. The assassination of Hamas’s senior leadership and Gaza War’s regionalisation to Lebanon have not thwarted Qatar’s push for a ceasefire and the release of ninety-seven Israeli hostages in Hamas’s custody.  The CIA and Mossad chiefs brainstormed plans for a hostage release deal Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani welcomed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Doha last Thursday. Sheikh Mohammed announced that Qatar had ‘re-engaged’ with Hamas after Yahya Sinwar’s death and would host US and Israeli negotiators for ceasefire talks. Blinken enthusiastically endorsed this proposal. On Sunday, CIA chief Bill Burns and Mossad head David Barnea arrived in Doha. As

Israel’s overt ground intervention into Lebanon is now entering its third week.  So far, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have advanced just a few kilometers in and established control in a number of locations across the border.  The IDF itself has described its ground action on the border as consisting of ‘limited, localised and targeted raids.’  Standing at a border observation post a few days ago, my impression was that this description appears accurate, at least for now.  Looking across to the towns of Bint Jbeil, Maroun a Ras, Ain Ebel and Ait a Shaab, we heard the occasional sound of artillery cannons.  Twice, we saw interceptions of ordnance fired

When Iran attacked Israel last week with a barrage of missiles, one thing was certain: Israel would hit back hard. Ten days on, that response has still not come. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has warned that the retaliatory strike on Iran will have an element of surprise. Israel’s attack, he said, ‘will be deadly, precise and above all surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results.’ A wounded Iran with the IRGC still in charge could prove more dangerous Gallant knows that this element of surprise is critical; without it, Israel may have insufficient conventional capability to land a decisive first-blow strike.

From sunset on Wednesday until sunset today, Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It comes after a hellish 12 months for Israel and the Jewish diaspora at large. It started with Hamas’s brutal terror attack of 7 October and ended with an Iranian missile barrage on Tuesday night. There is undoubtedly more to come as Israel tries to push back Hezbollah, bring about an end to the near daily rocket attacks and allow displaced citizens from the north to return home. The plight of the remaining hostages looms large I was in Israel just a few weeks ago. In the run up to arriving at

Israel has come under widespread missile attack from Iran. Some 200 ground-to-ground missiles were launched from Iran, according to Israeli media. Israelis have been ordered to stay in bomb shelters while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) intercept missiles overhead. The sound of interceptions over Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, are constant and deafening. So far, there don’t appear to be any casualties or direct hits. Among Iran’s targets were military bases, including airforce and intelligence facilities. It’s not known whether the attack has now finished, or if another wave of missiles is making its way to Israel. Elsewhere, a terror attack this evening in Jaffa has resulted in the death

At the end of the 2014 film Kingsman: the Secret Service, the plucky spy hero is in trouble deep in an enemy base. Suddenly his tech wizard figures out that he can hack into the microchips inside the enemies’ heads and make them all explode. The bad guys all go boom. Hezbollah fighters must be asking themselves what other tricks Israel might have up its sleeves On Tuesday night, the spy thriller trope became real. Across Lebanon, Hezbollah operatives’ secure pagers exploded. Security camera footage showed the small explosions in supermarkets and shops, leaving Hezbollah terror operatives bleeding or worse. More than 3,000 people were injured in the hundreds of blasts,

The Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is a moderate man and chooses his words carefully. So his statement about David Lammy’s suspension of 30 export licences to Israel was striking in its tone, if not surprising in its content. The Foreign Secretary’s timing did feel a bit rum ‘It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on the 7th October, and at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by