Israel’s Constitutional Standoff

Israeli politics is rarely quiet, but recent events have taken the drama and volubility to another level. The country has faced 11 weeks of protests against the make-up of Israel’s governing coalition and reforms to the country’s judicial system. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets. Roads have been blocked. The Knesset and politicians’ homes in Jerusalem have been targeted. Israeli police have used mounted officers, stun grenades and water cannon to disperse demonstrators. 

Tunisia’s New Dictatorship

Tunisia has become a police state. This has not happened overnight. But it is still a shocking reversal in democratic development.  

This is the country whose former dictator was overthrown in a few days in 2011. His was the first scalp claimed by the Arab revolutions of that year. But where the tyrant Zine El Abidine Ben Ali once went (apart from running away in disgrace), his latest successor, Kais Saied, longs to follow.  

Appeasing Assad at Munich

The Arab nations are making certain not to let a good crisis go to waste. This month’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria has revealed that the region’s tyrannies have given up on confronting Syria. As their leaders have long hinted, they they want to court Bashar al-Assad again.

Zelenskyy in Britain

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in Britain for a surprise visit. ‘Freedom will win – we know Russia will lose,’ he told a joint session of Parliament in Westminster Hall this afternoon.  

The Earthquake in Syria

Natural disaster always worst affects those who have already lost so much. And so it is in Turkey and Syria, where a double earthquake has killed more than 1,900 people. Across both countries, there are widespread scenes of destruction: apartment blocks reduced to rubble; gas supplies cut off in the middle of a freezing winter; survivors left to try and pluck their relatives from the rubble. 

The Spy-Balloon Gap

In the depths of the Second World War the Japanese empire tried to start a plague of forest fires in the United States with squadrons of incendiary balloons. It failed, although six civilians were killed in a single successful balloon bombing in Oregon in May 1945. 

The Taliban Are Not Afghanistan

I cannot begin to count how many times, when talking to a policymaker, a journalist or an ordinary person in Britain, that they have tried to tell me that it’s pointless to oppose the Taliban in Afghanistan, because the Taliban are somehow ‘natural’ or ‘essential’ to the country. They believe that the Taliban are so innate to Afghanistan that they could never be beaten or marginalised. 

The Taliban Created Space for ISIS Violence in Afghanistan

The Islamic State may have been driven out of its capitals in Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqqa but that doesn’t mean it has gone. In the Philippines, West Africa, and most obviously in Afghanistan, the terror group is thriving and growing.  

A New Intifada Looms in Israel

Peace has never seemed further away for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Several dreadful incidents recently have made that point sadly obvious. 

The Tank Debacle

At long, long last, it might seem that things are coming to a head. After a year of phony excuses, ridiculous claims and constant back-peddling, some of Nato’s bigger nations are planning to give Ukraine some fairly modern main battle tanks. Not very many. And not exactly soon. But I suppose it’s the thought that counts.