Israel

The world’s eyes are on Israel at the moment, as the country continues its phenomenally fast roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine. As of yesterday, the country had vaccinated a third of its population with at least one dose, which means we are starting to find out vital information about the vaccine’s effectiveness and how it works in the real world. So what have he learned about the vaccine so far? First some statistics: as of yesterday, 78 per cent of people over the age of 60 in Israel will have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. 58 per cent of the over-60s are over 14 days from

For Israeli critics of Benjamin Netanyahu, myself included, these are rather difficult times. It’s hard for us, or anyone, to deny that he appears to be leading the world in vaccinations against Covid-19. In less than four weeks, two million Israelis — my parents and many friends among them — have received their inoculations. A project spearheaded by the Prime Minister himself promises a return to almost normal life. I’m under 50 and have no underlying illnesses, but am still confident of getting my own vaccine in a couple of weeks. Our world-beating jabbing speed means we have covered 20 per cent of the population. Britain, which has made far

Israel’s remarkable vaccine rollout has been deservedly praised. But not everyone is full of goodwill. Depressingly and inevitably, commentators and human rights groups have queued up to find a reason to condemn the Jewish state.  Israel, which is leading the world in the speed of the rollout, has been accused of ‘excluding’ the Palestinians from getting the jab and giving it to ‘settlers’ instead. ‘Denying Covid-19 vaccines to Palestinians exposes Israel’s institutionalised discrimination,’ Amnesty International has claimed. To people familiar with stories about bogeyman Israel, this is an easy narrative to get behind. But it fails to account for a simple fact: the Palestinian leaders themselves haven’t complained. Let’s start with the facts. Under

The dawn of the new year is rising on a world that would have been unrecognisable 12 months ago. The scourge of Covid, the fall of Trump, the resolution of Brexit; all have carved history in unpredictable ways. But nowhere has seen greater changes than the Middle East, where, for the first time, people are daring to believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict is over. In January 2020, Israel was as isolated as ever in the region. Its ‘cold peace’ agreements with Egypt and Jordan, which were not matched by affection on the street, were as good as it got. The Arab League’s notorious threefold rejectionism — no to peace, no

On a cold night three days before the end of the 2020 I drove down to Jerusalem’s Pais Arena. The area is usually a sports venue, next to Jerusalem’s stadium and mall, but in December it was transformed into a centre for mass vaccinations, open from morning till ten in the evening. By the first day of 2021 Israel had vaccinated more than 1 million people in two weeks, an unprecedented number, making the country a global leader in vaccinating against Covid-19. I was one of those who received the first jab of the Pfizer vaccine. Israel’s path to this milestone has been a rollercoaster of lockdowns and struggles over the

Twitter is not always kind to the Jewish state. But the peace accord between Israel, UAE and Bahrain that was signed in Washington in September has opened the floodgates to a social media love-in. In one video, recently shared by Ivanka Trump, an Israeli called Amit Deri expresses his astonishment at finding produce from his country in a food market in Dubai. Elsewhere, in pictures that were shared thousands of times, a vast Emirati flag is seen projected onto the façade of Tel Aviv’s city hall. Even Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has got involved, posting in Arabic this week to mark UAE’s national day, alongside a video in which he

The news that Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen ‘father of the bomb’ Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, met his end in a hail of bullets near Tehran today comes as no surprise. As with so many things these past four years, this is all about Trump. Whoever carried out the hit, it is all but certain that Trump gave it the nod. Once again, he is trying to put a stamp on the Middle East that Biden will find difficult to scrub out. His actions would hardly be without precedent; Obama, Clinton and Reagan all made last-gasp moves in the region to shape it in their image. But none of these Presidents were anywhere

‘They are S-C-A-R-E-D’. So said Binyamin Netanyahu in a famous 1999 election campaign speech, referring to the media. Now he is the one who is scared. The political mastermind who has been Prime Minister for the past eleven years stands to lose his crown. Israel’s political crisis of 2019-2020 saw three general elections without producing a clear winner. Eventually, asserting a need for national unity to combat the pandemic, Bibi masterfully managed to form a coalition under his leadership while dividing the main opposition party, Blue and White. Under the rotation agreement, Bibi is to step down after two years and be replaced by Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz.

Last Friday the UN Security Council rejected any extension of the arms embargo on Iran. That embargo — imposed in 2007 — began to get phased out after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But a ‘snapback’ provision was put in place intended to allow the return of all such sanctions should Iran violate the terms of the deal. Iran has been violating those terms for some time, but on Friday, when the United States hoped that its allies would join it in deploring this fact, only the Dominican Republic voted with it. The UK, like France and Germany, chose to abstain. On the question of whether Russia and China should

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a coalition agreement, after a year of uncertainty and three elections, to create a government that should keep him in power for at least another year and a half. If all goes well with his corruption trial, set to begin on May 24 after a postponement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he will have outwitted his opponents once again and remained in office more than a decade. How does Israel’s leader keep going when his own party never gets more than 35 seats in the country’s 120-member Knesset and he seems to have alienated parties on the left, right and centre? Netanyahu has

An Israeli startup called Vocalis Health is working with the country’s National Emergency Team to conduct a trial using voice samples to identify coronavirus. It is one of many innovative approaches being trialled in Israel as the country is radically transformed by the battle against the virus. The Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development said this week that the study with Vocalis Health would look at voice recordings and use artificial intelligence to help identify carriers of the disease. ‘These recordings will then undergo data analysis using neural networks.’ The idea is that an algorithm that would identify characteristics associated with symptoms of the virus. The obvious

Quassem Soleimani is dead but in Israel fear of his warped legacy lives on. The Iranian general was key to his country’s strategy of developing networks of militant groups throughout the Middle East. These organisations are all held together by one thing: a common hatred of Israel. And a month after Soleimani was killed in an US drone strike, Israel is worried that its nemesis’s objective might soon become reality. Soleimani was the mastermind of Hezbollah’s programme in Lebanon aimed at adding a deadly new weapon to the group’s arsenal. The intention is simple: to take ‘stupid’ (unguided) missiles and add GPS technology to make them accurate. Whereas in previous

‘In business, when I have a tough deal, people would say, “This is tougher than the Israelis and the Palestinians,”’ said President Donald Trump as he unveiled his long-awaited Middle East plan, the so-called Deal of the Century, during a White House ceremony on Tuesday. The comment, ad-libbed, not only demonstrated that the former real-estate tycoon does have a sense of humour. It suggested that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, President Trump is ready to do business when it comes to peace in the Holy Land. ‘Actually, there’s nothing tougher than this one but we have to get it done,’ he added. ‘We have an obligation to humanity to get