This letter appears in the Daily Telegraph today, 21 January 2025 Sir Colonel D P Dunseath (Letters, January 20) says that Hamas exists because of the Palestinians' sense of grievance at not having a viable and independent state . But the last thing Hamas wants is a two-state solution, since one of the states would be Israel. Its aim is to eliminate Israel and create a Jew-free Palestine "from the river to the sea". The stumbling block to peace in the region has always been rejection by Palestinian leaders of Israel's right to exist (endorsed by UN Resolution 181 in 1947). That is why ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 20 January 2025 As the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage handover comes into effect, media and public opinion is divided on whether we are witnessing Hamas snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  Very early on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that one of his war aims was to destroy Hamas.  Wounded, even disabled, Hamas may be, but it is not destroyed.  Playing the hostage card to advantage, it is imposing its demands on the deal.  Even so, one thing is reasonably certain – Hamas will never again govern Gaza.  The f ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 January 2025 What is to become of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority at some two million people? The Syrian civil war, starting in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In face of the all-conquering military advance of Islamic State (ISIS), Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them.  A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS, allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably successful.&nb ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 6 January 2025               Afterthe Syrian people themselves, it is Turkey that has emerged as the biggest winner from the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.  As soon as Assad fled to Moscow, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knew that fate had played into his hands. It was as far back as March 2012 that Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Assad, but within a few days of the regime’s overthrow it had re-established its diplomatic representation in Syria, and Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 31 December 2024             Four of Iran’s main anti-Israel instruments are effectively out of action.  Hamas is a shadow of the fighting force it once was; Hezbollah has been neutered and is currently in a two-month ceasefire deal; Iran’s two efforts at a direct attack on Israel were humiliatingly ineffective; and control of the militias in Syria has been wrested from Iran’s grasp.  As a result Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has been forced to fall back on the one resource still effective – the Houthis ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Report, cover date 6 January 2025    The Oxford Union is arguably the most prestigious student debating society in the world.  Founded in 1823, it has hosted some of the world’s greatest figures such as US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, countless British prime ministers and their Cabinet colleagues, and many of the world’s leading actors, musicians, authors and scientists.  Few are they, even among the most eminent, who refuse an invitation to participate in a debate in the Oxford Union, while to become President ..read more

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 23 December 2024             Abu Mohammed al-Julani surely never envisaged the rapidity with which the Assad regime would crumble under the assault he master-minded on November 27. It must, however, have been clear to him that if he was ever to make a bid to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, this was the moment.  It was a golden opportunity.  The two powers that had come to his aid time and again in the past were both preoccupied with their own problems.  Russia was bogged down in the quagmire of the Ukrainian war; &n ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 December 2024: Well before the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia found itself victorious in its struggle against the Assad regime, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, its head, told CNN:  “The goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime.” But Julani omitted to say what he wished to replace it with. Despite all his softly spoken reassurances about his liberal intentions, all the evidence points to a political takeover ​of the country by the leader of the military coup – in fact a Sunni jihadist replacement of Assad.&n ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 December, 2024 Did Iran oppose or approve of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, agreed on November 26 and implemented in the early hours of the following day?  ​Opinion is divided, views differing according to the holder's perception of Iran’s complex geopolitical interests in the region.   ​Some ​of the media speculate that Iran saw the ​proposed ceasefire as conflicting with its strategic interests by undermining its leverage against Israel,​ and opposed it.​  Some  ..read more

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 December 2024             On his first time around the presidential election circuit, Donald J Trump placed such emphasis on his desire to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, that once he was elected I decided to follow his progress on this matter with especial care.  The result was my book “Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020” (see right), which I brought to a conclusion with a summary of the Israel-Palestinian peace plan that had been assiduously put together over the preceding four years by ..read more