It’s been a strange old week, somehow slightly surreal as I read the British newspapers and watch the local news reports of terrorist attacks in southern Israel, missiles raining down from Gaza, and the Libyan regime teetering on the brink of total destruction. 

All this from the fairly sunny climes first of southern England and London, and now back home in Leeds, in ‘God’s Own Country’, Yorkshire. I’ve been spending a few weeks over here on business and have seen first-hand the stunning realisation of the British people that revolutions and rioting don’t only happen in far away distant lands, but can also spring up right under your nose. The London riots showed that beneath the veneer of co-existence and prosperity that the Brits would like the rest of the world to believe is the case here, there are a multitude of serious social and racial problems that appear to be bubbling towards the surface and that may, one day, engulf this ‘green and pleasant land’.

I take no pleasure in seeing Britain fall on hard times, in the sense of doom and gloom that seems all pervading here at the moment, in the fear in the mind of everyone I speak to that it is more likely than not that the worst of the economic and other hardships that have be spoken of are still yet to come.

Despite all the problems here in Britain this island nation does not however face the kind of threat that seems to be looming large on the horizon in Israel, where the breakdown of law and order in surrounding nations and the consequent instability that this has brought to the region has – as I suggested more than six months ago – resulted in the likelihood of a major conflict looking more of a probability than a possibility. Last Thursday I stood at Bosham , where a thousand years ago King Canute tried to stop the waves reaching the shore, and I wondered whether the wave of unsavoury happenings back home in the Middle East could possibly be stopped or has gained its own, inevitable, irreversible momentum.

Egypt’s loss of control over the Sinai Peninsular has opened the door for terror groups operating around the Middle East to enter via Sudan and then move freely into Gaza, from where they launched the deadly attacks last week that killed eight Israelis. Despite the leader of the terror group that carried out the attacks having been killed along with a number of his cohorts in airstrikes on their compound, there seems little doubt that unless frenetic diplomatic activity can bear unexpected fruit there will be a major escalation in the conflict, with Hamas determined not to lose face, even though they have said they will observe a ceasefire if Israel agree to do the same.

The problem is that whilst Hamas might agree to this their proxy militias (who still act with their tacit approval in all matters), have sent barrages of missiles into southern Israel in the area spanning Beer Sheba, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Ashdod, a move that invites Israel to have to seek them out and destroy their weapons supply routes, launching pads and weapons dumps. If Israel doesn’t grasp this nettle very quickly, I suspect that even more lethal weaponry could find its way into the Jewish homeland placing many more lives at risk.

With Iran boasting of the progress of their nuclear project, Syria quite likely to attempt to distract attention from the mass murder of their own people by potentially engineering a conflict with Israel in the north, severe instability in Lebanon, internal political turmoil in Jordan, Egypt staring at potential civil breakdown and disorder once again before elections are even held, and the Turks determined to continue with their pathetic attempts at smothering the UN report that reportedly exonerates Israel from any significant wrongdoing in the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair last year, these are incredibly difficult times for Israel and indeed for all the people of the Middle East.

And all this less only a month before Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, determinedly intends to ask the UN to vote on officially recognising a Palestinian State, against the best advice of many of his closest advisors, a move that would alienate all of North America, much of Europe, and a significant number of countries around the world from the cause of establishing a genuine Palestinian State that offers secure borders and genuine peace with Israel. This premature bid for statehood would likely result in the suspension of economic support for the Palestinians on the West Bank at a time when they are at last seeing light at the end of the tunnel and moving ahead rapidly in a minor economic boom centred around Ramallah.

Abbas’ foolish reconciliation with the blatantly terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza has hopelessly undermined his legitimacy and done untold damage to the Palestinian cause, but more than anything, it may irreversibly set back the progress made in recent years, catapulting the West Bank into disharmony and financial crisis and further destabilising the region.

I believe that the next four or five weeks are going to be absolutely crucial in determining the destiny of Israel and its neighbours for a generation. This is a time to hold your breath and hope that good sense and reason will prevail in a part of the world where such attributes have been rarely seen in recent times.

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When I first started blogging a couple of years ago the original idea was to keep family and friends overseas updated as to what was going on over here and give a picture of what life is really like for an ordinary Israeli
family. 


The blog has evolved somewhat since those early days and has surprised me at the number of people who are kind enough to take a few minutes a week to read or listen to me blithering on about politics, culture and
day-to-day happenings here in this beautiful, but crazy place. I’m grateful to all those people from around the world who follow the blog and hope you continue to find things of interest as I express my personal opinion on what I see and hear going on around me in the Holy Land.

 
I try and tell it how it is; as I see it. I don’t have a set
political agenda or a body of viewers or listeners who expect to hear a particular viewpoint (as is the case with so many major media organizations), and I’m afraid that sometimes the subject matter can be very serious as it is
in this week’s update. So much is going on in this part of the world at the moment, so I’ll dash through the main points that need to be raised.

 
First of all, (and following on from my last blog where I warned of the likelihood of a national strike and general discord within Israel), the protests about housing costs have gathered momentum and there are now tented  cities in major gardens and public parks across the country. There is an extraordinarily high level of consensus on this issue with an alliance never before seen of pressure groups coming together to try and force the government to change their housing policies, to force prices down and give young people a chance to get on the ladder and find a starter home of their own.

 
Who would have imagined even a month ago that students, doctors, the Gay Pride movement, the ultra-orthodox Haredim, mothers with babies, and public servants, would all band together on any issue. But housing, together with the fight for better wages for professionals in the medical fraternity (and doubtless very soon the teaching profession), is an issue that appears to have hit home for all sections of society, and even PM Netanyahu’s half-hearted  attempts to take the heat out of the situation by making concessions on  releasing land for development and the freezing of a scheduled further rise in fuel prices, has failed to pacify the objectors. Israel is in for a very lively few months of public demonstrations and people power.

 
Externally however, matters are even more serious. The trial of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for treason for selling oil to Israel in a deal legitimately brokered with international approval during the original
peace negotiations in 1979, is an indication of the direction in which our former partner-in-peace is heading. Add to this the unchecked freedom of  movement of goods through the Egyptian side of the Gaza border and the reported massive arsenal of weapons that is being prepared for an all out war with  Israel by Hamas, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we could be in  for a very tough time in the near future. Masses of weapons have reportedly arrived in the fundamentalist Islamic enclave from Iran and the Yemen via the Egyptian border crossing, and only yesterday missiles from Gaza fell close to Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat as well as in open land in the Negev. 

 
I am no war monger, but Israel has to move fast and decisively to neutralise an arsenal that is set to be unleashed on our population centres in the south and possibly further afield, in the near future. It came as no
surprise to learn that last night the Israel Air Force (IAF) launched a series of strikes on weapons dumps in Gaza around Khan Younis, the first (I believe) of a series of raids that must be carried out to  remove as much ammo from Hamas’ hands as possible. A spokesman for the IAF however insisted that this does not signal an escalation on the Gazan front in the near future. We’ll wait and see.


Across Israel’s north-eastern border matters in Syria and getting worse by the day with more than 200 people killed yesterday by Assad’s army in the town of Hama. Syria is on the verge of all out civil war and Assad is determined to go down fighting. I believe that the only weapon left to him that can possibly re-unite his abused and unfortunate people behind their evil dictator, is if he declares war on Israel and returns to the old chestnut of  demanding the return of the Golan Heights. All indications are that an escalation in tensions in the north is simply a matter of time.

 
Ask yourself this question. If Assad has no qualms at all about murdering thousands of his own citizens in cold blood whilst he still has a significant amount of control over the internal situation in his vast country, what would he try and do to Israel if he realised he had nothing left to lose but to declare all-out war on his old enemy in a last-ditch attempt to regain his lost popular support? The feeble response of the international community in Libya has looked positively robust in comparison to their muted objections and all-too-late censure of Syria for the murder of so many innocent men, women and children, whilst the statement of the Lebanese representative at the UN yesterday in condemning the motion to increase sanctions on Syria, only serves to demonstrate how Syria still calls all the shots in their neighbouring country through their hugely powerful militia, Hezbollah.

 
If and when Assad goes, his departure will most likely further destabilise Lebanon, offering a vacuum for Hezbollah to strengthen their grip on the country and very likely begin their own conflict in the north.

 
As the sun beats down on us and tourist numbers reach all-time highs, as the Israeli economy (relative to most others in the world) booms, and on the surface all seems hunky dory, I genuinely fear that we could be on the
verge of a very, very difficult period ahead. Despite these fears, I am confident though that Israel will overcome whatever challenges we may face us
just around the corner.

The simple truth is that we have no other option but to
succeed.

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