Until 2018, no member of the British royal family had ever visited Israel in an official capacity, but the first to do so unofficially was Prince Philip, the late husband of Queen Elizabeth, who came in 1994 to a ceremony at Yad Vashem honoring his mother, Princess Alice of Greece, for rescuing Jews from the Nazis. Philip indeed had a long record of sympathy for Jews and Jewish state. While researching a book about Anglo-Jewish photographers, the historian Michael Berkowitz interviewed the duke of Edinburgh, and recalls the meeting:

Sterling Henry Nahum, [the Jewish photographer] known as “Baron,” asserted that he was intimate with the royal couple and especially friendly with Prince Philip. . . . Baron’s account, though not exactly a literary masterpiece, struck me as sincere, [and] his photos of then-Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip . . . inspired me to dig deeper. The couple appeared relaxed, even jovial when Baron was behind the camera. I thought this revealed a level of comfort they didn’t share with other photographers. I wondered: what were their own feelings about Baron? So I wrote to the queen in November 2011 and she suggested that I contact her husband separately.

I met with Prince Philip in his library, in Buckingham Palace, for some 45 minutes. . . . Prince Philip confirmed that Baron’s account was solid and that Baron was, indeed, his best friend—and squash partner. He did not recall if he ever knew about Baron’s specific ethnic or religious background, except for him being foreign. . . . One of the [other] questions I had for the duke was, in fact, about his wife’s relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz. . . . He said they got on “like a house on fire.”

I appreciate, immensely, the honestly, generosity, and humility of the duke of Edinburgh. He shook my hand (what a grip!), we sat down (alone), talked seriously and quickly, and had more than a few loud laughs between us.

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.