On December 26, the World Chess Championship—one of the game’s biggest tournaments—opened in Riyadh. The Saudi government, in what may be a sign of liberalization, announced in advance that female players would be allowed to play bareheaded, in Western dress. But allowing Israeli players was a bridge too far, as the editors of the Washington Post write:

Saudi Arabia refused to give visas to seven Israelis [who wished] to participate. The reason for excluding them, a Saudi spokeswoman said, is that the kingdom and Israel do not have diplomatic relations. This is a flimsy pretext; the two countries do in fact have informal contacts and increasingly share a hostility toward Iran. The kingdom evidently would rather have secret contacts with Israel than welcome seven chess players to an open tournament. Rubbing salt into the wound, the chess federation [that sponsors the tournament] and the kingdom issued an obsequious news release pledging to admit players from Qatar and Iran, both increasingly at odds with Saudi Arabia.

For seven decades, the Arab world has wished Israel would fall into the sea or be driven there. The Jewish state has not and will not. If Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is truly committed to rejuvenation of the kingdom, as he claims to be, then he might discard some of the calcified thinking of his forebears. His attempts to diversify Saudi Arabia away from dependence on oil, to permit women the right to drive, to allow public cinemas, to crack down on corruption, and to pursue other initiatives all point toward a young leader capable of jettisoning an outdated mindset at home. . . .

If a nation cannot welcome everyone, it should not be given the honor of hosting a world tournament.

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”