According to paragraph 29 of the agreement cementing Israel’s governing coalition, prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu can introduce a bill in the Knesset after June 30 that would apply Israeli sovereignty to certain portions of Judea and Samaria not currently under the Palestinian Authority’s control. Stephen Daisley writes:

[A] sovereignty bill, if it passes into law, will simply begin the process of implementing the Trump administration’s peace plan. . . . The United States intends to recognize this Israeli sovereignty provided Jerusalem agrees to map out a Palestinian state with its opposite numbers in Ramallah.

Come July 1, Britain will view Israel’s application of its laws to its communities in Judea and Samaria as no different from Russia’s invasions and annexation of the Crimea. That is an unsustainable situation, not least when it involves a friendly nation that furnishes us with vital intelligence on national security threats.

In preparation for likely changes to Israel’s map, the UK should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, commit to moving its embassy there once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, and affirm, as the U.S. has, that civilian settlements are not “per-se inconsistent with international law.”

The sovereignty bill Netanyahu is likely to bring forward will leave the Palestinians with the vast majority of Judea and Samaria. Along with Gaza, this gives them substantial territory on which to found their state. Any country that considers itself a friend to the Palestinians should beg them to take the deal and end the conflict. Britain should right a historical wrong by affirming a promise it made a century ago and never again should it treat an ally like an “illegal occupier” in its own land.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].