Earlier this year, the Jewish state remained far ahead of most of the world in its coronavirus-vaccination rate, having been the first country to acquire the vaccine, and having employed an efficient distribution mechanism. But the disease’s delta variant nonetheless led to a spike in cases and hospitalization that raised fears of a return to the worst days of the pandemic. Arieh Kovler explains why things never got so bad:

In the last few weeks, the COVID-19 picture has completely changed in Israel. Israel suffered from a delta wave that had the highest new daily coronavirus cases per capita of any country in the world in September. Despite what you might think, Israel no longer has a high percentage of vaccinated people compared to other industrialized countries. It was still just about true in July, but now, in October, it just isn’t true anymore.

When the delta variant began spreading in Israel among highly vaccinated populations, it looked a lot like it might have evolved to escape the immunity that the vaccines induced. . . . But it turned out that delta wasn’t “evading the vaccines” at all. People who’d been recently vaccinated were still well protected against the variant, but vaccine effectiveness waned over time against any variant of the coronavirus. Israel had vaccinated most of its adult population by March, and most of its vulnerable people by late January, making it one of the first countries to test the effectiveness of vaccine immunity over time.

The country did reintroduce some mitigations, like public masking . . . and modest limits on events. But mostly it pinned its hope on booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Israel initially offered boosters only to those over sixty, but within a few weeks they were available to anyone who’d been vaccinated at least five months previously. . . . The results were dramatic. The booster dose seemed to produce ten times the antibodies of the second dose. This also translated into a dramatic drop in infection among those who received it.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?