Open the champagne, send up the rockets… NO!!!, not those ‘rockets’, the fireworks, FFS, and say a prayer of thanks. The war is over. There’s peace in the Middle East. Donald Trump should be awarded not just the Nobel prize for peace but for physics too, and literature, any others they have begging. And how appropriate would it be that the reward for ending the destruction and demolition be given with money earned from dynamite? Nobel’s legacy to the world; money and the power for unlimited explosions.

The ‘Peace Plan’ has been signed. In Egypt, this very morning. Phew. Its over. What could possibly go wrong…

The answer, of course, is ‘everything’. The 2 sides in the agreement are… short on trust for each other. But with help from the Egyptians and Qataris on one side and Donald Trump on the other, there is every possibility of the peace lasting 37 hours. Possible even more!!!

The hostage exchange I’m hoping beyond hope will happen before it all goes tits up. Because that’s the most important thing. 48 Israelis, half of them now dead, in return for a few thousand… Well, the very nature of how to describe them depends on your first bias. Calling them ‘prisoners’ is fairly neutral. Netenyahu calls them ‘terrorists’. Many call them ‘detainees’. Which is to dignify them and create an aura of unfairness over their being held in the first place. Like they got a parking ticket and were imprisoned because they were Arabs. Whereas the reality is that these ‘detainees’ are people who have murdered, maimed and sought to inflict grievous harm on Israeli citizens. Some of them the Israelis won’t release. They’re Hamas hierarchy and have so much blood on their hands that to release them would be foolish.

Hamas disarming is another… sticking point? They must, according to the plan, but they won’t, on principle or for any reason on earth. Saving ‘innocent Palestinians’ really has never been on their agenda.

And there’s the Israeli hard-liners. Netenyahu’s political ‘allies’ who have been the cause of massive unrest in Israel since long before the October 7 massacre. They won’t sign off on the peace agreement. So it’ll still get signed, by Bibi, but it won’t have the full backing of government. Because the likes of Smotrich and Ben Gvir are extremists who should never have a say in matters of peace because it’s not on their agenda.

There’s a big deal being made about the Israeli strike in Qatar. That it was a ‘turning point’ because it upset Trump to the extent that he has forced Netenyahu’s hand after acting without the President’s blessing and attacking the nation who’d just given the Trumpster a $400million airplane. I can’t buy that. It’s simply impossible that Israel could have flown fighter jets over America’s largest air base in the Middle East without them knowing and thus consenting. In which case, I say ‘good for Trump’. He ‘plays’ everyone.

Let’s just hope that the peace lasts long enough for people to realise that getting rid of Hamas is simply essential for any continuation of that peace.

Happy Thursday… so far.

A xxxx