One can only imagine the jubilation on the streets of Kiev and Moscow this week, with the news that Trump has sorted out the Middle East and is now free to turn his attention to resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Before I consider the pesky little details of that sorting out of the Middle East, let me give you two little tastes of what living in a war zone feels like, on a day-to-day basis. The influence of the war can be felt in all sorts of unexpected places. Here are two of them.

(A quick word of background to the first little taste. For decades now, apartment buildings (or blocks of flats, as I  realise with a slight shock I used to call them) in Israel have been constructed with a dedicated communal bomb shelter in the basement. More recently, new homes have been built with each apartment having a ‘safe room’, essentially a one-family bomb-proof room that is an integral part of the family apartment and functions in normal times (whatever they are) as an additional room.)

Israeli media, like, I suspect, those of most of the first world, are full of adverts for retirement homes, golden age resorts, assisted living, and so forth. In Israel, many of these complexes are fairly high-end, and the advertising often targets the 55+, still very active and independent, pre-retirement population. A radio advert currently running gives much prominence to the fact that ‘every apartment in our complex has its own integral safe room with a sea view, so that, when the sirens sound, you don’t even have to move.’ In Israel, in 2026, an integral safe room is a top priority selling point for a retirement home.

As for your second appetiser: a lead story on this week’s news was a warning from Israel’s Transportation minister. As the chief administrator of Ben Gurion airport explained, the world’s airlines are now expected to be flying to Israel this summer, and 2.4 million air tickets have been sold for flights into and out of Ben Gurion airport in July. However, the airport is currently able to handle only 1.6 million passengers, because it has insufficient space for planes to park. The reason for this is that about two-thirds of the airport’s aircraft parking capacity is currently occupied by 70 USAF refuelling and transport planes.

With peace having broken out when I wasn’t looking the other day, these 70 planes may all go back to where they are usually parked. If they don’t, 800,000 passengers may have their flights cancelled on them, since the airline cannot fly them to Israel because the plane park is full. This, I suppose, puts into perspective my own annoyance when I headed for our local mall on Sunday and drove around for 5 minutes unable to find a parking space and finally gave up and parked a five-minute walk away.

With a sinking feeling, I see that I have only achieved, with that preamble, 460 words, which means I have no alternative but to address ‘the deal’. This is problematic, and only partly because it is likely to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. ‘Addressing the deal’, it emerges, is about as meaningful a term as ‘recognising Palestine’

You probably don’t remember my blog post from 25 August last year. But, then, you probably don’t file all my blog posts in a folder on your desktop, as I do. Let me refresh your memory. I wrote then about that week’s European fad, to recognise the state of Palestine. I quoted, on that occasion, the following verse:

As I was going down the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish that man would go away!

Last time, the man who wasn’t there had metamorphosed into a country. This time, he has transformed himself into a peace agreement.

I can’t speak with absolute authority, since we mere mortals have not been privileged to have the details of the peace agreement – sorry, I can’t keep this charade up any longer: it’s not a peace agreement; it’s a ‘peace agreement’ – to have the details of the ‘peace agreement’ shared with them. However, it seems clear that what this thing is is nothing more than two lists, representing the positions of Trump and the IRGC, which will form the basis of discussions over the next 60 days, at the end of which the IRGC will not have moved a centimetre from their listed position, and, in order to have any chance of emerging from the mid-terms in November with a shred of respectability, Trump will sell out Israel, the US and the rest of the free world, by accepting the IRGC position, and then, if not sooner, release money to enable the IRGC to resume full funding of its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza.

JD Vance tells us that the ‘peace agreement’ is “a very general document” and is “about a page and a half” long, so it is clearly nothing more than a series of bullet points to form the basis of discussions toward a peace agreement (or, more accurately away from a peace agreement and toward a Trump sell-out).

It’s fair to say that I’m not widely known for the insightfulness of my geopolitical analysis. So, if I say that I have serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concession Trump is trumpeting (“Iran has agreed to never have a Nuclear Weapon” [Trump’s caps], you are entitled to question my credentials. Fortunately for my argument, reports are that it isn’t just me saying this, but also the director of the CIA, whose street creds are presumably significantly greater than mine.

The Times of London reports that a source told the American news website Axios that “the intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal”. In the real world, we call that lying and cheating. The source stated that “the intelligence agencies concluded that the way Iranian officials were discussing the deal among themselves was inconsistent with what they were telling the mediators”. I know: almost impossible to believe, isn’t it!

If I needed any more convincing that this week’s developments are deeply concerning, confirmation came in the form of messages from the leaders of Germany, France, the UK and Italy, welcoming the signing of the memorandum. Usually a very reliable yardstick these days: If the West European football giants agree on something, it’s never a good sign.

America’s primary concern was stated with engaging honesty by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer: “What exactly is in this understanding? Will service members remain in harm’s way? What have we actually gained here from Trump’s war?” What a telling framing of concerns that is. For the Senate minority leader, the primary concern is ensuring that US military personnel are not in any danger. The secondary concern is whether the free world is safer or not. Forgive me if I seem callous, and I truly would not wish to belittle even a single soldier’s death, but the primary purpose of an army is not to be kept safe, but to keep its country safe. By the very nature of the concept of a military, the safety of troops cannot be a country’s primary consideration.

Even Trump’s supporters among Republicans in the Senate seem sceptical about the deal. Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he was “somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiation team is claiming”. So, he agrees with the CIA assessment. America and Iran are co-signing an agreement (initially digitally and, this coming Friday, physically) on whose meaning and interpretation they do not agree.

There are times in history when enemy states wish to end a conflict honourably and pursue a path of peace. Sometimes, they achieve this by signing an agreement whose ambiguity allows each of them to avoid losing face with its own people.

There are other times in history when one state wishes to end a conflict honourably and pursue a path of peace, and the other wishes to resume, unhindered, its belligerent march towards regional domination and the destruction of its enemies. Any leader who signs an ambiguous agreement with such a state is not safe to be trusted with a fountain pen.

Tellingly, Senator Graham went on to identify VP Vance as the “architect of the deal”. This reads remarkably like recognising this ‘deal’ as the charade it is. In readiness for handling the fiasco that is bound to ensue, Vance is being set up to be pushed under the bus when it starts careering out of control.

The trouble, from where I’m sitting, is that Vance is not the only one who is in grave danger of being pushed under this careering bus. In common with every last Israeli, I am feeling a lot closer to that bus’s wheels than I was a few days ago.

Blogger’s Note: I know that many of you will be opening this post eager for geo-political analysis of the latest mid-East complications. My analysis and advice are pithy: Don’t waste your time reading or listening to anything any of the leaders involved writes or says. You will be no less well-informed, and you will have saved precious moments of your valuable time.

Today’s admittedly obscure title references an excellent joke that I won’t tell you, because it doesn’t work in writing. However, I’ll pause for a moment, to give your lateral-thinking braincells a chance to work out in what way blood tests could possibly be like comedy.

I suspect that most long-running marriages gradually settle into a rough division of responsibilities between the parties. Among those that our specific marriage has settled into is that Bernice ‘does’ health. In practical terms, this means that she, who enjoys fly-on-the-wall video documentaries of medical procedures and case-studies, and who keeps up to date with medical breakthroughs, is our family’s expert on good, and ill, health. I tend to focus more on the ill than the good, and also to focus on the practical, rather than the theoretical side. Basically, I develop the conditions, and she tells me all about them.

Bernice has a mantra that she has drummed into me over the years, which is: ‘Do not take a blood test within two months of an impending trip to Portugal’. This is very sound advice, as I will explain at length in this post. However, it is very much theoretical advice, and not always practical.

So, when I developed a couple of symptoms three weeks ago (four weeks before we were due to fly to Portugal for a month), we both knew that it made no sense to ignore them, and I paid a visit to our family doctor. He sent me for blood tests, and, when the results gave a little cause for concern, repeat blood tests. I made sure to revise more thoroughly before the resits, and, sure enough, I improved my marks sufficiently to ease those concerns.

Unfortunately, I was then afflicted with another ailment, and was sent for a third set of blood tests last week. My doctor cunningly slipped in another test this time, without telling me. So, of course, I had been unable to revise for it, and I failed even more spectacularly than last time I failed this particular test 15 months ago. My doctor was immediately on the phone to me, instructing me to make appointments with two specialists. I pointed out that I had routine appointments with both of them in the next couple of months, but my doctor was not impressed. I then explained that we were flying in 10 days’ time, at which point he informed me that this needed to be resolved before we flew.

I was fairly confident that I knew what would happen: a repeat of what happened 15 months ago. The first specialist will send me for a couple of tests, that will take six weeks to line up, undergo, and receive results from. He will then look at the results and inform me that all is OK, I should cancel the appointment with the other specialist, and make a repeat appointment in a year’s time to monitor progress.

I was, as I say, fairly confident…but then, I’m not the one who ‘does’ health in this marriage, so it was reassuring when Bernice more or less shared my cautious optimism.

However, despite our optimism, it was perfectly clear to us that, even in Israel, I would not be able to complete this process in ten days. We would need something more like four weeks at the very least. The earliest specialist appointment I could get was for the day after we were due to fly. The last time this happened, the negative results of the second test the specialist sent me for came back just in time for the specialist to phone me after Bernice and I had checked in for our flight to Portugal, and for me to report this result to the senior executive in the travel insurance company we use, so that he could approve our travel insurance and issue the policy while we were queuing for the security check before proceeding to the departure gate. That is not an experience either of us particularly wants to relive. At the same time, without those results, I would not be able to get medical travel insurance while there is a question mark, however small, over my blood test results,, and it would take somebody much younger, fitter and more foolhardy than me to travel without insurance.

The bottom line is that we have reluctantly cancelled our trip to Portugal, thus proving that blood tests are, as Bernice contends, indeed like comedy: the secret is in the timing. What would have been a minor inconvenience, and a way of getting out and meeting people (even if only fellow patients, medical specialists and technicians) has instead become a major disruption.

However (and what a huge and delightful however this is), like all clouds, this one has a silver lining. In this case, that takes the shape of Tslil, Micha’el, Tao and Ollie coming over to Israel instead – probably for the last week or so of July and the first three weeks of August. This is twice as long as their planned trip in March, which the last war but one (or is it two?) shot to pieces. It is even rumoured that my nephew and his family may be visiting Israel from England at the same time, and all four cousins and their families may be able to be together for the first time since I can’t remember when.

This arrangement has the added bonus that I will be able to laugh at Micha’el and Tslil packing to go back with all their luggage, including the one or two or forty things Bernice bought for us to take out, and knowing that I won’t have to lift any of it into or out of car boots or airport carousels. At this point, I am more than happy to take enjoyment wherever I can find it.

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We need to talk birthday parties, for two principal reasons.

The first concerns specificity. We have heard, recently, of the birthday parties of the grandchildren of friends and family, one in the UK and the other in the US, which took us mildly by surprise.

The US party was a slime party. For any of you who have no children/grandchildren of an appropriate age, and who live on desert islands, you can get an idea of what ‘slime’ is from the excruciatingly syrupy promotional video here. I’m not really sure what exact shape the slime party took, but I imagine the birthday boy’s parents must have needed to buy a considerable quantity of slime to keep all the party guests occupied. Of course, at the end of the day they had a plentiful supply of slime for their own children to play with in the future, although, in my experience, once all of the lurid pastel shades have been mixed together, the resulting sludge-coloured mass seems considerably less attractive.

I am reminded of mixing paint colours in primary school. While my more creative classmates produced rich, vibrant purples, and umbers, or subtle shades of forest green, I, however hard I tried, always seemed to end up with sludge brown. Indeed, the intensity of the sludginess seemed always to match the intensity of the effort.

The UK party was a trampolining party. I’m not quite sure of the logistics of this. It makes no sense that the guests spent two hours queueing for their turn on the one trampoline the hosts own, so I imagine the hosts invited all of the guests to a trampolining centre. It is even possible, given what I know of the hosts, that they and their friends run a trampoline g’mach (charitable non-profit provider), and their back garden was filled for the afternoon with ten assorted trampolines borrowed from friends.

What puzzles me about these parties is that I find it difficult to imagine how the parents construct a balanced party progranme around such a constricting theme. Back in the day, one of the things that Bernice and I most enjoyed was collaborating on themed birthday parties for the kids. I particularly remember a pirate birthday party for Micha’el. All four of us dressed in pirate costume; we laid out a treasure hunt complete with map; Bernice read a suitable pirate story; I made pirate hats with all the children (from the ubiquitous sol, or EVA foam craft sheets, of course); the birthday cake was a magnificent treasure chest, with the open lid revealing a kingly fortune of sweet jewels and chocolate coins. Try as I might, I can’t mentally construct a birthday party around the theme of trampolining, but perhaps I am simply even less creative than I was mixing paints in primary school.

All this talk of parties recently led Bernice to remark that, as a child, she never had a birthday party. Thinking about it, I realised that I couldn’t recall ever having one either. However, just to be safe, I consulted my brother, Martin. I half-expected him to reveal that, as the favoured elder son, he always had a party, but I was locked in the scullery on those occasions, Instead, he confirmed that he also had no recollection of any birthday parties. Now, this may of course simply be a consequence of our dwindling mental faculties, but, in my brother’s case particularly, I very much doubt it.

During this phone conversation, Martin then pointed out that he couldn’t remember going to any friends’ birthday parties either, a non-memory that I shared. Bernice suggested this might have been because I was not very popular as a child, but I was having none of that. (There’s a nasty side to Bernice that very few of you are ever exposed to.) As we considered this topic, it became clear to us that children’s birthday parties were something that austerity Britain didn’t indulge in. At least in our circles. Bernice, who grew up in South Wales, remembers being invited to other children’s parties. However, in our social circle, people clearly didn’t ‘do’ birthday parties.

I suspect that may have been partly because fathers were not, or did not feel themselves to be, in a position to take time off work to co-host, and, to be honest, being a single-parent child’s birthday party host seems a massive undertaking. Anyway, whatever, the reason, I never had, and was never invited to, a birthday party.

Except once. And this is a confession that is going to cost me a good deal of embarrassment, so please show some consideration. A not-particularly-close friend did once invite me to his party. I must have been around 9 years old. I got dressed up in my smart clothes, clutched the carefully bought and wrapped present under my arm, and set off on the ten-minute walk to his home, which I had never been to.

On the way, I got lost, and despite wandering around increasingly desperately for the next half-an-hour, I failed to find the house. Still clutching the present, I considered my options. Continuing to wander aimlessly seemed increasingly pointless. Even if I now found the house, I would arrive ridiculously late, and would be compelled to explain the reason for my lateness. Returning home would mean confessing to my mother that I was incapable of following clear directions. Neither option seemed particularly attractive

In the end, I went into the nearby park, sat on a bench, felt very sorry for myself for an hour and a half, hid the present under a bush, and found my way home, where I lied shamefacedly to my mother about the party.

There! Apart from Bernice, and my brother on the phone a few days ago, you are the first people I have ever told this sad story to. Now you know just how insecure and devious a person I am. I will not be surprised, or indeed offended, if, after we next shake hands in shul, I catch you surreptitiously counting your fingers.

And, having arrived at this point, I am, not for the first time, amazed at the confessional effect writing this blog has on me. I would have bet a large sum of money on me never sharing this story publicly… and, it is now clear, I would have lost. Perhaps it would be best to give up this blog-writing.