‘The patterns that emerge from examples drawn from 150 years of terrorism and counterterrorism are clear. When a tactic works, it is copied and adapted to new times and new situations. Attacks on civilians, women and children strike terror and provoke governments to react. When governments overreact and kill large numbers of civilians, regardless of the provocation, governments lose support, lose legitimacy, and in the modern world, soon find both popular opinion and later the world community will turn against them, making ultimate defeat inevitable.’

‘Both Jordan and Israel, each for different reasons, are part of a larger trend of the deChristianization of the Middle East. Many churchmen fear that in a generation or two Christianity, like Judaism before it, will become a diaspora religion; exiled from its birthplace. In this dark vision, the great Christian churches, shrines, and monuments will become the objects of pilgrimage, mere museums, rather than vibrant, living places of worship.’

Much of the world agrees that the Palestinians should have, and deserve, a state of their own. It’s a political ideal whose time should have come long ago. But the experience of Palestinian self-government, even in a limited sense, is not promising.

‘In the end, what for Hamas is a military defeat and a humanitarian disaster has become a resounding political victory. Bringing the Palestinian cause back into the forefront of world attention will for years to come to be the ultimate legacy of the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October.’