It was a week when the Middle East could have exploded, or imploded – or even both. And yet, with the enormous and distressing exception of the deaths of perhaps 3000 innocent Palestinians in Gaza, it was a week in which very little happened.

Israel is desperate to avenge the 1400 appalling Hamas-inflicted deaths and 224 abductions of October 7, and has 360,000 troops and their accompanying armour massed at the border with Gaza. But it did not invade the benighted Palestinian territory.