Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu holding a call to “discuss regional stability” in the Middle East is rather like a pair of arsonists congratulating each other on their commitment to fire safety.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the same breath, he endorsed Trump’s plan to transform the depopulated ruins of southern Gaza — where over 57,000 Palestinians have been documented killed by Israel to date — into a luxury resort. This grotesque flourish topped a day of backroom deals in Washington, where Trump pushed a ceasefire not as a path to peace, but as leverage for a normalization agreement with Syria.

Against all odds — and in the face of overwhelming military force, foreign occupation, and relentless international slander — Syrians overthrew one of the most brutal and entrenched dictatorships of our time. After more than a decade of revolution, they brought down the Assad regime, a hereditary dictatorship that had ruled by massacre, torture, and fear since the 1970s.

Israeli special forces carried out a cross-border raid into southern Quneitra in the early hours of this morning (Wednesday July 2), arresting three men from the same local family. While the Israeli army later claimed the operation had targeted an “Iran-deployed terror cell,” local sources identified the detainees as unarmed civilians with no militant links — further fuelling scepticism about Israel’s stated motives.

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, is worried. Not about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, not about the 56,000+ civilians Israel has killed there in the past 19 months, not about the crimes against humanity. No — he’s worried that the United States might, in some hypothetical future, support Syria’s internationally recognized claim to the occupied Golan Heights.

Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy to Syria, on Sunday slammed the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved up the Middle East for "imperial gain-not peace." The division of Syria was a historic mistake, he emphasized, stressing a that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria would open the door for prosperity and security.

Syrian activists have raised doubts over the status of the Chinese company, Fidi Contracting, that’s just signed a major contract to invest in the Hasiya Free Trade Zone in Homs and the Adra Free Trade Zone in rural Damascus. The activists revealed that their investigations could find no online presence for the company and they’ve been unable to find any trace of its involvement in business in China or any other countries.

It was another fine speech. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, with his usual mournful gravity, warned the world this week that the situation in Gaza had reached “the cruellest phase yet.” A humanitarian catastrophe. Famine. Children dying. “A moral outrage,” he called it. And then what? A press release. Another grim statement filed under “Too Late, Again.” If the UN were judged not by the eloquence of its leaders but by the lives it failed to save, its headquarters might as well be a mausoleum.

The UN’s Original Sin: Doing Nothing Loudly

US President Donald Trump today concludes a historic whirlwind Middle East tour, but the message he leaves behind is louder than any press conference: Saudi Arabia is in ascendance, and Israel — under Benjamin Netanyahu — is being shown the door.