The hearing at Israel’s Supreme Court is closed to the public. It is clear to everyone that the imprisonment of Hussam Abu Safiya (held without charges and on the basis of secret accusations that even his lawyer does not know) has perhaps generated the most international mobilization, with calls for his release from the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Amnesty International. He is the pediatrician who ran Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and became a vocal critic of the Israeli invasion until troops arrested him in December 2024. He was seized inside the hospital, the only one still operating in the northern Gaza Strip.

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La vista, en el Tribunal Supremo de Israel, es a puerta cerrada. A nadie se le escapa que el encarcelamiento de Hussam Abu Safiya (sin cargos y en base a acusaciones secretas que ni siquiera su abogado conoce) es, quizás, el que más movilización internacional ha generado, con peticiones de liberación de la Organización Mundial de la Salud, el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja o Amnistía Internacional. Es el pediatra que dirigía el hospital Kamal Adwan de Gaza y que se erigió en voz de denuncia de la invasión israelí, hasta que las tropas lo arrestaron en diciembre de 2024. Lo apresaron dentro del hospital, el único que seguía funcionando en el norte de la Franja.

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The relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu lends itself more to psychological analysis than political, after a decade in which the volatile U.S. president has alternately showered the Israeli prime minister with insults and excessive praise — sometimes almost within the same sentence. The war they launched together against Iran 100 days ago has driven them apart as the original plan dissolved: a short, successful operation with oil-related benefits, modeled on the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Beyond how the Iran war is resolved — if it is resolved — its lasting legacy could well be the rift between the two leaders.

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The ceasefire that has never truly stopped the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah followed the same dynamic on Thursday after being extended in a new round of talks in Washington.

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Writer Etgar Keret (Ramat Gan, Israel, 58) had planned to deliver his ninth book of short stories to his publisher on October 8, 2023. He had picked the date at random: he produces one every seven years or so and sets himself a firm deadline. Two days earlier, he told his wife, Shira Geffen — the screenwriter and filmmaker who wrote the film Jellyfish (2007), directed by Keret and awarded at Cannes — that he felt the book had become too dark because of the personal and political events that had marked him in preceding years: his mother’s death, the coronavirus pandemic, a herniated disc, the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu with the most right-wing government in the country’s history… His wife advised him to reread it calmly the next day and, if he still felt that way, to ask the publisher for an extension.

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In the war with Iran, the sense of urgency has shifted sides. In February, the United States and Israel judged it so urgent to start the conflict that they were prepared to launch a massive strike and kill the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, even amid negotiations; three months later it is Donald Trump who is trying to keep alive the talks that would definitively end the conflict, while Tehran remains firm. The U.S. president showed that attitude again on Monday when he ordered Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to halt the airstrikes the latter had announced on Beirut. The aim? To prevent the feared derailment of negotiations with the ayatollahs.

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