The discovery last week of the bodies of six Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Rafah sent shock waves throughout Israeli society, resulting in a spontaneous outpouring of public grief and anger of a kind that has not been seen there for a long time.

One possible reason July’s advisory opinion by the UN’s top court, which stated that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories goes against international law, did not attract much international attention is that most observers felt this was no more than stating the very obvious.

In an utterly unnecessary act of defiance, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, last month voted by a decisive majority to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state and, with it, the notion of a two-state solution to the more than century-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For now, peace and order have been restored to the streets of the UK after one of the ugliest episodes of far-right, ultranationalist mobs attacking mosques and hotels that host asylum seekers, assaulting police officers, and looting shops and other businesses.

It would take extreme (and probably unfounded) optimism, or more probably sheer insanity, to find any positives in what is currently taking place between Israel and the Palestinians. To portray it as a “miracle” brings insane ideological extremism to new heights altogether.