Literary Review

One of the least noticed gambits of Liz Truss’s spells as international trade secretary and then foreign secretary in 2019–22 was her quest for a free-trade agreement with Israel. It was to be as asymmetrical as most of the trade deals agreed since Brexit. Truss was prepared to move the UK embassy to Jerusalem – putting the UK in the select company of Guatemala, Honduras and Trump’s USA – and to ‘revisit’ the two-state solution. Rishi Sunak has since ditched these reckless proposals. The main prizes for the UK were to be joint ventures in defence and cyber warfare. Although a very small nation, Israel is among the leading powers in cyber technology, along with China, Russia, the USA and the UK. Israel’s main tech hub in Herzliya receives one fifth of global private investment in cybersecurity, from such firms as Cisco, IBM and Qualcomm, among others.