A fresh analysis from former MI6 officer Sir John Bowen has landed on my desk, and it is stark. His assessment, likely circulated to the Joint Intelligence Committee, warns that the deepening political entanglement between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump is not a tactical drift but a structural shift toward permanent crisis. The term ‘permacrisis’ is apt.
This is no mere diplomatic spat; it is the crystallisation of a threat vector that the UK Foreign Office is now forced to recalibrate around. For years, I have watched the Middle East file become a strategic sinkhole. Washington’s unconditional backing of Netanyahu’s most maximalist elements, coupled with Trump’s transactional foreign policy, creates a reality where deterrence collapses and escalation becomes the default setting.
Bowen’s paper likely identifies a key pivot: the erosion of the Oslo framework and the normalisation of annexation rhetoric. This is not just about the West Bank. It is about the entire regional order.
When a hostile state actor sees the US and Israel operating without constraint, they calculate that the rules of the game have changed. Hezbollah, Iran, even elements within Syria will recalibrate their own threat matrices. The UK Foreign Office’s recalibration is therefore a survival mechanism.
It means distancing from the most toxic elements of Netanyahu’s coalition while trying to preserve a channel for crisis management. But here is the intelligence failure: Whitehall has been slow to recognise that the Netanyahu-Trump axis is not an aberration but a future baseline. Our military readiness for a broader regional conflagration is questionable.
Our cyber defences against Iranian proxy attacks are barely adequate. The Bowen analysis must be read as a warning: permacrisis is not a headline, it is a budget line. We need to harden our embassy security, increase signals intelligence on settler violence, and prepare for a refugee surge if the West Bank ignites.
This is not alarmism. This is strategic reality.
