The many videos circulating on Israeli social media testify to a pre-war mood of chronic uncertainty. One is from a “vox pop” television interview with a woman who says cheerfully that, yes, she is stocked up with food. But then she adds with a mischievous twinkle that she should really be invited to join the ex-generals and pundits endlessly pontificating on the station’s studio panels, since just like them, “I have no idea what’s going on”.

Another message warns: “There will be an Iranian attack in the next 24 hours. If this doesn’t happen you may read this message tomorrow.”

Israeli society is certainly readying itself for retaliation by Iran and/or Hezbollah for last week’s assassinations of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran and of the Lebanese militia’s chief of staff, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut.

But how and when it takes place, and whether it could lead to an all-out regional war, remains largely a matter of conjecture. So, for that matter, does the question of when and whether there will be a ceasefire which would lead to the release of well over 100 Israeli hostages held in Gaza – at least a substantial minority of whom are already dead.

A ceasefire could potentially end the unprecedentedly lethal 10-month Israeli military bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and remains the primary cause of the present tensions between Israel and its enemies to the north and east.

The answer to the first of these questions, of course, lies not in Israel but with the Iranian regime and its Shia proxy in Lebanon. But the causes of the confusion over the second – whether a deal to exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners will happen in the near future – can be found rather closer to home.

Nobody thinks that........

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