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The past month opened with a report from ABC News under the heading, Could a New Armed Conflict be looming in the Middle East? "Long time enemies, Israel and Syria, have indulged in some fiery exchanges of rhetoric, leading some in the Middle East to fear a new armed conflict may be looming". The Syrian Foreign Minister fired the first salvo by declaring, "Israel is indeed planting the seeds of war in the region. I would tell them to stop playing the role of thug in the Middle East. Don't test, you Israelis, the determination of Syria. You know that war this time would move to your cities. Come to your senses and choose the road of peace".

This outburst was immediately rebuffed by Israel's Foreign Minister who "advised Syria to abandon its dreams of recovering the Israeli-held Golan Heights". In a speech that "ratcheted up simmering political tensions", he said, "The Syrians have crossed a red line that cannot be ignored. Our message must be clear to Assad, 'In the next war, not only will you lose, but you and your family will lose power'."

A few days after the above exchange, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, spoke to the President of Syria, Bashar Assad, and reports emerged that he had said that "any attempt by Israel to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear program should be met with Israel's destruction. If the Zionist regime . . . initiates a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all".

Towards the end of the month, President Ahmedinajad visited Damascus and, at a press conference on 24 February, he and his Syrian counterpart "took turns threatening and taunting Israel". Ahmedinajad told reporters, "The bond between Damascus and Teheran is strong and no one can damage it. We have mutual interests, as well as common goals and enemies. The world needs a new order". Speaking of Israel, he said, "The Zionists and their protectors have reached a dead end. The Zionist entity will eventually disappear; its existential philosophy has ended. The Zionist conquerors have reached a dead end; all of their threats against the Palestinians stem from their weakness. If the Zionists repeat their past mistakes, all of the region's nations will uproot them. With Allah's help, the new Middle East will be a Middle East without Zionists and imperialists. Israel must realise that, if they continue along their wrongful path, they have no place in our region".

Addressing Israel's threat, President Assad said, "We believe we are facing an entity that is capable of aggression at any point, and we are preparing ourselves for any Israeli aggression, be it small or large scale. We must be prepared for any Israeli response, under any pretext".

In the middle of February, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow in Russian Studies, in which he commented on the earlier approval by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, of the first sale of a Mistral-class assault ship to a foreign nation - Russia. It is also the Kremlin's first major warship purchase from the West since before World War I, and the first major weapons sale to Russia by a Nato member. The Mistral-class assault ship is capable of carrying two landing barges, 30 helicopters, 900 commandos, 13 tanks and numerous armoured vehicles.

Mr. Cohen said, "Building a modern navy will intimidate Russia's neighbours and open doors for Russian power projection in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". He also added, "Moscow is planning to buy sophisticated armaments from abroad. Besides Mistrals from France, Russia is buying unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel. The plan is to produce them under licence to force-march its obsolescent military to the 21st century".

Commenting that Moscow "still views Nato as an adversary", Mr. Cohen concluded that "a major weapons sale to Russia is premature. This is especially true when the sale is a part of a major naval modernisation programme that may jeopardise the Alliance's flanks and important energy routes". Despite these "destabilising policies", Europe is "queuing to buy Russian natural gas, feting Mr. Putin in Paris and Berlin, and selling him modern weaponry. Lenin called this 'capitalists selling us the rope with which we will hang them'. Only this time, Russia may try to hang Ukrainians and Georgians first, before expanding its naval might to the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the North Atlantic".

During a visit to London, the Georgian leader, Mikhail Saakashvili, warned Europe against this sale, as it would allow Moscow to invade any former Soviet republic within hours. Mr. Cohen said the sale "imperils the security of Nato members and aspirants, and the sale is already making governments around the Black and Baltic Seas shudder". A Pentagon spokesman said that "America's friends and allies in Eastern Europe have good reason to be nervous about the deal". Mr. Sarkozy has defended the sale, saying, "One cannot expect Russia to behave as a partner if we don't treat it as one".

The Georgian leader also announced that the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, is shopping around for the purchase of military equipment. He said, "If Putin gets tanks, ships, missiles, then we are getting into a very, very risky zone", adding, "Vladimir Putin was now searching for a new conflict to underpin his bid to recapture the Russian Presidency in 2012". The Lithuanian Defence Minister voiced his concern, saying, "Having in mind the unpredictability of Russian politics, we cannot exclude that this military equipment may be used for illegitimate purposes inconsistent with our values and principles".

Another significant event was the signing by Russia, on 18 February, of a military treaty with Abkhasia, which has access to the Black Sea. The deal included the setting up of a Russian military base "for at least 45 years".

Later - A euobserver.com report headed France and Russia forge alliance with gas, warships deal, spoke of two deals being cemented on the occasion of a three-day visit to Paris by Russia's President Medvedev. The French firm GDHSuez is to take a 9% stake in Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline, and Russia is to increase gas deliveries to France by 1.5 billion cubic metres a year from 2015.

France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the same time confirmed that France is "in exclusive talks to sell four Mistral-class amphibious assault ships to Russia". Two of the vessels are to be built in France and two in Russia. Speaking at the press event, Mr. Sarkozy said, "How can we say to our Russian partners we need you for peace . . . but we don't trust you, we can't work with you on Mistral? We wish to put the Cold War behind us. The time has come to turn the page and look to a new era". President Medvedev called the defence deal "a symbol of trust between our two countries".

Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference held on 6 February, the German Foreign Minister said that Berlin supports the long-term goal of creating a European army. "The EU's new institutional rules, the Lisbon Treaty, are not the end, but rather the beginning for common security and defence policy. The long term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control". He added that "the German government wants to advance along this path", and suggested that moving further on common security and defence will be the "motor for greater European integration".

On Thursday 4 February, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made her first trip abroad after her recent re-election, and this was to Paris "to signal that the Franco-German partnership is up and running again". A source from Mrs. Merkel's entourage commented, "We want to see in the coming years how we can take joint initiative on important topics". At this meeting the French and Germans unveiled "their own economic and political strategy document, the Franco-German Agenda 2020", in an attempt to put some substance in the "working partnership between the EU's two major economies".

Israel's Prime Minister has announced that Rachel's Tomb and the Patriarch's Cave are Jewish heritage sites that are to be refurbished. This statement caused the Palestinian Authority's chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, to warn that such a move is a "serious provocation which may lead to a religious war". The entire Muslim world has "protested Israel's initiative". The United Nations has expressed "concern". Hizbollah, Iran, Egypt, Syria and Jordan have warned that the move is "a provocation". Hamas has "outrightly called for violence",

The annual Global Attitudes survey, published by the Pew Research Centre, had "some surprising numbers in regard to Israel, the most prominent being that the vast majority of people in the Middle East hate Jews and the Jewish State". 97% of respondents in Jordan and 95% in Egypt said they do not like Jews. A similar number of Palestinians expressed the same views. A majority in both Jordan and Egypt said they fully backed Hamas and Hizbollah, both of whom "have done the most harm to Israel in recent years".

An interesting statistic raised a surprising outcome. The international media "tries to paint a picture that Israel and the Jews are only disliked because they stole land from the Palestinian Arabs", suggesting that they would get along fine with the Jewish State if that land was surrendered. But it was revealed that "in nations that Israel has given land to, and are officially at peace with the Jewish State, hatred of Jews was actually at its highest".

The Community Trust, a Jewish community organisation that collects figures on attacks on Jews, reported that "attacks on Jews in the UK reached record levels in 2009", the rise being linked to last year's Gaza conflict.

The Sunday Telegraph dated 21 February, carried a full-page article about race-hate attacks on Jews in Sweden, until recently having a long record of offering a safe haven to Jews. In 2009, in one city a chapel serving a 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze; Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated; worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer. An 86-year-old survivor from the Nazi concentration camps said, "This new hatred comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now. I haven't seen hatred like that for decades. It reminds me of what I saw in my youth. Jews feel vulnerable now".

In France anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 reached a 75% increase on 2008. "Anti-Semitic words and deeds, on a daily basis, often under the cover of anti-Zionism, have become a major and worrying trivial fact of life". At least part of the reason for the hatred may have been due to the corresponding rise in the country's Islamic population.

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada also reached record highs in 2009. An annual survey showed that the number of incidents over the previous year constituted the highest level ever reported in the 28-year history of the survey. It was also reported that there was "a five-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada over the past decade".