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In a small but notable step that signals continued tentative engagement between two longtime regional rivals, Israel has named a new senior diplomatic representative to Turkey this week, even as the country’s main embassy compound in Ankara remains shuttered to most diplomatic activity over persistent security threats, a senior Israeli official confirmed to Middle East Eye in an exclusive briefing Wednesday.

Veteran Israeli diplomat Joel Lion has been selected by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to fill the post of charge d’affaires in Turkey, taking over the role that has sat vacant since the retirement of former ambassador Irit Lillian earlier this year. Lion brings a wealth of regional and European diplomatic experience to the role: he most recently served as Israel’s first resident ambassador to Moldova, a post he held until April 2025, and also held concurrent accreditation as non-resident ambassador to Armenia through August 2026.

On the very day the appointment was confirmed, Lion was already on the ground in Ankara to formally present his credentials to Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, marking the first visit by a senior Israeli diplomatic official to the country since Israel withdrew all of its expat diplomatic staff from Ankara and Istanbul in late 2023 amid escalating security risks.

The Israeli official who spoke to MEE emphasized that the ongoing closure of the embassy is exclusively a matter of security assessment, not a reflection of a diplomatic rupture between the two states. Contrary to public speculation that the shuttering constitutes a formal downgrade of relations, the official clarified that the mission has never been officially closed: local Turkish diplomatic staff continue to carry out limited core operations from the compound even as all senior Israeli personnel remain stationed outside the country. “Both sides agree that the embassy should stay closed over the security issues,” the official told MEE, confirming a shared consensus on the current status of the facility.

The appointment comes at a moment of deep, persistent friction between Ankara and Jerusalem that shows little sign of near-term easing. After a brief period of warming bilateral ties between 2022 and 2023, relations deteriorated sharply following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Turkey was one of the earliest and most vocal critics of Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, ultimately upgrading its condemnation to labeling the war a genocide and imposing formal trade restrictions on Israeli goods in 2024.

Tensions spilled beyond verbal confrontation earlier this year in neighboring Syria, where both countries maintain competing military and strategic presences. Just last month, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes on the Abu al-Duhur military air base in northern Syria, located just 70 kilometers from the Turkish border. Israel justified the strike by claiming Turkey was preparing to deploy advanced air defense systems to the base, a move that would have limited the Israeli military’s unrestricted freedom of operation in Syrian airspace, where it regularly carries out strikes against Iranian-backed militant groups.

Ankara has pinned its hopes for a reset in relations on the upcoming Israeli general election scheduled for October, with Turkish officials widely expecting that a defeat for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would open the door to renewed high-level dialogue. The Israeli official pushed back on that expectation Wednesday, noting that even if Netanyahu’s current bloc fails to secure a majority, his Likud party could still form a viable governing coalition by aligning with other centrist or moderate opposition parties. Such a shift in coalition makeup, the official added, could actually bring broader, more substantive changes to Israel’s overall regional policy framework. The official also identified one key persistent irritant in bilateral ties: widespread what the official called “incitement against Israel” in Turkish state and private media outlets, which the official described as the single biggest stumbling block to improved relations right now.

On Friday, the Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education approved a revised social studies curriculum framework by an 8-4 vote, following hours of public testimony from hundreds of stakeholders. The new standards, which will impact roughly 5 million public school students across the state when new textbooks are fully phased in for the 2030-2031 academic year, have sparked fierce national debate over religious bias and educational accuracy.

Under the revised guidelines, Bible passages will become required reading for students, with curricular materials instructed to highlight Christianity’s positive contributions to global and American history. By contrast, early Islamic military campaigns will be explicitly labeled “brutal” — a designation that is not applied to equivalent periods of violent expansion waged by Christian powers. Local Texas outlet Fox4 Dallas-Fort Worth confirmed that units on early Islamic history will also be framed exclusively through the lenses of slavery and the captivity of women, a framing that critics say erases the religion’s centuries-long cultural, scientific and social contributions. The 9/11 attacks, which were carried out by Saudi hijackers and planned by the al-Qaeda network, will also be taught as being rooted in “radical Islam” rather than any political motivation or agenda, a narrative that historians widely reject as oversimplified.

The decision drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups, lawmakers and education advocates, who argue the framework promotes selective, biased history that targets one religious community. “Selective history is not education. Texas students deserve history that is accurate, complete, and fair,” Salman Bhojani, a Muslim member of the Texas State House, wrote on social media platform X ahead of the final vote.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, led coordinated opposition to the changes. In a pre-vote statement, the group clarified that it does not oppose teaching the full history of global religions in public schools — but takes issue with targeting Islam for unfair negative framing. “What public schools should not do is force teachers and students to single out and denigrate a particular religion, in this case Islam,” CAIR said. The organization added that it would object just as forcefully to any curriculum that framed Christianity as inherently responsible for historical atrocities ranging from the genocide of Indigenous populations to the transatlantic slave trade and modern domestic terrorism by white Christian extremist groups.

Supporters of the new curriculum, however, have defended the change as a push for honest education. Longtime anti-Islam advocate and Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz praised the board’s decision, writing on X that “students deserve to know the truth about Islam.”

The controversial curriculum change aligns with a years-long pattern of anti-Muslim policy actions from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who has repeatedly targeted the state’s growing Muslim population — a community that now numbers more than 400,000 across the state. Just last month, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport scrapped plans to build a dedicated ablution station for Muslim travelers, used for ritual cleansing before prayer, after Abbott threatened to withhold hundreds of millions in state grant funding from any airport that moved forward with the project.

Last year, Abbott amplified far-right anti-Muslim disinformation to push for a federal investigation into a planned 1,000-home residential development with a mosque and school outside Dallas. After far-right agitator Amy Mekelburg falsely labeled the project “Sharia City” and claimed it would implement Islamic law, Abbott shared the false claim to his own social media, framing the development, led by the East Plano Islamic Community, as a threat to Texas. A Texas judge ultimately ruled in favor of the developers in May 2024, ordering the state to honor its pre-existing contractual agreements with the project.

Also in 2023, Abbott issued a proclamation designating both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal enterprises. The designation bars the groups from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas, and grants the state attorney general broad authority to bring legal action against them. CAIR has forcefully rejected the unsubstantiated allegations, and the Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational movement with no official headquarters or centralized operations based in the United States.

Critics have also noted that the new curriculum violates the core principle of separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of an official state religion and bars public institutions from promoting or elevating one religious tradition over others.

A major controversy has engulfed the British Museum’s high-profile Bayeux Tapestry exhibition after revelations that its lead sponsor, Belarus-born billionaire Igor Tulchinsky, has provided core funding for a community resilience center located in Efrat, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank that is now subject to UK sanctions.

Tulchinsky, whose backing for the iconic medieval tapestry exhibition is reportedly valued at £5 million ($6.75 million), publicly unveiled a purpose-built therapy yurt at Efrat’s Mondlak Center in November 2025, appearing alongside the settlement’s far-right mayor Dovi Shefler for the ceremony. Public records from the Efrat Development Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Mondlak Center, confirm Tulchinsky as the primary sponsor of the facility, which serves the entire Gush Etzion settlement bloc, a cluster of illegal Israeli settlements located just 12 kilometers southeast of Jerusalem.

According to an Instagram post from the foundation documenting the event, Tulchinsky dedicated the new facility to “Israel’s brave warriors and their families” during his opening remarks, where he famously described the therapy space as “Israel’s inner Iron Dome.”

Efrat, a settlement of roughly 12,000 Israeli settlers, was constructed on land seized from four indigenous Palestinian villages. It serves as the administrative capital of the expanding Gush Etzion bloc, which continues to push its boundaries toward the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The Mondlak Center operates as a project of the Efrat Development Foundation, a nonprofit that states its mission is to advance Efrat’s social, cultural and physical development. The foundation’s public website outlines three tiers of donor partnership, with its top-tier “Vision Partner” designation requiring contributions of more than $50,000 and granting donors access to participate in strategic planning for the organization. The foundation also explicitly advertises support for “pioneer family support in Givat HaEitam” – a reference to the highly controversial E-2 hilltop settlement expansion that peace campaigners warn will cut Bethlehem off from the southern West Bank, effectively ghettoizing the Palestinian city.

The full scope of Tulchinsky’s support for the center, whether financial or in-kind, remains undisclosed. Middle East Eye attempted to reach Tulchinsky’s global investment firm WorldQuant for comment multiple times, but received no response. When contacted directly, the Efrat Development Foundation confirmed Tulchinsky is a donor but said his contribution was channeled through an unnamed third-party organization. A photograph of Tulchinsky at the yurt’s opening ceremony remains publicly displayed on the foundation’s official fundraising webpage.

The revelations about Tulchinsky’s connection to the illegal settlement come just 48 hours after UK Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband announced a sweeping new package of sanctions targeting individuals and entities linked to illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. Speaking to UK parliament, Milliband accused Israeli settlers of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, stating that the Israeli occupation is unlawful due to Israel’s entrenched control, stated aim of claiming permanent sovereignty over the territory and expansionist agenda driven by illegal settlement building. “We will take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure financing or real estate for settlement expansion,” Milliband told lawmakers. “So to those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this: You will face the full force of UK sanctions. Settlements are illegal. They should not be promoted in our country.”

Efrat’s mayor Dovi Shefler, who appeared alongside Tulchinsky at the yurt opening, has a long public record of vocal support for the full Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank. The municipal council he leads has repeatedly violated even Israeli military regulations to expand Efrat into territory administered by the Palestinian Authority, and Shefler has openly boasted that Efrat’s eastward expansion has irreparably damaged any prospect of a viable contiguous Palestinian state. “We are physically blocking the connection between Bethlehem and Hebron,” he stated in an April 2025 interview. “Whoever is plotting to establish a terrorist state here – we are simply cutting off their dream through construction.”

Efrat is widely recognized as a stronghold of far-right religious-nationalist ideology in the West Bank. During Israel’s 2022 national election, nearly 48 percent of Efrat voters cast ballots for Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, the two extreme far-right parties led by Israeli cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir – both of whom were sanctioned by the UK in June 2025 for repeated incitement to violence against Palestinian communities. In May 2025, Smotrich appeared in a public video with Shefler praising the mayor’s settlement expansion work, and the pair called for new Israeli settlement construction in the Gaza Strip.

Roughly 50 to 60 percent of Efrat’s settler population are native English speakers, and in April 2025 investigative outlet Declassified UK exposed an Israeli organization caught on camera offering assistance to British citizens seeking to relocate to the settlement. The organization Shivat Zion told potential migrants, “You’re next to the Arabs; you’ll hear their mosques. But apart from this, it’s a great living standard.”

The Mondlak Center, named after British-born immigrants Moshe and Lina Mondlak who settled in Gush Etzion, provides specialized mental health services to the settlement community. The therapy yurt unveiled by Tulchinsky features three private therapy rooms and an outdoor space dedicated to yoga, mindfulness and breathing workshops, according to reporting from the Jerusalem News Syndicate. Demand for the center’s services from Israeli soldiers and settlers increased dramatically following the outbreak of the 2023-2025 Gaza war, which has been widely described as a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In his dedication speech, Tulchinsky reaffirmed his support for Israeli forces, saying, “the war after the war being fought by therapists, volunteers and by soldiers and their families who are learning to breathe again.” Additional reporting from Middle East Eye published this week revealed that Tulchinsky runs a defense technology-focused venture capital fund based in Israel, led by a recently retired senior Israeli army commander who has publicly promoted the use of remote-controlled combat vehicles in Gaza. Israeli remote-controlled vehicles have been labeled a “direct tool for committing genocide” by one leading human rights group, and have been implicated in the systematic destruction of entire civilian neighborhoods in Gaza and southern Lebanon, including irreplaceable cultural heritage sites. In a March 2025 interview with the *Jerusalem Post*, Tulchinsky confirmed he has provided direct financial support to the Israeli army since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and the start of the Gaza war, noting that he visits Israel on a regular basis.

The British Museum has so far declined to respond to multiple requests for comment about Tulchinsky’s sponsorship, which opened to the public this Thursday. Artists for Palestine UK, a prominent network of UK-based artists and cultural workers, has condemned the museum’s partnership with Tulchinsky as “outrageous.”

For weeks leading up to a historic diplomatic announcement, tensions simmered between the United Kingdom and its closest transatlantic ally over a planned UK crackdown on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. British media had been saturated with reports that the Trump administration was gearing up to forcefully block the Andy Burnham-led UK government’s sanctions plan, sparking fierce domestic pushback from opposition lawmakers and pundits who warned the move would provoke Washington and leave Britain isolated on the global stage.

Behind closed doors, the pressure campaign was real: senior government sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that U.S. officials had repeatedly lobbied the Burnham government to abandon the plan ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled announcement. The pressure campaign reached extraordinary heights last week, when U.S. President Donald Trump openly suggested the U.S. would not defend the Falkland Islands if Argentina launched an invasion, a comment widely interpreted as a veiled threat tied to the settlement dispute. Over the weekend, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee escalated the rhetoric further, accusing the British government of “Jew hate” and warning that U.S. states could retaliate by sanctioning British firms.

But when Burnham spoke directly with Trump to outline the UK’s plan on Monday afternoon, the expected pushback never materialized. What Washington had not anticipated was that Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband had quietly built a broad international coalition ahead of the announcement: France and Canada, both core U.S. allies, had already committed to enacting their own bans on Israeli settlement goods alongside the UK. In total, 12 Western nations signed on to a joint public statement released Tuesday: alongside the UK, France and Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden added their signatures. The document confirmed participating nations either intended to introduce national trade restrictions on illegal settlement goods, back broader European Union-level restrictions, or were actively evaluating such measures in line with domestic legislative processes.

In a landmark address to UK Parliament on Tuesday, Miliband went further than any Western government has gone in recent decades, formally recognizing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declaring Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestinian territory illegal under international law, and announcing a full package of measures: comprehensive sanctions on Israeli settlements, plus an immediate ban on all arms licenses and exports that could “materially contribute to the occupation.”

Unsurprisingly, Israel responded with immediate, fierce anger. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced a slate of retaliatory measures, including closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem and banning 11 sitting British MPs from entering the country. Most notably, however, the U.S. reaction was far quieter than observers had predicted. On a working trip to Colombia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the administration had been notified of London’s decision in advance, acknowledged the UK’s rationale, and stated only that the U.S. shared the goal of avoiding renewed violence and rising tensions in the already volatile West Bank. Significantly, Rubio declined to issue any formal criticism of the British move. Trump has not yet commented publicly on the decision, a silence that itself signals reluctance to publicly condemn three key U.S. allies simultaneously – even amid existing trade tensions with Canada.

While British diplomats privately told U.S. counterparts that the new sanctions are largely symbolic, with too small an economic footprint to force an immediate shift in Israeli policy, analysts widely frame the move as a consequential turning point with broad geopolitical implications. For the UK, the decision marks a stark shift in official rhetoric: the explicit recognition of ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank sets a new standard for Western governments, one that government sources say is just the first step in a broader policy shift toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The coordinated 12-nation action also represents a major diplomatic rebuke of long-standing U.S. policy in the Middle East, and signals a tectonic shift in Western attitudes toward Israeli settlement expansion. Even historically pro-Israel Western European nations like the UK and France have now taken formal punitive action, leaving Germany as an outlier in its continued strong support for the Netanyahu government, a shift that has left Israeli officials particularly outraged.

Beyond the Middle East, the coordinated effort also puts into practice the so-called “Carney Doctrine” coined by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, which calls for a coalition of middle-sized global powers to act as an independent counterweight to larger great power influence – particularly the United States. By successfully building and leading this coalition on an issue where Washington holds an opposing position, the UK has effectively projected independent soft power and established itself as an agenda-setting global actor. The move has already won broad praise from Arab nations: Qatar and Jordan, both key British partners in the region, were quick to welcome the sanctions, followed shortly by the Arab League. Far from isolating Britain, as domestic opposition leaders warned, the bold stance is expected to boost the UK’s global standing, particularly across the Middle East.

For now, the Trump administration has held back from public rebuke. It remains to be seen whether that stance will hold in the coming weeks, and if pressure does mount, whether Burnham and Miliband will maintain their ground in what would be an unprecedented test of post-Brexit British diplomatic independence.