In the eye of Israel’s coming storm

ISRAEL finds itself at the center of several storms—with a landmark week ahead. Attacks and counterattacks with Iranian and Syrian forces to the north may be on the rise, while Hamas leaders in Gaza to the south threaten to storm the border. Sunday is Jerusalem Day, a rallying holiday for Israelis marking victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. Monday marks a historic transition as the United States moves its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (at 4 p.m.), recognizing the contested city as Israel’s capital. And Tuesday is Nakba Day, a day of remembrance for Arab Palestinians who fled their homes and could not return after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

On Friday, about 15,000 people joined protests led by Hamas at the Gaza border. The demonstrations are now in their seventh week and likely to intensify next week.

Israeli Defense Forces this week struck dozens of Iran-linked military targets in Syria in response to rocket fire over the Golan Heights, marking a significant escalation in regional hostilities. “It’s getting hard to see how this can be contained,” said veteran correspondent Liz Sly.

Give Israel credit: For seven years it has stood watch over a Sunni-Shia war at its border and did not intrude. Faced with an array of al-Qaeda-linked (Sunni) and Iranian-backed (Shia) groups, Israel has taken action only after direct provocation.

Ilan Shulman, an Israeli Defense Forces intelligence officer and former paratrooper, described the variety of Syrian regime-supported elements at the border a year ago during a briefing I attended in the Golan Heights: two Syrian army brigades; assorted militias, including Hezbollah; and Iranian-backed Basiji fighters. Shulman concluded then, “This is not our war.” But he acknowledged Israeli intervention would become increasingly likely, given that “the lack of intervention of EU and U.S. leaders eventually brought both sides to do pretty much whatever they like.”

The prolonged Syrian war is leading to realignment, with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states supporting Israeli strikes on Syria this week. Bahrain’s foreign minister tweeted that as long as Iran acts up, “Any country in the region, including Israel, has the right to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”

NORTH KOREA: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un will sit down together June 12 in Singapore, the first time a sitting U.S. president has ever met with the leader of North Korea. A key question for experts leading up to the summit is whether U.S. troops based in South Korea will be part of negotiations. But White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told NPR, “This president’s got his eyes wide open.”

IMMIGRATION: This Mother’s Day, a lot of mothers are in jail, awaiting deportation and separated from their children. Here’s the view from a Michigan prison where Albanian Cile Precetaj, 46, a mother of three who has been seeking asylum in the United States since 2000, is sharing a cell with six other women, and a lot of desperation.

Some Christian groups are taking issue with the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” policy that separates parents from their children and puts children in state foster care. “If the law requires this, it must be changed,” said Robert George, Princeton University professor and U.S. religious freedom commissioner. “Sometimes it’s necessary to separate children from parents. But where it’s not necessary to do that, it’s necessary not to do it.”

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said the United States “should fold all of the TPS [temporary protected status] people that have been here for a considerable period of time and find a way for them to be on a path to citizenship.” In the past six months, the Trump administration has moved to expel 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living and working in the United States under TPS, despite senior U.S. diplomats warning that mass deportations could destabilize the region and trigger more illegal immigration.

IRAN: A group of about 100 mostly Iranian Christians who landed in Vienna, Austria, at the invitation of the United States faces dwindling options after the Trump administration denied final admission. Now cut off from U.S. family members, the Iranians may receive support from church leaders in Austria and the U.S.-based Nazarene Fund, while a lawsuit against the Department of Human Services and the State Department is pending.

RUSSIA: Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of those fake Russian Facebook ads, while Republicans on the committee won a classified briefing from the FBI that may reveal the agency actually had a mole inside the Trump campaign. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel said she knows who it is.

CHINA took on a trial run the world’s first railless electric train, kind of a bus train.

IRELAND: When is Irish whiskey no longer Irish whiskey? Perhaps when it’s caught up in the complexities of the Brexit wars.

I’M REREADING William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East.

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