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This paper combines two case studies from the UK and Israel to question/'que(e)ry' LGBTQ people's travel and mobility behaviours, to explore the issue of 'queer mobilities' and related exclusions from heteronormative public transport spaces. Our research demonstrates how the fear of anti-LGBTQ discrimination and violence have profound impacts on LGBTQ people's travel options and activity spaces. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, we examine how LGBTQ identity/'queerness', visibility, and safety perceptions affect mobility opportunities and choices. We pursue feminist and queer approaches to expose how LGBTQ people embody a complex, intersectional set of mobility considerations. The study reveals grounded experiences of different LGBTQ travellers and their coping strategies to feel able to travel safely. It identifies how LGBTQ participants are not necessarily physically excluded from mobility opportunities. Rather, they pay hidden costs to travel safely, which take the shape of identity and visibility compromises and heightened levels of fear while travelling. They also use more expensive travel alternatives, such as taxis, or take less direct routes to overcome their experiences of unsafe and inaccessible public transport alternatives. Thereby, we advocate a view of mobility as another important dimension of the discrimination and exclusion of sexual and gender minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel's relationship with the West during the first half of the 1950s was not a walk in the park. Economic relations fitted into this general picture. Both Britain and France were sceptical as far as Israel's potential was concerned. Their early prognoses tended to be quite gloomy. Simultaneously, economic relations provided a convenient communication channel at a time when overt association with the Jewish state was not desirable. The progress in Franco-Israeli economic ties during the years 1953-1955 illustrates this ambivalence in full. While prudence remained, the increase in bilateral trade managed to warrant the military supplies. Britain, constituting a traditional market, surpassed France as a trading partner. Given British political aloofness, the instrument of trade served primarily its immediate economic purpose. Based on archival sources gathered in all of the three countries, the paper traces the interplay of trade and diplomacy in the early years of Israel's foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article accounts for Israel's failure to take the historical opportunity to invade the West Bank during the 1948 war. It also considers the nature of British support for Jordan between 1948 until the death of King Abdullah in 1951. British interests in Transjordan were determined by strategic factors that were outlined in the 1948 Anglo-Transjordan Treaty. Although the British were bound by the treaty to come to Jordan's assistance in the case of an invasion, in practice this would have been very difficult to achieve short of invading Israel from Egypt. This paper argues that the Israelis failed to invade the West Bank in 1948 because they were deterred by the possibility of British intervention and because of divisions within the Israeli political establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]