Two global issues continue to dominate world affairs – the aftermath of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 by Moscow-backed rebels in Ukraine, and the Gaza-Israel war.

Despite the UN Security Council resolution drawn up by foreign minister Julie Bishop – and backed by all members, including Russia – international investigators and those searching for the remaining bodies have still not been given unfettered access to the crash site by Kremlin-backed separatists.

Hence the question of sanctions against Russia remains a live issue, though there seems less appetite for banning president Vladimir Putin from the G20 summit in Brisbane in November. Prime minister Tony Abbott now seems cool on the idea, and has the support of The Australian. At the weekend Britain’s deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, came up with a potentially more effective idea – stripping Russia’s right to host the next soccer World Cup in 2018.

In an interview published in London’s The Sunday Times, Clegg said it was now “unthinkable” for Putin to be given the privilege of hosting the world’s most popular sporting event. The Russian president’s behaviour in “this terrible, terrible downing is beyond the pale”, he said.

Clegg’s call may draw a better response than UK prime minister David Cameron’s urging of European Union leaders to impose new sanctions against the Russians. Cameron last week singled out the French for going ahead with the sale of two Mistral-class warships to Russia. Cameron was accused of hypocrisy by the head of France’s ruling Socialist party, who suggested to the Financial Times Cameron should “clean up his own backyard” instead of providing refuge in London for Russian oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea football club.

“ Cameron appealed to European governments to freeze accounts of oligarchs close to Putin. He can do it himself, with Roman Abramovich,” the FT quoted Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences, as saying,“Abramovich is one of Putin’s closest associates, he is one of those who put Putin in his post in 1999.”

Finally, I’ll leave this subject for now with a thundering editorial from The Economist, which argues that “Putin’s epic deceits have grave consequences for his people and the rest of the world”.

In recent days Israel has come in for criticism by a number of world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, for the use of disproportionate force in its counter-attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. These were provoked by rockets launched by Hamas against civilian targets in Israel. AIIA NSW has a meeting on this next week when an advocate of an academic boycott of Israel will put his case.

One particular incident that inflamed international opinion was a disputed attack on a United Nations school which housed scores of refugees and where 16 Palestinians were said to have died, though the UN has not confirmed this. The New York Times reported Israel as insisting it did not attack those sheltering at the school. The Washington Post reported President Barack Obama as pressing Israel for an “immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire”, reflecting growing concern over the rising death toll. The United Nations Security Council later agreed to a statement along these lines.

Foreign Affairs, the publication of the US Council on Foreign Relations suggests that when all is said and done Israel will achieve a tactical success but a strategic failure. The influential centre-right British magazine Prospect quotes John Kerry, the US secretary of state is on record of saying that Israel risks becoming an apartheid state; its editor, Bronwen Maddox, asks “Could Israel be drifting towards disaster?”