The first publicly acknowledged lethal sea encounter still has not arrived. That absence is now part of the record, not a comfort.

On Monday, this paper treated the missing fatal clash as the maritime artifact. AP's Tuesday-relevant Hormuz file keeps the same structure: proposal, blockade, shipping disruption, Brent above $108 and no public fatality marker. [1]

The strait can be dangerous without giving governments the single event that forces a speech. Prices rise. Ships wait or reroute. Insurers make quiet decisions. Diplomats test relays. None of that requires a death certificate.

This is the divergence. Mainstream coverage sensibly follows the proposal and the market. Security X watches for the first body because the first body changes the legal vocabulary overnight. Both are looking at the same water. The paper's job is to name the threshold before it is crossed.

The absence of a fatal encounter still preserves options. The duration of that absence shows what those options cost.

This is not a plea for escalation. It is a warning against lazy reassurance. A sea lane can be militarized enough to raise insurance, delay cargo and distort diplomacy long before it produces the public casualty that cable television recognizes as war.

That pre-casualty period is where policy choices are usually made quietly and explained later.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem