In a flagrant violation of the US-mediated ceasefire, he intensified attacks against Lebanon.
This week, Israel not only killed 14 Lebanese people, including two children and two women, wounding 37, in reckless bombing on Sunday, it also restarted its policy of forced displacement by issuing evacuation orders to residents in the south who have just returned to their homes after six weeks of intense bombing. More than one million people had been displaced during the fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hizbullah between 2 March and 17 April, and only a fraction of those have managed to return.
On Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed targets in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, violating what seemed like an undeclared understanding that attacks would be limited to Hizbullah strongholds in the south, avoiding the capital, Beirut, and other parts of Lebanon.
Israel has already occupied 55 villages, making up nearly five per cent of Lebanon’s territory, during the latest round of fighting, establishing what it now calls a “yellow line” similar to the occupation in Gaza. After US President Donald Trump mediated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October, Israel maintained its occupation of more than half of the tiny Gaza Strip, squeezing more than two million people in inhumane conditions behind what it dubbed “the yellow line”, and declaring it would not totally withdraw before Hamas was totally disarmed. Now we have “yellow line 2”, and Israel’s Netanyahu is saying it won’t end its illegal occupation of Lebanese territory before Hizbullah’s disarmament.
It is no secret that Israel has strongly resisted ending the fighting in Lebanon, and was pressing the Trump administration to separate the Lebanese from the Iranian front. It was indeed confusing and embarrassing for the Pakistani prime minister to declare in his initial announcement of a truce between the US and Iran on 8 April that it covered all fronts, including Lebanon, only to be followed shortly by Netanyahu as well as Trump and other top US officials denying that this was the case.
Considering that it was Iran that asked Hizbullah to join the war against Israel and the United States as part of its strategy to prove that it can generate chaos in the region to compensate for its limited military capabilities compared to the US, Iran insisted that any truce between the two sides must include Lebanon, as well as Iraq and Yemen. The US president finally gave in, and on 17 April declared that his close ally, Netanyahu, was “prohibited from” bombing Lebanon “by the USA”. Trump added, “enough is enough.”
That statement was a major embarrassment for Netanyahu, considering that the truce between Israel and Hizbullah was declared from Washington even before informing the small Israeli security cabinet or securing its approval. There was never any doubt as to who was bossing in the joint US-Israeli war against Iran, but the statements made by Trump were another confirmation of how much leverage the US president maintains in steering his relations with Israel, and how he could bring Tel Aviv to comply with the ongoing regional effort to restore peace and stability, rather than restricting efforts to a short-term truce after which fighting will be resumed.
Trump was ambitious enough when he announced last week that he was personally involved in the effort to reach a permanent peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel, hosting the ambassadors of both countries briefly at the White House. He went as far as expressing the hope that he would soon host a summit between Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and Netanyahu, when the current alleged truce expires by mid-May.
It is very obvious that Lebanon, as a country, is deeply divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, an outcome of the history of its formation as a nation after the end of French colonisation, and a bloody Civil War that lasted 15 years between 1975 and 2000. Thus, it can never be run and maintained as a united nation if majority-vs-minority rules are applied. All major decisions regarding the country’s internal and external ties must be reached by consensus if they are to be effectively carried out on the ground.
Many Lebanese would argue that Hizbullah consulted no other parties in Lebanon before deciding to join Iran’s war against the United States and Israel. Yet many analysts feel that, when Netanyahu and Trump sought to fulfil their fantasy of repeating the Venezuela scenario in Iran by toppling its regime in a matter of days, Hizbullah had already assumed it would be next. Netanyahu and his extremist government would not forgive the group for backing Hamas during its two-year war against Israel following the 7 October, 2023 attacks.
Without broaching the complicated politics of Lebanon and the involvement of many outside parties in its affairs besides Iran, there is no doubt that Israel’s current military escalation against Lebanon, the killing of innocent civilians, maintaining the occupation of vast swathes of Lebanese territory in the south and preventing locals from returning to their homes are no help at all to those who are seeking to strengthen the Lebanese state, ensuring that its military would be the only party allowed recourse to arms or reach a peace agreement with Israel.
No Lebanese president or top official is likely to set foot in the White House and shake hands with Netanyahu while he continues to kill Lebanese people on a daily basis, or insist he will not end the occupation of parts of Southern Lebanon. More than 2700 Lebanese people have been killed in the last six weeks of fighting, and another 2500 were killed during the fighting between 7 October, 2023 and November, 2024. Aoun rejected Trump’s request, looking for any “unprecedented” victory, to join a phone call with Netanyahu before the announcement of the fragile truce two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the obvious reality is that all sorts of wars and fighting of which Israel has been part for nearly two and half years must stop. Lebanon will not reach stability and the Lebanese government will not be able to take full charge if the fighting does not stop on the Iranian front. The same applies to the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is extremely costly and hurting the whole world. There is an urgent need for a period of tranquility in the region because it is very obvious that continued wars, violence and bloodshed are only making the situation worse on the political, economic and national security levels.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 30 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: