On Saturday morning, a member of the Lebanese parliament led a group of about seventeen people into Israeli territory. The IDF promptly fired warning shots, forcing the group to retreat back to the other side of the Blue Line—the provisional boundary between Israel and Lebanon that the UN established in 2000. While this may seem like a minor incident, it follows on the heels of Hizballah operatives setting up tents on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, trying to sabotage the border fence and start fires near Israeli villages, and flagrantly violating the terms of the 2006 ceasefire that ended the Second Lebanon War. Assaf Orion comments:

Although Israel assesses that Hizballah is not interested in initiating a war at present, senior IDF officials recently warned of the group’s growing appetite for challenges that risk unintended escalation (e.g., the March bombing near Megiddo; the April rocket salvo by Hamas cells in south Lebanon).

Israel faces a strategic dilemma. . . . The remaining tent, [others have been removed], presents no military threat, and attempting to answer the challenge with quiet diplomacy is a prudent first step. Yet in seeking to restrain such provocations without deteriorating into all-out war, Israel’s measured use of force (e.g., intercepting last year’s drones without an offensive response; responding to the Megiddo attack by striking Syria rather than Lebanon; striking harmless targets in response to the April rocket strikes) has emboldened Hizballah’s aggression and invited political grandstanding in Beirut. Accepting Lebanon’s demands could project weakness and invite additional provocations.

If the group’s presence in Israeli territory persists, as is now increasingly probable, Israel should prepare to remove it at a time of its choosing—and prepare for possible escalation if Hizballah forcefully opposes this removal or engages in any other aggression.

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.