Backed by Iran and deeply entrenched in Lebanon, Hizballah possesses military capabilities far greater than Hamas’s. Israeli officials have made clear, on and off the record, that they will no longer tolerate the terrorist group’s existence on their northern border. To this end, French and American diplomats have been working on a negotiated solution that involves Hizballah’s withdrawal north of the Litani river, which divides the southernmost tip of Lebanon from the rest of the country. Israel in exchange would cede Har Dov and few other small parcels of land—based on Hizballah’s extremely tenuous claims that these are in fact Lebanese territories. David Wurmser explains why the deal should be a nonstarter:

Hizballah has been in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701—the resolution that terminated the 2006 Second Lebanon War—since its signing. . . . In many ways, the U.S. proposal only asks of Hizballah to implement one part of UNSCR 1701 and completely ignores [the others, along with previous resolutions]. This itself constitutes a major victory for Hizballah. [Moreover], under the plan proposed by the U.S. and France, Hizballah is rewarded—and its resistance validated and continued existence as an armed militia legitimized—by a full Israeli withdrawal in all of the areas in addition to other disputed parcels.

The U.S. and France have also proposed under this agreement that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) secure the border and the buffer zone south of the Litani River. Indeed, UNSCR 1701 had called for that, but [the LAF] has long been proven to be an entirely dysfunctional fiction as a sovereign force. It cannot in any way cross Hizballah, and to believe it can . . . is simply delusional.

The U.S. and France are pushing for an agreement to avoid escalation on Israel’s northern border which must be understood in effect as part of a larger effort to appease Iran on substance and strategy while giving Israel hollow tactical scraps. It is a deal Israel must refuse.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.