Yesterday, pursuant to the November 27 cease-fire deal with Lebanon, the IDF withdrew the bulk of its forces from that country. It will, however, maintain control of five key border villages, a decision approved by the U.S. While these five outposts improve Israel’s military position, they do not constitute a “buffer zone” in the usual sense, even thought that term has been used in the press.

Meanwhile, towns on the Israeli side of the border yesterday held municipal elections, which had been delayed due to the war: a symbol of the gradual return to normalcy. The IDF officially recommends that those who evacuated the area return after March 1. Yossi Yehoshua writes:

The most glaring weakness in the [cease-fire] agreement is the absence of a buffer zone—an area off-limits to civilians and, especially, to Hizballah operatives. The IDF’s recent blow to Hizballah’s elite Radwan Force, which was trained to seize Israeli border communities, significantly reduces the likelihood of a repeat of the October 7-style scenario [in the north]. But it won’t prevent provocations designed to test Israel’s response, even if they risk triggering renewed violence.

It’s therefore baffling that the agreement does not include a clear Israeli demand stipulating that no armed forces other than the Lebanese army be permitted in southern Lebanon—and that anyone seen carrying a weapon be considered a legitimate target, regardless of whether they’re actively engaged in terrorism.

For precisely this reason, Israel has been sending important messages both to enemies and to its own citizens:

[On Sunday], Israeli warplanes hit Hizballah positions while the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, delivered a speech—retaliating for repeated cease-fire violations. Over the weekend, an airstrike eliminated a senior commander from Hizballah’s [drone] unit after the group launched several reconnaissance drones into Israeli airspace. And [on Monday], a strike in Lebanon killed the senior Hamas operative Muhammad Shahin.

The real test will come if Hizballah continues its provocations—and, more importantly, when the Israeli government instructs the IDF to escalate its response, even at the risk of renewed fighting. Only then will the residents feel that something has truly changed.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.