The US-brokered trilateral statement, issued by the US State Department on Wednesday following the latest high-level meeting between Lebanese and Israeli representatives, belongs to a category of political submission so extreme that it is difficult to locate a precedent in the history of modern statecraft.
Lebanon, a state under attack, co-signs a document that conditions a ceasefire not on the withdrawal of the occupying power from its territory, but on the withdrawal of its own citizens from their land.
The ceasefire agreement is not made conditional on Israel ending its aggression, withdrawing from occupied Lebanese territory, releasing prisoners, or enabling the return of the displaced, but on Hezbollah ceasing fire and withdrawing from the south.
Israel is not even named in relation to the ceasefire’s obligations.
What is presented as a cessation of hostilities is, therefore, structured not as the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon, but as the removal of Lebanese from Lebanese land.
