Articles

On the seventh day, do we rest? No. We wait. We live forever on the threshold of anticipation. We scroll through the minutes of the twenty-four hours, an article here, a statement or a tweet there, trying to sketch our day from the debris. There is no roadmap here, save for the one charted by those who do not speak our tongue. And we simply... endure. We endure... and we dismantle. We read the void between the lines more than the lines themselves. We dissect the silence, and we distrust everything that seems natural. For the natural is natural no longer. And the quiet, in our lands, is not peace... but the breathing space of those who did not choose to fight.

While total uncertainty continues to reign over the evolution of the conflict between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, direct talks between Lebanon and Israel resume this Thursday, April 23, in Washington, in the afternoon (Levant time), under the aegis of the Department of State. An authorized local source indicated on Wednesday that the Lebanese delegation will demand the extension of the ceasefire in the South for a period of one month. The discussions could also focus, in parallel, on the practical organization (calendar, meeting venue, etc.) and the agenda for the upcoming bilateral negotiations.

The yellow line drawn across southern Lebanese soil is not merely a military demarcation. It is a warning from history. Israel has established a military zone stretching roughly ten kilometers north of the border inside southern Lebanon. Israel through its Prime Minister has made its position unambiguous: "This is a security strip ten kilometers deep, which is much stronger, more intense, more continuous and more solid than what we had previously. That is where we are and we are not leaving." [1] The vocabulary is familiar. Analysts have described what is unfolding as the " Gazafication " of southern Lebanon — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz having instructed the army to demolish Lebanese border villages based on the Beit Hanoun and Rafah models. [2] We know what those models look like. Nothing remains.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The study that follows, dedicated to a detailed analysis of the logic of war in the Persian-Iranian spirit and practice in the light of the current conflict with the United States, is not to be read in a single sitting, but in segments; the digital medium is no doubt ill-suited to the length of the text. It is more advisable to print the article and read it on paper. The author offers his apologies in advance to the reader for this inconvenience, but the academic approach followed cannot tolerate a break into several articles, or a summary that would dilute its substance and nuances. Therefore, mea maxima culpa .

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the extension of the ceasefire with Iran, without setting a new deadline, in order to give Tehran more time to negotiate. He nevertheless said he intended to maintain the blockade of Iranian ports, to the dismay of the Islamic Republic. Writing on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president said he had decided to “extend the truce until Iran presents a proposal and talks are concluded, one way or another.” He said the decision had been taken in response to what he described as “deep divisions within the Iranian government” and at the request of Pakistan, the main mediator. He also said he had “ordered U.S. armed forces to maintain the naval blockade.” Tehran, which had made the lifting of the blockade a condition for attending the Islamabad talks, did not immediately comment on the extension. According to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, it would respond “at a later stage.”

Division in Lebanon is no longer a consequence of war; it has become one of its instruments. What we are witnessing today might be described as an economy of division — hatred converted into raw material, produced daily, manufactured, distributed and consumed, serving several parties at once, even when those parties appear to be in open enmity. The conflict has migrated from military violence to symbolic violence. When an elderly man rises to insult the head of government in abject language, when another attacks the president and reminds him of Sadat's fate, when children are trained in invective and the glorification of militarisation extends even to a shoe, the matter no longer concerns the individuals targeted but what they represent: a circumvention of felt anxiety and fear, a deliberate intent to embed in popular consciousness the image of a collapsing state, to normalise insult as a mode of political expression, shifting the conflict from a critique of power to its degradation and accusation of treason. This goes well beyond moral decline or uncontrolled rage; it is, at its core, the sign of a far graver mutation — striking the image of the state in the collective consciousness and replacing public deliberation with defamation.