The Foreign Office has issued a stark warning: Israel’s abandonment of the ceasefire in Lebanon risks plunging the entire Levant into chaos. After the strike on a Hezbollah target in Beirut, the usual diplomatic theatre of “concern” has given way to something more shrill. But let us be honest.
Britain has no more influence over Bibi Netanyahu than it does over the weather. The collapse of the truce was inevitable. What were we expecting?
That a prime minister fighting for his political survival would suddenly embrace statesmanship? The tragedy is that we keep pretending these cycles of violence are aberrations. They are not.
They are the natural state of a region where borders were drawn by bored colonial officials and grievances are nursed for centuries. The Beirut strike is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is the failure to address the fundamental question of Palestinian statehood, a failure that has metastasised into a perpetual war machine.
Britain’s warning is a fig leaf for its own impotence. It reminds me of the late Roman Empire’s frantic dispatches to frontier provinces: urgent letters full of menace, but no legions to back them up. We are now spectators in a conflict that will define the 21st century, and all we can do is tut and issue statements.
The truce is dead. Long live the truce.
