Beirut, a city that has seen more boom than a fireworks factory manned by Wagner Group rejects, is once again the stage for the world’s most cynical theatre. I am Biff Thistlethwaite, gin flask in hand, reporting from the edge of a very expensive, very useless armistice. The Americans, bless their sort-of-innocent hearts, have crafted a ceasefire so flimsy it would collapse under the weight of a feather, let alone an Israeli missile. And now, six Lebanese souls are cooling in the morgue, a direct result of what our American cousins optimistically call a ‘faltering extension’. Faltering? It’s not faltering. It’s doing the dying swan in the middle of a minefield.
But let’s talk about the real victims here: British peacekeepers. Yes, your boys and girls in blue helmets, sent to babysit a conflict that predates their grandmothers’ first cigarette. They are currently ‘at risk’, which is diplomatic-speak for ‘their arses are hanging out in the wind while politicians argue over commas in a UN resolution’. I imagine them there, sipping lukewarm tea from a thermos, wondering if the next bang is a car backfiring or a 500-pound bomb. Splendid.
The Israeli strike, if we are to believe the Lebanese ministry, was ‘an act of aggression’. The Israeli ministry, in a rare moment of candour, called it ‘a targeted precision strike against a Hezbollah weapons cache’. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is doing what Hezbollah does best: sending out press releases in between smuggling Iranian rockets in crates marked ‘Humanitarian Aid’. The whole affair is a glorious, bloody mess.
And where is the great arbiter of peace, the United States? Anthony Blinken is probably on a plane, phone pressed to ear, saying things like ‘we are deeply concerned’ and ‘we urge restraint’. Restraint, for the record, is what you show when you resist eating the last Hobnob. Not what you show when you have the ability to glass an entire city block.
But I digress. The ‘ceasefire extension’ was supposedly going to give room for diplomacy. Diplomacy, in this context, means a bunch of men in suits flying to Geneva to talk about talking about peace while the body count rises. It is the most expensive game of Othello ever played.
So what will happen next? The usual. Britain will ‘warn’ both sides. The UN will ‘condemn’. The peacekeepers will ‘monitor’. And the dead will be buried. Then, in about three weeks, there will be another ‘urgent breaking report’ about another ceasefire failing. And I will be here, glass in hand, ready to chronicle the farce.
For now, I raise my gin to the peacekeepers. May your flak jackets be strong, your tea hot, and your escape routes clear. As for the politicians? I’d say they can go hang, but the nooses are probably tied in diplomatic knots.
