The afternoon air in Beirut smells faintly of crushed concrete and roasted pistachios from a corner vendor. Officials are reviewing the latest technical implementation of the regional peace agreement, which on Tuesday took the form of lethal bombardment.
BEIRUT — The afternoon air in the capital smells faintly of crushed concrete and roasted pistachios from a corner vendor. Dust settles quietly on the red plastic chairs outside a cafe as officials review the latest technical implementation of the regional ceasefire, which on Tuesday took the form of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon that killed thirteen people, including four women and a child.
Military planners in Tel Aviv have moved quickly to reassure the international community that the ongoing bombardment is merely a structural component of the cessation of hostilities. The deployment of high-yield explosives into residential blocks, they explained, is a standard mechanism for ensuring that the peace process is not interrupted by unauthorized periods of quiet from Hezbollah.
A ceasefire is a living, breathing framework, and occasionally you have to sustain that framework by dropping munitions on a family to maintain the necessary strategic equilibrium.
As rescue workers pull the remaining non-combatants from the rubble in the south, diplomats in Washington praised the remarkable durability of the agreement. The structural integrity of the ceasefire remains absolute, observers note, provided no one looks too closely at the daily casualty figures arriving from the Lebanese health ministry.