Ground Blows Up Under Netanyahu’s Withdrawal Deal; IDF Pour More Fuel On The Failure

Right, so this is what a “withdrawal framework” looks like now, apparently. Not a convoy leaving. Not a border post being handed back. Smoke.

Lebanon gets told there is a deal. A framework. A peace step. A route back to sovereignty. You can almost smell the conference-room coffee.

And then the ground blows up, because Israel’s idea of withdrawal, by the look of it, comes with a detonator in the welcome pack.

Yet that’s a problem for Netanyahu here. He needed this to look like withdrawal with a tie on. Careful language, official backdrops, everyone lined up for the cameras. Then the smoke rolls in from southern Lebanon again, and the whole thing starts looking less like diplomacy and more like a demolition job with a press pass.

But then there’s this footage.

And once you’ve seen the smoke, the sales pitch starts looking a bit less like diplomacy and a bit more like somebody missed - well, something rather important out of it and it stems from this recent event, which you might recall.

That was of course in the aftermath of Lebanon’s sell out of a deal to Israel

Lovely room. Lots of flags. Important people looking very official, though you can’t escape the feeling somebody’s back might have a knife pressed to it can you?

The violence is going on elsewhere. All the death a destruction goes on somewhere else. You put all the conditions you feel like you can get away with imposing here into the appendices at the back. Then you stand back and admire your machinations.

A framework. A step forward. A path to peace.

Wonderful.

And then, once the cameras move from the podium back to southern Lebanon, the whole thing starts coughing up smoke like a clapped-out old van trying to pass its MOT.