I received an email from a friend in the United Sates this week saying that Israel’s war in Lebanon had not received much publicity in the American press. Since I was surprised, I tried to explain it to her. It occurred  to me that others may may not understand this issue, so I decided to write this blog.

A key provision of that treaty is that the Sinai would be demilitarized so that neither Egypt nor Israel could attack the other with tanks.

This was not the first time that Israel had tried to establish a buffer zone between itself and its enemies. Previously, the IDF forced the PLO back across the Jordan river, thereby creating a neutral zone between Israel and the PLO. What Israel had  NOT anticipated was that Jordan did NOT want the PLO either, and drove the PLO into Syria, from which it went to Lebanon, which borders Israel. Once again Israel had no buffer zone. That led to what Israelis call the First Lebanon War. That war only ended in 1982 when US Secretary of State George Shultz got the PLO to move to Tunisia

Ever since the October massacre, Hezbollah has been shooting missiles at Israel from south of the Litani River in support of  Hamas. Finally, Israel got fed up with Hezbollah and the Lebanese army and decided to enforce the provisions of UNSC 1701 itself. It was been wildly successful in this regard, doing enormous damage to Hezbollah, including killing its leadership. In the last year, Iran has spent large sums of money in order to support and rearm Hezbollah, so that it can retain its strength.

On Friday April 10, 2026, Iran announced that it would no longer participate in peace negotiations with the United States, unless the United States agreed as a precondition that its peace agreement with Iran would include the war in Lebanon. If the United Stats agrees to that, it will give Iran more time to re-arm Hezbollah. Since Donald Trump does NOT seem to care about Israel at all, I suspect he will give in on Iran’s demand.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)