The Guardian view on Trump and Lebanon: civilians need lasting peace, not short-term patches. The US president seeks to curb Israel’s intensified offensive as he looks for an exit from war with Iran, but turmoil in the Middle East will not easily be ended

The southern Lebanese port city of Tyre was targeted by Israeli airstrikes on 2 June 2026. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Editorial 

“Let’s see how long that lasts,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night, addressing his attempts to de-escalate in Lebanon following Israel’s intensified military campaign. Within hours, Israeli drone strikes had killed eight people in the south, including a father and his two children, and damaged a hospital. Hezbollah continued launching rockets and drones.

Anxious to escape the illegal war that he launched on Iran, and with Tehran threatening to suspend peace talks over the Israeli offensive, the US president reined in Benjamin Netanyahu – for now – in what was described as an expletive-laden phone call. Mr Trump’s post, despite its unusual admission of doubt, still oversold the agreement. He claimed that Hezbollah and Israel had agreed to “stop all shooting”. Lebanon’s presidency suggested a more limited deal: Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs if Hezbollah did not launch attacks against Israel.

That people are discussing de-escalation at all when a ceasefire is already supposed to be in place epitomises the cruelty of this conflict. The truce has not prevented Israel killing hundreds of people in Lebanon, including civilians, and it had intensified its offensive in late May. Mr Trump’s intervention appeared on Tuesday to have achieved – for however long – a return to a lower rate of death.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/02/the-guardian-view-on-trump-and-lebanon-civilians-need-lasting-peace-not-short-term-patches

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"Lethal Israeli attacks on an engineer and drivers transporting water have intensified the water crisis that is fuelling the spread of infectious diseases; Médecins Sans Frontières has called the weaponisation of water supplies a campaign of collective punishment. Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable. Hospitals and schools lie in ruins." The Guardian view on ceasefires that aren’t: Israel never stopped killing in Gaza

‘Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty

"The meaning of the term “ceasefire” should be self‑evident. Yet Israel’s strikes have killed scores of people in Lebanon since it agreed a truce with Hezbollah under pressure from the US, with the two sides trading fire. There was a strike on Beirut on Wednesday. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would be delighted to resume war with Iran. But it is wary of Donald Trump’s wrath as he seeks an exit from the conflict.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 800 people since the truce there was declared in October, striking almost every day. This, too, is not a true ceasefire but a de-escalation, however necessary. Lethal Israeli attacks on an engineer and drivers transporting water have intensified the water crisis that is fuelling the spread of infectious diseases; Médecins Sans Frontières has called the weaponisation of water supplies a campaign of collective punishment. Never mind the estimated $70bn cost of reconstruction; homes are still being flattened. Families in tents face a rat infestation. Essential medicines are unavailable. Hospitals and schools lie in ruins. An analysis of the war’s impact on education described children feeling “like the living dead”.

Israel agreed to end attacks, massively increase the aid allowed into the territory and withdraw its forces to within a “yellow line” – still accounting for 53% of the territory. Yet strikes have continued, aid flows yo-yo and essential items are blocked on the claim that they are “dual use”. The military has expanded its zone of control substantially – and the..." READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/07/the-guardian-view-on-ceasefires-that-arent-israel-never-stopped-killing-in-gaza-allies-must-reject-any-escalation

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What Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right really mean when they invoke ‘Greater Israel’ - The concept is about much more than acquiring territory, it is also about Netanyahu’s desire for Israel to become a regional superpower.

Daniel Levy served as an Israeli peace negotiator at the Oslo II talks and is president of the US/Middle East project 

First responders and residents gather at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut's Tallet al-Khayyat neighbourhood, on 8 April 2026. Photograph: Fadel Itani/AFP/Getty

Mon 13 Apr 2026

Much remains unclear about the significance and durability of the two-week pause in the US and Israel’s war on Iran. But one aspect of the conflict remains as clear today as it was six weeks ago. Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan. Benjamin Netanyahu does.

Israel’s war aims were to maximally degrade the capacity of the Iranian state, achieving not so much regime change as state implosion. Despite the ceasefire, Netanyahu has emphasised that this is “not the end of the campaign” and that Israel’s “finger is on the trigger” to resume combat. A seasoned strategist, he has spent the second Trump administration seizing the opportunity of geopolitical fluidity to reach for his end goal: a Greater Israel.

When it’s invoked on the Israeli right, “Greater Israel” is often seen as a purely territorial concept: an attempt to increase the size of territory that Israel claims as its own. This is certainly integral to its meaning. After all, Israel has been expansionist and entailed the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians since its inception, and this process has now accelerated considerably.

In the past two-and-a-half years, Israel has flattened and reconquered Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people and laying waste its civilian infrastructure, squeezing its population, according to one estimate from last year, into just 12% of an already tiny strip of land. In the West Bank, Israel continues a campaign of destruction and displacement towards Palestinian people and property that is unparalleled since the six-day war in 1967, expanding its matrix of control and settlement.

After the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in 2024, Israel seized territory in Syria (beyond the illegally annexed Golan Heights) and is in the process of reconstituting a zone of occupation in southern Lebanon. Government ministers from the Religious Zionism and Jewish Power factions, and Likud parliamentarians, openly agitate for Israeli sovereignty and settlement in that country. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has called for Israel to “expand to Damascus”, and Netanyahu himself claimed to feel “very much connected” to this territorial vision of Greater Israel.

However, Greater Israel should be seen as a geopolitical and strategic concept as much as a territorial one. The acquisition and control of land is, in many respects, the obvious and easy part... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/13/benjamin-netanyahu-middle-east-greater-israel

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"Church leaders argue that invoking Christian identity while directing military actions that have killed thousands amounted to a political use of the faith, reducing Christianity to a public‑relations tool rather than a moral framework. It is this stark contrast between rhetoric and lived reality that fueled widespread anger among Christian leaders in Jerusalem and beyond."

International Middle East Media Center IMEMC Editorial Remark: Netanyahu’s statement that “Jesus was a Jew, and Christianity is part of our heritage” was framed as an outreach message to Western Christian audiences, yet it was received by Palestinian Christians as deeply provocative.

The concern was not the historical accuracy of the phrase itself, but the context in which it was delivered—during a devastating war in Gaza and amid ongoing Israeli policies that continue to harm Palestinian Christian and Muslim communities.

Church leaders argue that invoking Christian identity while directing military actions that have killed thousands amounted to a political use of the faith, reducing Christianity to a public‑relations tool rather than a moral framework.

It is this stark contrast between rhetoric and lived reality that fueled widespread anger among Christian leaders in Jerusalem and beyond. 

Jerusalem Archbishop Rebukes Netanyahu’s Statements on Christianity

Archbishop Atallah Hanna, Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia, Jerusalem; March 21, 2026:  

They want a Jesus shaped by their own agendas and desires, while Jesus Christ came into this world to spread love, compassion, and fraternity among human beings.

Netanyahu’s offensive remarks about Christianity have angered Christians everywhere, as well as every reasonable and wise person in this region and across the world.

His statements are insulting and wholly unacceptable, yet they are not surprising. They stem from a Zionist ideology that excludes and marginalizes anyone who is not Jewish, viewing followers of other faiths as lesser beings.

Netanyahu is a product of this racist school of thought. But what concerns us most is not only what he says, but what his government continues to do to our Palestinian people, who are targeted in every aspect of their lives.

At the very moment he insults Christianity and Christians everywhere, he persists in his aggressive policies against our people.

The genocidal war in Gaza stands as the clearest testimony to the crimes committed against a people who seek nothing more than to live freely and with dignity in their homeland and on their sacred soil.

This Zionist current to which Netanyahu belongs seeks a Jesus of a different kind—one molded to their whims and political needs.

They want a Jesus who tells the killer to remain a killer, the criminal to remain a criminal, and the butcher to continue his brutality.

Jesus Christ came into this world to correct false concepts, including some recorded in the Old Testament. He came to straighten what had gone crooked, and to call every human being to live with integrity, mercy, and humanity.... READ MORE https://imemc.org/article/jerusalem-archbishop-rebukes-netanyahus-statements-on-christianity/

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"His [Trump's] escalation against Iran comes as he faces mounting domestic pressure, for attacking the civil rights of US citizens in Minneapolis, amid renewed scrutiny surrounding the Epstein files, and just days after the US supreme court struck down the legal justification for his global tariff policy." Christopher S Chivvis

‘If Trump cares little for strategy, this does not make strategy irrelevant.’ Photograph: Fatima Shbair/AP

Trump wants to distract Americans from scandals at home with a diversionary war

Christopher S Chivvis

Iran strikes are attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out Epstein and tariffs with the thunder of cruise missiles

 

Sat 28 Feb 2026 15.00 EST

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without deciding whether it should. The George W Bush administration failed to ask whether the costs, risks and likely consequences of regime change justified the gamble. The result was tragedy – for Iraq, for the Middle East and for America.

Donald Trump’s attack on Iran now follows the same pattern – but with an even narrower logic of performative power. In the run-up to Iraq, Washington devoted enormous energy to planning the invasion. Almost no attention was given to the more important question: was war necessary, and could it realistically produce a stable political outcome?

Now history is repeating itself. Having torn up the Iran nuclear deal and escalated pressure, the president has now initiated a military campaign explicitly aimed at regime collapse. Yet there has been no serious public reckoning with the risks, much less the plausibility of the political end state he claims to seek. By weaponising the military for the sake of the attention economy, Washington has traded grand strategy for the immediate gratification of the news cycle.

This is because the outcome of the war is less important to Trump than violent conflict with America’s enemy and the performative use of US power.

Trump’s foreign policy is not guided by a coherent theory of order, deterrence or alliance management. It is driven instead by the demonstration of dominance, the creation of spectacle and the command of the news cycle. Military force, in this framework, is not a tool subordinated to strategy. It is the strategy.

His escalation against Iran comes as he faces mounting domestic... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/28/diversionary-war-trump-wants-to-distract-americans-from-scandals-at-home?CMP=share_btn_url 

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Israel pushes ahead with vast illegal settlement in heart of West Bank: Tender posted for construction of 3,401 homes in [ILLEGAL] settlement designed to ‘bury idea of a Palestinian state’... “We said there will be no Palestinian state, and indeed there will be no Palestinian state! This place is ours,” Netanyahu said.

The separation wall next to the Arab neighbourhood of al-Eizariya, near where the Israeli government says housing units will be built as part of the E1 settlement development project. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem

Tue 6 Jan 2026

Israel is moving to start construction on a vast illegal settlement in the heart of the West Bank, designed to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The Israel Land Authority in mid-December quietly posted a tender for construction of 3,401 homes in the “E1” project, which will effectively sever the north and south of the occupied West Bank for Palestinians, and further cut off East Jerusalem.

The tender, which has not been reported previously, lays out terms for companies to bid for part of the work, with a deadline for submissions in mid-March.

It “reflects an accelerated effort to advance construction in E1”, said Yonatan Mizrachi, a co-director of Settlement Watch with the advocacy group Peace Now, which found the document online.

“This timeline suggests bulldozers could start work in less than a year,” he added. The construction work would seal a land grab the British government has described as “a flagrant breach of international law”.

Building settlements in this area is a decades-old idea with cross-party backing in Israel, mooted initially in the 1990s by Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor prime minister and Nobel peace laureate who was assassinated in 1995 by a rightwing nationalist.

For years, construction was blocked by the US and the country’s European allies... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/06/israel-vast-illegal-settlement-west-bank

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"... What other ethnic group would be treated with such indifference or ignorance or bias? Especially a devastated population, with the heaviest casualties among babies and children, by U.S.-made weapons. " Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader

@RalphNader

 

The media’s continued indifference to the massive under death count of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the genocidal Netanyahu—embraced for the 5th time this year at the White House—by Dictator Trump. The total death count coming from the most intense bombardment and starvation (food, water, medicine and healthcare) of a human population in military history in the tiny enclave is not nearly 70,000. It’s about 600,000—or slightly over a quarter of the civilian population. 

 

What other ethnic group would be treated with such indifference or ignorance or bias? Especially a devastated population, with the heaviest casualties among babies and children, by U.S.-made weapons.

https://x.com/RalphNader/status/2007105459719713058 

 

Civic Self-Respect

by Ralph Nader

Seven Stories Press  https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4505-civic-self-respect?srsltid=AfmBOooe0l0Zvtxn-KJ-9dBiwv1L4dS67VqFbFGz0XDZ9sJdDJ9MGgh7

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Born in Connecticut in 1934, RALPH NADER has spent his lifetime challenging corporations and government agencies to be more accountable to the public. His 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed permanently altered the course of a reckless U.S. automobile industry and made Nader a household name. His lobbying and writing on the food industry helped to ensure that the food we buy is required to pass strict guidelines before reaching the consumer. One of Nader’s greatest achievements was his successful lobbying for a 1974 amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, which gave increased public access to government documents. Over the years he has co-founded the public interest groups Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert, and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. His 2000 presidential campaign on the Green Party ticket served to broaden the scope of debate on the nation’s priorities. Named by the Atlantic as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, Nader continues to be a relentless advocate for grassroots activism and democratic change. He lives in Washington, D.C.