Good afternoon from the Jewish Currents news desk. Today, Hezbollah expert Thanassis Cambanis tells us whether the “ceasefire” will hold between Israel and Lebanon. And, the New York City school buffer zone fight turns into a political test for the Jewish establishment. Plus: A quick question for Mairav Zonszein on the unification of Israel’s center-right opposition.

The Jewish Currents news desk is directed by Josh Nathan-Kazis. Tips, responses, ideas, complaints, leaks? Email Josh at jnk@jewishcurrents.org. If you were forwarded this email, subscribe here so you don’t miss the next one.

Hezbollah Expert Thanassis Cambanis on the Bloody Ceasefire in Lebanon

On Sunday, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed 14 people, while Hezbollah killed an Israeli soldier stationed in southern Lebanon. Three days earlier, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend their so-called ceasefire for another three weeks.

The notional ceasefire is the latest effort to curb a war that broke out on March 2nd, when Hezbollah fired at Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-US war on Iran, the Lebanese militant group’s benefactor. But the fighting has continued, and the attacks on Sunday highlight the precarity of a deal that has lessened the intensity of the violence in Lebanon, but has not ended it. As direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon continue, Israeli troops continue to occupy parts of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces have depopulated the area, forcing over 1.2 million people from their homes, and have demolished hundreds of buildings, destroying entire villages.

To understand the state of the war in Lebanon, Jewish Currents spoke to Thanassis Cambanis, the author of a book on Hezbollah and the director of the foreign policy center of the progressive think tank The Century Foundation. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Alex Kane: What does the extension of the “ceasefire” mean?

Thanassis Cambanis: I don’t want to call it a ceasefire, because it isn’t fully one. The only promising element of this rapprochement between Israel and Lebanon is that it has enabled direct negotiations between the two governments, a necessary precursor to an actual ceasefire or peace agreement. But I’m profoundly skeptical that there is any possibility of a real political settlement right now because of two factors: Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon throughout periods of negotiation and ceasefire, and the exclusion of Hezbollah from the political process.

Israel and Lebanon have been at war since 1948, before the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah existed. There has to be some kind of political settlement between these two states so that people on both sides of the border can live free of attack. That said, the war is not between the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel. It’s between Hezbollah and Israel, and the resolution has to involve direct negotiations between those two.

AK: How controversial are these talks within Lebanon?

TC: When the president of Lebanon publicly called last month for direct talks with Israel—a wise diplomatic move—he didn’t offer any concessions. He was immediately accused of betraying Lebanon, and specifically the “resistance,” the formulation used to describe Hezbollah and its allies who have fought against Israel. That is dangerous. I have heard people in Lebanon worry that the current president or prime minister might face the risk of assassination because of this diplomatic outreach to Israel and the United States and I think that’s unfortunately a plausible scenario. [Ed note: In 1982, a supporter of the Syrian government killed Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, and in 2005, Hezbollah members assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.]

AK: What are Israel’s main goals in Lebanon right now, and are they the same as the Trump administration’s goals?

TC: Israel’s goals are maximalist, detached from reality, and horrible for Lebanese society. Since October 8th, 2023, the policy goal of Israel has been to annihilate Hezbollah, to completely pacify Lebanon, and maybe extract something like a complete surrender from the country. In the last month and a half, those Israeli goals have grown to an overt project of ethnically cleansing the border zone of Lebanon, and there’s been an expressed desire to occupy some Lebanese territory.

Those goals are not the Trump administration’s goals, although his administration’s Lebanon policy has been, at best, unarticulated. The thing that would really contribute to a shift in the dynamic would be empowering the Lebanese state, and that’s something that neither the United States nor Israel has ever supported, because they don’t actually want a strong and coherent Lebanese government which could theoretically provide a counterweight to the Israeli military.

AK: Israel and the US are pushing for Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, but they don’t want a stronger state?

TC: It’s an incoherent and contradictory policy. Everyone involved knows that the Lebanese government and the army aren’t strong enough to even hold their own territory from an outside or an internal challenge. They’re definitely not strong enough to disarm Hezbollah, a militia that has fought the Israeli military to a standstill multiple times in land wars.

Hezbollah’s transnational reach was eroded [by Israeli attacks on them after October 7th], and its ability to pose a threat beyond its borders shrank. However, it has retained its core competence, which is infantry power on Lebanese territory in communities that have been part of the Hezbollah-led project for nearly half a century. They are as strong as ever on their ability to defend Lebanese territory and fight against Israeli encroachment. They might be as weak as they were in their early years when it comes to projecting transnational power.

AK: Do you think the deal will hold?

TC: The regional picture has always been the main determinant of what happens in Lebanon. Right now we have an Israel that is running amok around the region, and a United States following suit, pursuing unachievable, open-ended military goals. Until that imbalance goes back into some kind of equilibrium, I don’t think there can be any kind of stable peace in Lebanon.

The type of settlement that is within reach is a tenuous and somewhat dissatisfactory type of non-aggression pact like what we saw from 2006 until 2023 between Israel and Lebanon. It certainly wasn’t anything like a political settlement, but there was a cross border calm that lasted for 17 years.

Right now Israel is not interested in that kind of agreement. Israel imagines that through the use of force, it can get something like total submission or military domination. We’re going to have to wait until those options are exhausted, until Israel and the United States find out that no matter how much they bomb Lebanon or bomb Iran, Lebanon and Iran are still going to be functional societies that contain elements that are going to oppose them. Peace, or at least non-war, will have to be made with those very actors that Israel and the United States hope to eliminate.

Wielding Veto, Mamdani Draws the Line in the Buffer Zone Fight

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s veto last Friday of a bill civil liberties advocates fear could limit protests outside of schools is setting up a face-off between Mamdani and the Jewish establishment groups that backed the legislation.

Organizations like the UJA-Federation of New York, once a dominant power in the city, are struggling to find their political footing amid the realignments of the Mamdani era. The effort to overturn the veto of the school protest bill is a test of how much juice they have left, and of the leadership of their key ally, council speaker Julie Menin.

Mamdani said he opposed the school protest bill on civil liberties grounds. “The problem is how widely this bill defines an educational institution and the constitutional concerns it raises regarding New Yorkers’ fundamental right to protest,” he said in a statement explaining his veto.

Also on Friday, Mamdani chose not to veto a similar bill targeting protests outside of synagogues and other houses of worship, which passed with a veto-proof majority vote in City Council. Both bills had been part of a package put forward by Menin, who says the bills are meant to fight antisemitism. Civil liberties advocates have said that both could restrict the right to protest, though the cops’ own lawyers say that neither of the proposed laws would do much to change the police department’s powers, as Alex Kane reported for Jewish Currents.

Jewish Currents previewed the veto earlier this month, when Alex Kane wrote that there was enough opposition to the schools bill in the Council for Mamdani to put up a fight. Now that fight has come, and the Jewish groups that wanted both of the bills passed are turning their fire on the mayor. In a joint statement, the UJA, the local offices of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, and a handful of other groups called the veto “a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.”

The question now is whether establishment groups can move enough votes to get around the mayor’s pen. Thirty council members voted in favor, while 34 are needed to overturn a mayoral veto. “We’re working really actively to make sure that Council members don’t flip,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, communications director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. “Nothing has changed since they made their original votes. The legislation is the same. Our objections are the same.”

Ellman-Golan says that the watered-down bill won’t do what its backers want, but could lead to racial profiling at schools and violence against protesters. “That’s just an unacceptable outcome,” she says.

– Josh Nathan-Kazis

A Quick Question for Mairav Zonszein: If Netanyahu Loses, What Does it Mean for the Palestinians?

In Israel, a bloc of centrist and right-wing parties is forming a united front against Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the national elections expected this fall. On Sunday, the centrist Yair Lapid and the right-wing religious nationalist Naftali Bennett said they would merge their parties and cooperate, as they did when they briefly unseated Netanyahu in 2021. Israeli media reported Monday that Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff who leads the centrist party Yashar, called for a meeting with Bennett, Lapid, and other leaders “to ensure victory” in the elections.

Netanyahu, beset by legal troubles and health problems, looks weak, but Bennett and Lapid don’t look any stronger, and another Netanyahu victory remains the most likely outcome. For liberals and the left, the remote prospect of another Lapid and Bennett government offers little hope. Under the prior Lapid-Bennett government, construction and planning of West Bank settlements and expulsions of Palestinians both increased compared to earlier Netanyahu governments, according to a report by the Israeli watchdog group Peace Now.

To understand the implications of the new compact between Bennett and Lapid, on Monday Jewish Currents spoke with Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group.

Josh Nathan-Kazis: Let’s say Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett were to win the elections this fall. What would change, in terms of Israel’s foreign policy, and Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians?

Mairav Zonszein: This election will not be about the Palestinians, and Bennett and Lapid are certainly not running on that issue. Rather, it will be about Netanyahu and restoring a sense of law and order. Bennett, like Netanyahu, openly rejects a Palestinian state. On the issue of settlements, he and Lapid will likely maintain the status quo in the occupied West Bank, which is in a state of accelerated annexation. But they would instruct the IDF to rein in settler violence—a break from the current government, which has armed and emboldened settler militias. On Israel’s foreign policy more broadly, Benett and Lapid will likely promote Israel’s national security interests not just through military force, but by emphasizing the importance of the US-Israel relationship and strengthening alliances in the region. To that end, they will try to improve Israel’s image in the West by toning down the rhetoric currently coming out of the defense and foreign ministries.

The big question is whether they will change Israeli military actions in places like Syria and Lebanon. That is primarily dependent on what will transpire on the Iran front, and what Trump will do. Regardless, they will make sure to stay on Trump’s good side.