The ten-day ceasefire currently settling over the smouldering hills of southern Lebanon is less a triumph of diplomacy than a desperate, timed experiment in restraint. At its narrowest and most cynical, the truce is a diplomatic "clearance operation" designed to halt the kinetic momentum of war long enough for President Trump to physically haul Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Lebanese President Joseph Aoun into a room in Washington so he can wear the garb of the peacemaker that he has beguiled himself into believing.

In this role, Trump will, of course, use the softest feather to specially plead with the Israelis and deploy a cosh on Aoun. The urgency, however, is dictated by a grim new geography and acquisitive Israeli military cartography: roughly 80,000........

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