Amos Hochstein has thought long and hard about it, and he’s come up with a solution. The Biden administration envoy tasked with handling the Lebanese front of Iran’s current war on Israel has reportedly replaced an earlier U.S. ceasefire draft with the following: Hezbollah should move north of the Litani River, Israeli troops should stay out of Lebanon, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon should remain the only armed forces between the two.

Where on earth did he come up with such a brilliant plan? Oh wait—that’s the plan from 2006! It’s literally UN Resolution 1701, the piece of paper that “ended” the Second Lebanon War Israel was forced to engage in after Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers seven years after the Jewish state unilaterally pulled out of Southern Lebanon following 17 years in which it occupied the area between its border and the Litani.

Now, one might be tempted to say that the status quo—that is what Hochstein is suggesting returning to—has a poor track record of preventing wars between Israel and Hezbollah, given that they are currently at war eighteen years into the status quo. One could go so far as to say the status quo is the very reason Hochstein has a war to stop in the first place.

And one would be correct.

UNIFIL, the UN force in Lebanon, has not prevented Hezbollah from rearming or from militarizing the whole of south Lebanon. UNIFIL has also, as I wrote recently, repeatedly intervened in conflicts on behalf of Hezbollah. It helped the terror group cover up their kidnapping and murder of three Israelis in 2000; it published sensitive Israeli troop movements on its website in 2006; and it has looked the other way as Hezbollah has built tunnels and weapons depots around UN bases.

When the referee tells a boxer to retreat to a neutral corner after knocking down his opponent, both the boxers and the ref are still in a boxing ring. And as Hochstein must know, fighters don’t stay in their corners when the other guy is back on his feet.

So what’s the point of even trying to reinstitute a dead letter like Resolution 1701?

Here, though the Biden administration is unlikely to acknowledge it, Israel has actually provided the ray of hope. It’s possible that a ceasefire along status quo lines could now hold long enough for Hochstein to get a full night’s sleep. But that’s only because of Israel’s recent mop-up jobs in Lebanon and its strikes on Iran.

If—and it’s still a big if—the Lebanon-Israel border can be pacified, it will be for one reason and one reason only: deterrence.

The structure of the status quo in Israel’s north favors Hezbollah and Iran; the balance of military power favors Israel. Every so often, Israel is forced to use that military advantage because the UN and the international community allow Iran and Hezbollah to stay in position to start wars. The aim of all sides is to end those wars before they expand beyond south Lebanon—in other words, before Iran and Israel come into direct conflict.

Well, we’ve passed that particular line. And rather than drag the world into a great global conflagration, the ensuing skirmishes revealed the fact that Iran is wildly overmatched.

But deterrence isn’t only about getting in the enemy’s head. Israel destroyed all of the air-defense systems provided to Iran by Russia. IDF jets also crippled Tehran’s ballistic-missile development and reportedly some drone launch sites.

That means Iran cannot keep up this tit-for-tat even if it wanted to. Israel, however, could do this every day of the week and twice on Sunday, if it needed to.

Hezbollah is depleted and demoralized, and Iran is licking its own wounds. That’s why Amos Hochstein can ask everyone to go back to their corners.

The word for this is deterrence. It’s possible that Iran will still come out of its corner swinging despite its glass jaw and blurred vision. But the result of the recent conflict is that Iran’s next attacks would be necessarily weaker than the previous round, and Israel’s responses would be stronger.

No, UNIFIL isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah. Its peacekeeping forces aren’t capable of keeping the peace, and they are unlikely even to try. Hezbollah cannot be trusted to keep its end of an agreement. Iran does not seek peace and coexistence. US and European mediators are window dressing.

Israel’s display of force is the one and only factor. If there is quiet in the north, it’ll be because Israel reestablished deterrence, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.

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