While Israeli jets struck 13 south Lebanese civilians on the same day Benjamin Netanyahu was looking into a camera assuring Lebanese civilians that they could create a bright future together. That's not hypocrisy, that's the whole structure of what Jerusalem is trying to do.

It was an unusual day on June 10 in a war that has become rather familiar. The Israeli PM delivered a video statement to the people of Lebanon with Arabic subtitles, instead of to the Lebanese government. President Isaac Herzog, hours earlier, had done the same, sending a message in Arabic to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who had gone on CNN 24 hours before to tell Israel that bombs would not bring security to the north. In parallel, the IDF announced the strikes on more than 30 sites in southern and eastern Lebanon. There were thirteen fatalities. A diplomatic message was being transmitted somewhere between the ruins of Dayr Debba and the sleek studio set. But, is anyone in Beirut able to get it?

However, to grasp the reality of what is going on, one needs to move away from the daily death toll and keep in mind the structural transition to understand what has been happening since the end of 2024. The Iran-Hezbollah-Lebanon axis, considered once to be a permanent geography of the Middle East with all three forces working as a single military force aimed at Israel's north, is showing signs of cracking. Not dramatically, not irreversibly but just enough to allow several actors to utter aloud what was once unspeakable.

The United States held the fourth high-level trilateral meeting between Israeli and Lebanese officials as late as June 2–3, with both sides agreeing to the parameters of a ceasefire based on a full Hezbollah pullout from the south Litani area. That's Israel and Lebanon, sitting across a table something that rarely occurs these days. Lebanon was prepared to accept direct negotiations in return for a cessation of hostilities, but at first Israel and Washington were reluctant, before finally saying yes. The fact that the door is not only open, but has been walked through four times, is amazing, although the room on the other side is still under dispute.

Netanyahu carefully tailored his message. He cited a particular memory, before and after, of what Hezbollah and Iran had cost Lebanon: cafés, culture, calm. It is a rhetorical ploy that also doubles as a real geopolitical argument: If Hezbollah is the disease, then its eradication is the cure, and Israel is not the disease but the surgeon. What Lebanese ears may or may not be in the mood to hear is another story.

The real significance of this moment is that Lebanon's own president is putting forward a similar argument. In his CNN interview, Aoun played on the darkest card against Tehran by alleging Iranian use of Lebanon as a pawn in nuclear talks with the United States, the most severe public condemnation by a Lebanese leader in memory. Then, just yesterday, Aoun announced that Lebanon will not be withdrawing from negotiations with Israel because of the pressure being applied, insisting on basing itself on the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. Hezbollah and parliament speaker Nabih Berri have officially denounced the Washington-brokered ceasefire agreement as unfair. A second round of bilateral negotiations will take place on June 22nd. In a letter, the sitting Lebanese president is challenging Hezbollah. It's not a footnote, it's the story.

The reality behind the politics is the Israeli pitch is difficult to refute. The crisis in Lebanon has shifted to a state closer to what can be called civilizational collapse. A Lebanese finance ministry official estimated that the current 2026 conflict “may cost the country a total up to $20 billion in damage” and that the Lebanese economy was expected to shrink by 7-10 percent this year alone. Lebanon's GDP dropped by more than 38 percent and the national currency by more than 98 percent in the period 2019-2024. The World Bank had already estimated the total economic cost of the war in 2024 at $14 billion, of which $6.8 billion would be for physical damage and $7.2 billion for economic losses, including losses in housing and tourism, which are among the most heavily affected areas.

Agriculture, commerce and tourism combined are responsible for 77 percent of economic losses, sources of income for the lowest paid, and most informal, workers in Lebanon. According to the UN, almost a quarter (1.24 million) of the Lebanese population is currently in crisis or emergency-level food insecurity as of August. These are not the stats of a country that has options to burn. These are numbers that speak of a society being emptied out steadily, and that's where Netanyahu's vision of co-investment and shared prosperity strikes with a particular impact not because it is likely in the short term, but because the alternative trajectory is clearly visible and because it’s catastrophic.

But the Israeli case, in its unvarnished form, is this: Hezbollah has already cost Lebanon anywhere from $20 billion to $30 billion in two wars over the past two years. Lebanon has been the forward operating base of Iran's regional strategy, which is to Tehran's benefit, and none of others'. The Lebanese Armed Forces, alone, can't dislodge Hezbollah. International assistance will not come in big numbers until the group is brought under control by the state within the state. So the only way to re-construct, to sovereignty, to a working economy, to anything, is the disarmament of the group and that's something only Israel can do right now.

It has a counter argument which can't be overlooked. Israel has been continuing its strikes even since a theoretical end of the war was declared on 16th April. Since the announcement of that truce, Lebanon has seen almost 3,500 Israeli air raids and Hezbollah has conducted its own attacks on Israeli forces inside Lebanon. One of the issues with a government asking for your trust in its peace vision while its jets are pounding villages eight kilometres from Tyre is that no video message can help. UN's human rights chief Volker Türk said Wednesday he would send a team to Lebanon to gather evidence of alleged violations by all parties of international humanitarian law. This investigation does not target Israel specifically, but it does help illustrate the extent to which the military campaign is in conflict with the diplomatic campaign and its timing.

It is important to note that this is in the wider regional context. Iran has halted military operations against Israel but is insisting that Israel stop strikes in southern Lebanon for the operations to resume. Moreover, Iran also has noted that a Lebanon ceasefire must be linked to the Iran-US nuclear talks, a stance that puts Hezbollah's future up for grabs as it depends on Iran's strategic interests and not on Lebanon's. While saying some of the conflicts are "interconnected with Iran," Trump has said he personally would like to see Lebanon at peace.

Militarily, the Israeli hybrid strategy even as they degrade Hezbollah, to publicly address Lebanon's civil society and elected authorities makes sense geopolitically. It is created to create a wedge between the Lebanese state and the organisation that has served as a parallel state in Lebanon. It's also intended to make Hezbollah the obstacle to peace, not Israel. How that framing will play out with the Lebanese public, which has already witnessed its own country being bombed twice in less than two years by the same army that is now claiming it will construct cafes, is not to be taken for granted.

What's not so clear is that there has been a change. The joint US-Israel-Lebanon statement from the Washington talks categorically rejected the idea that any state or non-state actor try to hold Lebanon's future hostage. The language signed by Lebanon is aimed at Iran and Hezbollah. The Lebanese President is denouncing Iran by name on international television. 4 cycles of direct negotiations. A ceasefire mechanism hated by Hezbollah. These are not the attributes of a non-dynamic battle: these are the attributes of one in which the old alignments are strongly challenged.

The gamble of the Israelis is that the leaders and citizens of Lebanon, who are in the brink of economic collapse and proxy warfare on the behalf of Tehran's nuclear ambitions, will prefer sovereignty over solidarity with a militia. Netanyahu's video message was not really to the person watching it on their mobile phone in Sidon. It was written for history, and it's a marker dropped before a negotiation that is far from a conclusion, but for the first time in decades, direction is for real.