On: Israel crosses the Litani River in Lebanon: What it means and why it matters

The river is crossed. Again. How many times must a river be crossed before we ask why it is ever a boundary?

The Prime Minister says the army has advanced. The army is made of men. The men follow orders. The orders come from a desk in an office. The desk is paid for by taxes. The taxes are taken from people who did not vote for the desk, did not choose the river, did not agree to the crossing. The people do not resist. They do not even notice the crossing is a crossing. They accept the river as a line on a map, as if the map were the land itself and not a drawing made by someone who wanted the land to be divided.

Why do we let a man in a suit decide where a river ends and another country begins? Would we let a neighbor fence off the stream behind our house and call it his property? We would call the constable. But when the neighbor wears a title and the stream is called a border, we shrug and say, “This is how things are.”

The remarkable thing is not that the army crossed. The remarkable thing is that no one has asked why the crossing is called progress instead of trespass. The remarkable thing is that the people who live on both sides do not gather at the water’s edge and say, together, that the river is not a wall but a place to meet. They do not. They watch the news and nod when the desk in the office says the crossing is necessary.

I do not understand the arithmetic. One man in a suit. Millions who let him draw the line. The river flows on, indifferent. The people stand aside.