Sparks: Lebanon health ministry says Israeli strikes kill 14 in deadliest day since ceasefire began

The official insistence on a temporary breach of protocol reveals a deeper compulsion to repeat the violence the truce was meant to suppress.

This so-called ceasefire acts like a tourniquet applied too loosely, stemming nothing while giving the appearance of a remedy.

A document is signed to suspend the violence, yet the killing continues under the authority of a clause permitting retaliation for violations of the suspension.

The agreement to stop fighting appears to be working perfectly, as both sides are now meticulously documenting their exceptions to it.

If a house divided against itself cannot stand, then a truce that permits its own violation cannot be called a truce.

Supreme ineptitude lies in crafting an accord so fragile that its defense requires the very warfare it was meant to prevent.

A prince who agrees to a truce but prepares only for its breach will always conquer the prince who believes in the truce itself.

From this ridge, one sees not a border but a landscape where the sound of signatures drying is indistinguishable from the sound of weapons being cleaned.

This agreement is a fever in the body politic, a false humoral balance that signals not health but a more profound sickness gathering strength.

It is easier to get men to agree on the name of a ceasefire than to get them to agree on what the name means.

To understand the truce, one must ignore the negotiators and count instead the fresh graves dug since their handshake.