Now we’re gettin’ somewhere! Or not.

Under what I imagine was intense pressure from The White House, Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s willing to sit down with Lebanon to talk about Hezbollah in the context of a fragile ceasefire with Iran.

The IDF killed an “impressive” 203 people in Lebanon on Wednesday, an egregious slaughter (I suppose all slaughters are egregious, but you know what I mean) that smacked of disdain for Donald Trump’s nascent deescalation efforts.

To be fair to Netanyahu, Trump was all aboard the genocide train as recently as Tuesday afternoon, when a “whole civilization” was still scheduled to “die” at 8 pm ET sharp.

So it must’ve been a real disappointment in the IDF war room when Trump, amid criticism from anybody and everybody other than Israeli hardliners, called off the Persian extinction at Pakistan’s request.

Netanyahu had little choice but to stop bombing Iran when Trump did, but Israel continued to bombard Lebanon much to the chagrin of Tehran, where Bagher Ghalibaf accused Trump of violating the ceasefire vicariously, through Israel.

After insisting the IDF would keep at it in Lebanon, Netanyahu briefly reversed course Thursday after a host of US allies, including key NATO members some of whom have had it with Israel, demanded he refrain from undermining the two-day-old truce.

“In light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed the Government to open [discussions] as soon as possible,” Netanyahu said, in a statement. “The negotiations will focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah and the establishing of peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon.”

That’s great, and markets liked it, but here’s the thing: Lebanon can’t disarm Hezbollah even in its hopelessly dilapidated state, which means that job’s left to the IDF. Dead end. Figuratively and literally.

But that’s no longer that, which is to say the international community isn’t going to let Israel turn Lebanon into Gaza, particularly if doing so means ensuring the US remains at war with Iran, which is what Netanyahu’s (obviously) trying to accomplish.

Hezbollah should be allowed to participate in talks between Israel and the Lebanese government considering they’re part of the latter, but it’s far from obvious they’ll be invited. Nor is it clear they’d accept an invitation if it were extended.

At a minimum, Israel would have to stop bombing Dahiyeh to get Hezbollah to the table, again assuming Netanyahu’s interested in talking to representatives from the group. Politically, it’s not clear who Hezbollah would send to any such talks. Its parliamentarians I guess. Not Naim Qassem. No one representing Israel’s going to sit across a table from him, or not without shooting him in the face anyway.

In his statement, Netanyahu thanked Nawaf Salam for gesturing at a demilitarization of Beirut, but to say Israel’s been less than receptive to previous outreach efforts by Joseph Aoun would be to materially understate the case.

To sit down with Israel is to sit with an occupier who’s spent the better part of the last three years bombing the capital. The issue in Lebanon — and Israel’s hardly alone in calling this an unfixable problem — is that the government doesn’t have a monopoly on the use of violence.

Such a monopoly’s foundational to any stable social compact, and the fact that it isn’t present in Lebanon goes a long way towards explaining why the state isn’t stable. The Lebanese army isn’t capable of asserting such a monopoly. Even now, Hezbollah’s too strong for that, or it’s probably better to say the Lebanese army’s too weak. They’re also weak-willed.

In addition to running a parallel army, Hezbollah runs a parallel government in Dahiyeh, where their patronage network’s still intact. Israel’s (wholly plausible) contention is that the only entity willing to, and capable of, correcting this situation is the IDF.

This isn’t a matter of “manning up.” It’s not, “Put your big-boy pants on and take their weapons!” Imagine Cosa Nostra at the apogee of its power in Palermo and magnify that by a factor of 10. Then note that Hezbollah, as a political party, is formally represented in parliament, has a much larger legislative presence when you include its allies and has significant cabinet-level influence in the government.

So, I don’t know what the actual ask is in any negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. I doubt they know either. Disarming Hezbollah’s theoretically possible, but probably only if they agree to it. That seems unlikely because to surrender their weapons is to take the oomph out of “resistance,” and it also undermines their capacity to run a patronage network.

Doing away with Hezbollah entirely isn’t possible even in theory. If politics is the art of the possible, that outcome (where Hezbollah doesn’t exist in any form) isn’t on the palette.

But, coming full circle, circumstances might’ve conspired to make some manner of comprehensive deal an imperative. Because now, a larger deal that averts the carpet-bombing of Iran’s civilian infrastructure by US warplanes allegedly hinges on a lasting detente between Israel and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said Mojtaba Khamenei personally approved Tuesday’s ceasefire and blessed the decision to negotiate with the US in Pakistan. Pezeshkian’s remarks are consistent with Axios‘s account, which suggested Khamenei played a key role in facilitating the truce. I’ll believe it when I see him.

Later, Netanyahu offered clarification on whether talks with the Lebanese government mean a reprieve for locals from IDF bombing. “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon,” he said. Around the same time, the Israeli military announced it was in the process of conducting new airstrikes against Hezbollah.