On: Israel, Lebanon agree 10-day ceasefire, Trump says

Diary Entry

The news of a ten-day ceasefire, brokered by the American president, is presented as a diplomatic achievement. One must, of course, welcome any respite from violence. But I look at it and see, primarily, a failure of economic imagination. The conflict is framed as an inevitable clash of ancient hatreds, a political and military necessity. This is nonsense. It is, at its root, an economic problem wearing a political uniform.

Consider the state of both nations. High unemployment, particularly among the young, is a powder keg far more volatile than any ideological grievance. Idle hands and desperate prospects are the raw material from which extremism is forged. To speak of a ceasefire while ignoring the aggregate demand for meaningful work in both Lebanon and Israel is to treat a symptom while the disease rages. The “animal spirits” of a population - its confidence, its hope - are not frivolous concepts. They are the bedrock upon which lasting peace must be built. A truce that does not address the profound economic despair on both sides of the border is merely an intermission.

Mr. Trump speaks of deals. But what is the deal here? A pause. The long-run theoretical benefits of “stability” are invoked, but in the short run, which is all we have for the living, nothing is done to alter the fundamental calculus. Who benefits from this brief quiet? The politicians who can claim a victory. The markets, perhaps, which dislike uncertainty. But the people? They are given ten days to bury their dead and look upon their ruined livelihoods. Then the clock resets.

It is the same error we make in domestic policy: believing a technical fix - a ceasefire, a balanced budget - solves a human problem. The constraint is always presented as financial or strategic. It is not. It is a choice. We could choose to fund a massive programme of reconstruction and employment across the region, to make peace economically attractive. We do not. We choose the pause instead. And in the long run, which is rapidly approaching for too many, we are all dead.