We’ve Become the Washington Envelope

I don’t know what number I was in the new meme chain that appeared a minute, or two, at most ten minutes after the first missile in the barrage fired by the Iranians this week landed here, 30 missiles in all for those interested. “Due to the security situation,” it said there, “Miri Regev is shortening her vacation in the country.” We had just come out of the shelter, and I found it very funny, as well as the memes that came after it, including the one that said the “ceasefire” from the north had spread to the entire country. That is exactly what I wanted to say a few things about.

Not about the bitter laughter, and not about the normalization of the madness, but about the frustrating fact that these “ceasefires” are no longer just in the Gaza border area, no longer just in the Lebanon border area, but everywhere. It is just hard to find the right name for the country. Trump envelope? Washington envelope? America envelope? Not an envelope but a takeover? Less than two years ago, an article I wrote about the situation in Lebanon was published in this section. A little embarrassing perhaps, but I will quote from it anyway: “Nine months after October 7,” I wrote there, “it is already possible to say with confidence that the north is Gaza border area No. 2. In less than a year, daily air raid sirens, rocket barrages, anti-tank fire, and UAVs on a regular basis became normalized in the Lebanon border area. They skipped the drip stage that cooked, like the frog story, the communities of the Gaza border area and prepared them to understand, and even more so to agree to live with it. With the rounds of fighting, with the acceptance that this is the maximum that the governments of Israel over the years, and especially the current government, can do for them.”

This was written a day after the couple of parents, Noa and Nir Brans from Kibbutz Ortal in the Golan Heights, parents of three, were killed when a rocket hit their car. In the north they said then that it was impossible for them to become the Gaza border area; they said the red line had been crossed; that this had to stop. And Yehuda Duhah, head of the Katzrin Regional Council, said then that “there are not two options, there is only one option for defeating terrorism, with force, and a lot of force.” So I am reminding you, on the matter of force, and a lot of force, on September 17 Operation Beepers was carried out, ten days later Nasrallah was eliminated, at the beginning of October 2024 the ground operation began, and at the end of November our fighters reached the Litani. And if that reminds anyone of something from the last few days, they should know they are not wrong, because the following day, on November 27, 2024, the ceasefire was declared. The one that looks exactly like it looks today, after the announcement two days ago.

The frustrating fact is that these “ceasefires” are no longer only in the Gaza envelope or the Lebanon envelope, but everywhere. It is just hard to find the right name for the country. Trump envelope? Washington envelope? And these are the two things that need to be said now: the first is that this is not what a ceasefire looks like. Not in the south, not in the north, and not in the center of the country. And the second, even more important, is that it is time to get used to it, because this is probably what the next ceasefires will look like too. Round after round of flare-ups, usually beginning at the edges and seeping into the center, followed by a ceasefire imposed on us from above, meaning from Washington. A moment of quiet, sometimes shorter than two consecutive breaths, and then again a series of barrages, and again our forces in the Litani, and again publication is permitted day after day, alongside the shutdown of the education system, and an announcement about opening shelters as if some idiot had closed them here in the two years and nine months since the October 7 massacre.

So how do you sum up when there is no real summary on days when the “ceasefire” has indeed spread to the center? Perhaps with the heartbreaking quote from Gadi Eizenkot, then a brigadier general, who said in an interview he gave to Alex Fishman in this newspaper: “Terror will continue for many long years. The bitter truth is that there is no absolute victory in this struggle. The IDF needs to provide security, not excuses, alongside a clear statement that we will have to pay, as a society, a permanent blood tax.” His younger son, he also said then, would have to fight. Twenty years later, Gal, his younger son, was killed in Gaza.