Even Israel's Most Prestigious Paper Is Calling It: The Lebanon War Has No Exit

Haaretz, Israel's most analytically rigorous mainstream daily, has published two editorials in twelve hours calling the Lebanon campaign an 'absurd' and 'useless' war with no strategic rationale — and arguing that only American presidential pressure can end it.

By Monexus Staff Writermena4-minute read29 May 2026☆ Save ↗ Share ⎙ Print

On the morning of 29 May 2026, the Hebrew-language editorial board of Haaretz published a piece with a blunt headline: the war in Lebanon is, by their assessment, absurd and useless. Twelve hours later, a second commentary pushed the argument further — soldiers are dying for no coherent purpose, and the only figure capable of compelling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop is Washington. Both pieces appeared within hours of each other on the same day, and their proximity is not accidental.

The two Haaretz editorials constitute the sharpest sustained critique to emerge from within Israel's own media establishment since the ground operation began. They arrive as IDF spokespeople continue to cite tactical gains along the Lebanon border, describing each phase as progress toward a stated objective. The gap between those official briefings and what Haaretz is willing to publish in Hebrew — the language read by the families of conscripts and reservists — is significant. It suggests that within the country's own information ecosystem, the narrative is fracturing.

The Case Against the Operation

The first editorial, published on the morning of 29 May 2026, directly challenges the premise of the ground campaign. Soldiers, it argues, are dying in a terrain that offers no clear strategic prize. The phrase "curse of Lebanon's quagmire" — used in the piece to describe the disposition of forces — implies that the operation is not merely difficult but existentially pointless: a cycle of deployment and reinforcement with no defined end-state. The editorial does not argue that Hezbollah poses no threat. It argues that the current mode of engaging that threat is producing casualties without corresponding gains, and that the chain of command has not made the case for why that trade is acceptable.

That is a specific kind of editorial argument. It is not pacifist. It does not question Israel's right to defend its northern communities. It questions whether the present military approach is the instrument that serves that goal. That distinction matters — it is why Haaretz, rather than more left-wing or pacifist outlets, can make the argument without it being dismissed as fringe.

The Domestic Political Dimension

The second editorial shifts the frame from military to political. It identifies Donald Trump as the only external actor with sufficient leverage over Netanyahu to force a ceasefire in Lebanon. This is not a compliment to Trump — it is an acknowledgment of the power asymmetry inside the current coalition. Netanyahu's governing majority depends on parties whose political identity is tied to maximalist war aims. Any ceasefire that does not destroy Hezbollah's command structure is, for them, a concession. The prime minister's own incentives, the editorial implies, are not aligned with ending the fighting.

What makes the Haaretz argument structurally notable is that it moves the bottleneck for peace to Washington. It is an implicit concession that Israeli domestic politics have produced a policy that cannot be corrected from within, and that only a foreign actor — one with leverage the Israeli prime minister cannot ignore — can reset the terms. This framing is also, notably, an argument that Trump would likely find congenial: it positions him as the indispensable actor, the dealmaker who can deliver an outcome that neither side's own leadership can achieve alone.

What the IDF Has Said

The IDF's own public posture does not acknowledge the critique. Briefings from military spokespersons in the days preceding the Haaretz editorials emphasized the destruction of Hezbollah tunnel infrastructure, the elimination of mid-ranking commanders, and the systematic reduction of rocket launch capability near the border. These are not trivial achievements. They represent a genuine degradation of Hezbollah's southern Lebanon posture — the stated goal of the operation since October 2024. But the gap between those military metrics and the editorial's claim of strategic incoherence points to a familiar problem in attritional ground campaigns: tactical success does not automatically translate into strategic clarity. The question Haaretz is pressing is not whether Hezbollah has been degraded but whether the degradation justifies the ongoing cost, and whether there is a defined political objective that makes the calculus net positive.

The Regional Stakes

The stakes of this internal Israeli debate extend well beyond the border zone. Lebanon itself is a fractured state with a functioning state army, a fragile political settlement, and a population that has endured eighteen months of continuous conflict. An indefinite Israeli ground presence — even one that is achieving its tactical objectives — forecloses any political process inside Lebanon. Hezbollah's institutional removal creates a vacuum that no unified Lebanese actor currently has the leverage to fill. That vacuum, over a horizon of years, tends to produce its own forms of instability.

The broader regional picture compounds the problem. Talks between the United States and Iran — reported by multiple outlets including Axios as an active negotiating track — suggest Washington is working to constrain Iran's nuclear programme through diplomacy while simultaneously supporting an Israeli military campaign whose endpoint is undefined. Those two tracks are in tension. A ceasefire in Lebanon, orchestrated by the Trump administration, would give the Iran talks room to proceed without the spectre of a multi-front conflict on Israel's northern border. An open-ended Israeli ground operation does the opposite: it keeps the northern front active, which limits Iran's incentive to accept constraints it otherwise might consider.

Haaretz is making the argument that Israel's own editorial establishment understands this logic. Whether the political class in Jerusalem is prepared to act on it — or whether it requires the external pressure the paper is explicitly calling for — is the question that will determine how many more editorials follow this one.

Haaretz published two linked editorials on 29 May 2026; this article draws on the reporting of Al Alam's wire service for that coverage.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

https://t.me/alalamarabic/287321
https://t.me/alalamarabic/287314
https://t.me/alalamarabic/287294
https://t.me/alalamarabic/287293