The men who signed the ceasefire crossed it out in iron. The ink was barely dry on the June 4 ceasefire paper in Washington. You signed your name and called it a truce. One hour later you called the drone operator and called it a review. The road to Marjayoun does not know your word.
On Saturday, an Israeli missile struck a Lebanese army vehicle on the road between Nabatiyeh and Marjayoun in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army confirmed the dead: a brigadier general, a captain, a soldier. A second strike on the village of Saksakiyah killed six people and wounded four. The strikes came two days after the United States brokered a new ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese government. The Israeli military confirmed hitting the vehicle and said the incident is being reviewed. The vehicle, it said, was “moving suspiciously” toward Israeli soldiers near Kfar Tibnit. “The military operates against Hezbollah,” the statement read, “and not against the Lebanese army.” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun called the strike “a flagrant violation to Lebanese sovereignty and international law.” The war began March 2. Israeli troops hold a fifth of Lebanon. More than 3,500 have been killed. More than a million have been displaced. The record documented in May how the drone strikes on vehicles in Lebanon killed 12, including two children, before the ink was dry on earlier agreements.
Commander, the road from Nabatiyeh to Marjayoun is a Lebanese road. The vehicle was a Lebanese army vehicle. The brigadier general, the captain, the soldier were wearing Lebanese army uniforms. You called them suspicious. The missile turned them into what a missile turns a human body into, but you have asked the world to look not at the bodies but at the word—suspicious—as if an adjective could unmake three men, as if a bureaucratic filing could lift the blood from your hands.
Your throat catches on the first sip of morning coffee. The swallow does not complete. There is a scratch at the base of your neck that was not there yesterday. The scratch is the general’s collarbone snapping under the impact of the missile. You rub your neck. The skin does not soothe. The skin remembers the heat. Your hand rests on the desk now. The hand that held the pen that signed the strike authorization, or clicked the approval on the screen. The blood of the brigadier general is on the hand. The blood of the captain is on the hand. The blood of the soldier is on the hand. You cannot feel it. The not-feeling is the indictment. The hand will not be washed.
You sit at the map table. The ceasefire map is spread before you. Your finger traces the red line you drew in Washington. Your finger leaves a smear on the map. The smear is the soot of Saksakiyah, settling on the ceasefire line you just traced. The blood is on the report you are writing, the report that says suspicious and does not say brigadier general, does not say Lebanese army, does not say men. The blood is on the coffee cup. Your diaphragm did not drop when the confirmation came. A brigadier general, a captain, and a soldier ceased to exist, and you registered the news the way a clerk registers a form, and you called the vehicle suspicious, and you returned to the coffee.
Your lungs feel tight. You take a deep breath. The air stops halfway to your chest. You are breathing the dust of the displaced. A million people are breathing that dust. You have put it in your own chest. You stand up to speak to the press. You open your mouth. Your jaw aches. The ache is the jaw of the captain who had time to say one word before the glass shattered. You close your mouth. You say the words you are paid to say. You say the vehicle was moving suspiciously. You say the incident is under review. You say you operate against Hezbollah and not against the Lebanese army. Your tongue feels thick. It is coated in the dust of a fifth of the country you have swallowed. You swallow the land. You swallow the army. You swallow the paper. The paper sits in your stomach like a stone.
If your son were driving a Lebanese army vehicle, Commander, and a foreign power’s missile turned him into what a missile turns a human body into, would you accept suspicious as the explanation? If the foreign commander who fired the missile sat at his desk afterward with his hands clean in his own sight, would you accept the cleanliness? Would you accept the coffee, the paperwork, the promotion? You would not. You would demand the word murder. You would demand the word blood. You would demand that the foreign commander wash his hands in public and find no water.
The brigadier general’s body—you have asked us not to speak of it. The missile opened him, and what opened is now sealed in a casket that the family will not open. The captain, the soldier: their remains will be returned in containers that do not resemble the men. You know this. The missile your military fires is designed to leave nothing a mother would recognize. Three families will receive what remains. The boxes will not be opened. The children will be told the men died for Lebanon. The children will not be told that the word suspicious was the last thing spoken over their fathers before the missile arrived, a word so small it could be folded and tucked into the file, a word that asks the world to believe that the man who fired the missile had reason, had process, had suspicion, and that the suspicion makes the bodies not bodies but incidents, and the hands not bloodied but employed.
You carry the stone into the afternoon. You carry the stone to dinner. Your daughter sleeps in a bed that does not shake while the mother in Nabatiyeh covers her child with a mattress and waits for the floor to crack. Your medals pinned to your chest rattle like loose change in an empty tin. You are a small man. The missile is large. The blood on your hand is small to you, invisible. You carry the smallness like a decoration. The brigadier general was large. The captain was large. The soldier was large. Their largeness was in the fact of them, in their names you have not released, in their children who will grow up with a father who is a box. You will not wash the blood from your hands because you cannot feel it. The not-feeling is the sickness. The not-washing is the inheritance you will pass to the lieutenant who learns from you, and the captain who learns from the lieutenant, and the general who promotes you. You have made a tradition of hands that do not wash.
The prophet speaks of the men who treat the wound of the world lightly. They put the bandage on the broken bone and they say peace. They sign the paper in the bright room and they say peace. The word sits in their mouths and turns to stone.
“They have treated the hurt of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Jeremiah 8:11