(U.S. State Department) The governments of Israel and Lebanon agreed to the following text: "Lebanon and Israel have reached an understanding in which both nations will work to create conditions conducive to lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border, while preserving Israel's inherent right to self-defense." "Both countries recognize the significant challenges faced by the Lebanese state from non-state armed groups, which undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and threaten regional stability. Both countries understand that those groups' activities must be curtailed....Israel and Lebanon affirm that the two countries are not at war and commit to engaging in good-faith direct negotiations, facilitated by the United States." "Israel shall preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks. This shall not be impeded by the cessation of hostilities....The Government of Lebanon will take meaningful steps to prevent Hizbullah and all other rogue non-state armed groups in the territory of Lebanon from carrying out any attacks, operations, or hostile activities against Israeli targets."

(Middle East Eye-UK) President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Saturday: "Whether people like Israel or not, they have proven to be a GREAT Ally of the United States of America. They are Courageous, Bold, Loyal, and Smart... Israel fights hard, and knows how to WIN!"

(Ynet News) Ron Ben-Yishai - U.S. President Trump imposed a Lebanon ceasefire on Prime Minister Netanyahu in an effort to prevent the fighting from obstructing a potential agreement with Iran. Washington has intervened militarily in the past to halt Israeli operations. At the same time, the ceasefire provides relief for residents of northern Israel, who have endured continuous attacks for more than a month. It also gives the government an opportunity to address urgent civilian needs, including the deployment of protective infrastructure and essential services. For the IDF, the pause allows forces to rotate personnel, conduct short rest periods, reorganize logistics, repair armored vehicles, and replenish supplies. The ceasefire also creates a window for intensive intelligence-gathering across Lebanon and for the Israel Air Force to refine its response to Hizbullah rocket and drone launches.

(Ynet News) Yossi Yehoshua - Against the backdrop of ceasefire negotiations in Lebanon, the IDF set three conditions for an agreement: The creation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, free of Hizbullah presence and infrastructure; the preservation of full military freedom of action to remove threats, including north of the Litani; and the launch of a long-term process to disarm the organization under a U.S.-supervised mechanism. The IDF must remain inside the territory and must preserve freedom of action against Hizbullah's military buildup, including strikes in Beirut. The threats have not disappeared and will not disappear. The goal is to continue acting so that, like in a relay race, each shift hands off a better reality to the next. That is the definition of victory.

(Israel Hayom) Lilach Shoval - During the 40 days of war with Iran, the Israel Air Force launched 19,000 munitions and bombs, while the U.S. Air Force struck with 17,000. Iran launched 550 missiles at Israel, and another 850 at Gulf states. In Israel, 90 ballistic missile impacts were recorded, including 64 cluster missiles. Five major impact sites from heavy missiles were recorded across Israel. The IDF says Iranian leaders are operating like wanted fugitives, and commanders are working out of tents and cars. At the same time, the assessment is that the Iranians have already begun preparing for the next campaign against Israel. In Lebanon, senior military officials are conveying that the IDF has successfully met all the military objectives set for it and that everything now depends on the negotiations taking place. Hizbullah launched 5,500 rockets - 2,500 crossed into Israeli territory, while the rest fell in Lebanon or were fired at IDF forces operating in Lebanon. In order to thwart longer-range rocket fire at Israel, IDF forces would need to maneuver north of the Litani River, and that is not something anyone intends to do right now.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - The Israeli Navy on Thursday disclosed that its commando unit conducted an unprecedented operation "thousands of kilometers" from Israel that was successful. Additionally, Navy submarines operated in three arenas simultaneously during the war. Moreover, the Navy was involved in 40 "aerial threat incidents," shooting down several dozen drones from both Iran and Lebanon. Navy ships conducted 53 strikes in Lebanon and six in Gaza amid the war with Iran. Naval Intelligence provided information and planning for 95 airstrikes in Iran.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - Warrant Officer (res.) Barak Kalfon, 48, was killed and three other soldiers were wounded on Friday after an explosive device detonated in a building in the southern Lebanon village of Jebbayn. Kalfon was beyond the age of reserve duty but insisted on volunteering. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said of Kalfon, "In his civilian work as an engineer at Rafael, he contributed significantly to the security of the State of Israel, and combined a first-rate professional sense of duty with significant reserve service and many years of defending Israel."

(Ynet News) Lior Ben Ari - The IDF said Sunday that more than 150 Hizbullah terrorists were killed in strikes across Lebanon in the 24 hours before a ceasefire took effect on Thursday. The IDF said 300 Hizbullah targets were struck in the final day of fighting before the ceasefire, including launchers, command centers and weapons storage sites. Ali Reza Abbas, the Hizbullah commander for the Bint Jbeil sector, was among those killed. Reports circulating online called Abbas, who had received advanced military training in Iran, one of Hizbullah's most experienced and influential military commanders, who had been active in the organization for more than 40 years.

(Ha'aretz) Matan Golan - Muhammad Ahmad Abu Ghaliyeh al-Suwaiti, 25, from Khirbet Fuqeiqah, broke into the Israeli community of Negohot in the south Hebron Hills early Saturday morning. A member of the community's security team, who was on patrol, arrived at the front gate after the infiltration triggered the local security system. Al-Suwaiti ran toward the security guard with a knife and was killed. Troops later raided al-Suwaiti's home and found "an improvised weapon and military equipment."

(National Interest) Joe Zacks - For the U.S. to get what it wants and needs in a deal with Iran will take strategic patience and time. The focus now should be on allowing the U.S. (and to a lesser extent Israel) to finish what was started - an aggressive challenge to a regime that for nearly half a century has murdered U.S. citizens, destabilized an already volatile region, and pursued a nuclear capability that would allow it to blackmail the region and beyond. If we are patient and allow the U.S. naval blockade to take full effect, a humbler Iran is likely to return to the bargaining table. If the newly instituted blockade of ships departing Iranian ports to transit the Strait of Hormuz is successful, the Iranian trump card over the strait will be lost. The Iranian regime will be deprived of desperately needed hard currency, and its Chinese sympathizers will be denied discounted oil purchases. By the standards of modern armed conflicts, this has not been a protracted military campaign. The U.S. has dealt the Iranian regime a horrific military blow, destroying much of its nuclear, ballistic missile, and drone programs, along with its air defenses, air force, and navy. It will take this already economically struggling country time and many billions of dollars to reconstitute its military and rebuild infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the conflict. Sanctions relief and rebuilding Iran's economy should only come when the regime demonstrates a commitment to relinquishing its nuclear aspirations, ballistic missile programs, and support to terrorist proxies. A final intense economic squeeze on what remains of this regime is the best chance for obtaining a negotiated settlement that checks and chastens Iran's military ambitions for many years to come. The writer is a former deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the CIA and an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

(Foreign Affairs) Gideon Rose - Both the U.S. and Iran are claiming victory in their war. Each says: We held out and the other guy blinked first. Some sort of outcome like this was always likely because the structure of the game constrained the decision-making of the players. Wars have three phases: an opening, a middle game, and an endgame. The opening involves deploying forces and engaging the enemy. If that doesn't produce a quick victory, the contest moves into a middle game in which the two sides fight it out and try to get one another to surrender. As the trends in battle become clear, eventually the rough shape of a logical outcome emerges and the war enters its endgame, during which the details of the final settlement are hammered out. The ceasefire is likely to hold for the same reason it was agreed to in the first place: both sides were hurting and would hurt even more if the war escalated instead of ending. By late March, when it was clear neither side would give in easily, the Iran war reached the inflection point. With neither side wanting to make the war total, both stepped back from the brink. And at that point, the war's endgame began in earnest. By agreeing to the ceasefire, both the U.S. and Iran acknowledged, at least tacitly, that they were not going to be able to get everything they wanted from the war. The gaps between the demands of each side are so great that some think the negotiations will break down and the ceasefire will fall apart. Yet both sides know that returning to war would put them into the same position they just escaped - paying ever-greater costs for diminishing returns. The most plausible outcome is a mix of compromise and can-kicking, producing enough practical results to restart something resembling normal economic activity around the Gulf. The Iranian regime will survive, but with its leadership echelons thinned and its capabilities battered. The writer is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of How Wars End.

(Wall Street Journal) Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. - A stock-market chart from the start of this year is pretty dramatic. A sharp crevice comes a month into the Iran war, but it's only been up since then, and now the market is higher than when the war started. The market can only discount information it has, but it clearly has discounted the claim that Iran achieved victory by tying up the Strait of Hormuz. Let's admit that Mr. Trump's latest way of testing the patience of global oil consumers is so far going swimmingly. The U.S. is implicitly pointing a gun at ships of any country that enter and exit the ports of Iran, or that pay Iran a toll for passage through the strait no matter which country's ports they visited. The hope was that ships wouldn't test the U.S. Navy, and they haven't. An Iran that can't get its oil out will soon exhaust its domestic storage capacity, risking permanent damage (for technical reasons) to its wells by shutting them in. Mr. Trump also wants a nuclear deal, even if it's far from clear that one would be necessary or useful rather than merely face-saving, given the destruction already done to Iran's nuclear sites and the ability of the U.S. and Israel at any time to return for more. The way to deal with proliferators, it should be understood by now, is not to bargain. Iran's Hormuz vulnerability now has been exposed. Its oil can't exit. Its imports can't enter, including the millions of tons of construction supplies it will need to rebuild its battered infrastructure. Iran will also need financing, yet its wealthy neighbors are more interested in "Iran-proofing" their own economies - see Saudi Arabia's $250 billion rail-and-pipeline project to bypass the Persian Gulf.

(103FM-Jerusalem Post) "The Chinese will get supplies from the Russians" to make up for the U.S. blockade of oil exports from Iran, former Israeli Navy commander Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom told 103FM on Wednesday, as alternative energy arrangements are reducing the impact of the disruption on global fuel markets. "The ones who have gained are the Americans and the Russians, who will be able to supply more oil and gas. Trump's solution of closing the straits is working very well; the Iranians feel choked off, and nothing is entering or leaving their ports." Marom also noted that the Houthis in Yemen had done the minimum required to satisfy Iran but had not taken the broader steps Tehran may have wanted.

(Israel Hayom) Amb. Dror Eydar - The hourglass marking the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran has begun to run. The current war has destroyed not only military capabilities, regime institutions and industrial infrastructure; it has also destroyed the myth of immunity of the regime. The attacks on its most heavily guarded facilities and the elimination of the front ranks of its military and political leadership have caused it to lose deterrence both abroad and at home. The current economic damage, estimated by economists at around $200 billion so far, on top of the damage of previous years, has accelerated inflation to levels that have strangled the middle class and left only the elite with any resources at all. Despite Iranian propaganda claiming that it is winning, it seems we are at a decisive historical moment. This is a dictatorship living on borrowed time. We are an ancient people. In our history, we have already seen nations rise against us and then disappear into the mists of history. Patience. The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to Italy.

(Quillette-Australia) Michael J. Totten - Deciding what to do - if anything - about Iran's nuclear program is the mother of all terrible jobs. Do nothing, and Iran will obtain apocalyptic weaponry. On Quds Day in 2017, the regime installed a digital clock in Tehran's Palestine Square that began counting down the number of days until "the annihilation of Israel." The countdown's conclusion was timed to coincide with the 25-year expiration date of Obama's nuclear deal, at which point the Islamic Republic would be free to finish what Hitler started. No people on earth would sit patiently awaiting the moment when genocidal fascists decide to erase them from the map. The Jews, in particular, are in no mood to be passive after what happened the last time somebody tried this kind of thing. The U.S. could have decided to stick with the nuclear deal, buy time, and hope that the Iranian regime imploded or was overthrown. But the ayatollahs are nothing like reformist Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the waning days of the Cold War. They negotiate in bad faith and use the money from sanctions relief to unleash a vast swath of murder, arson, and mayhem even without nuclear weapons. So Donald Trump opted for a limited air war, hoping to get the best possible result for the lowest possible cost. He went to war together with the Israelis, and with much quieter support from America's Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, who had been menaced and attacked by Iran for decades. We can hardly blame them for finally hitting back at a regime weakened by the destruction of its allies in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon.

(Substack) Lenny Ben-David - Israel's critics in Congress are calling to "fundamentally reassess" the U.S.-Israel security relationship. However, the U.S.-Israel security relationship has evolved into a two-way strategic partnership, in which both sides contribute capabilities that the other lacks. In several critical areas, the U.S. is not the benefactor but the beneficiary. In the recent conflict with Iran, American and Israeli forces operated as a combined system - sharing intelligence, coordinating targeting, and integrating air and missile defenses. Israeli-developed systems such as the Iron Dome, Arrow, and David's Sling missile systems functioned alongside U.S. platforms, intercepting missile barrages that would otherwise have overwhelmed defenses. This level of integration is the product of decades of cooperation - and of Israeli innovation that has quietly reshaped U.S. military capabilities and doctrines. Israel developed the Trophy system, which detects and destroys anti-tank missiles before they reach armored vehicles. The U.S. Army now fields Trophy on its M1 Abrams tanks, marking the most significant change in tank survivability in decades. U.S. forces have also adopted versions of the Israeli Spike missile, enabling operator-guided precision strikes by attack helicopters or infantry at ranges of 25 km. Israel's defense and combat against Hizbullah and Hamas tunnels are studied today in American military academies. The Israel Defense Forces and Israeli defense industries have led the world in the deployment of loitering munitions. Israel's experience in dense urban environments has produced new breaching tactics, the integration of small UAVs at the squad level, and rapid fielding of IED jammers. Critics who call for scaling back the relationship ignore what the U.S. receives in return: access to combat-proven solutions to emerging threats. Israel encounters challenges - mass rocket fire, dense urban combat, short-range missile threats - well before they become central concerns for U.S. planners. The U.S., in turn, can scale those solutions and integrate them. Reducing its relationship with Israel means the U.S. weakens a partnership that enhances its own military effectiveness. The writer, a former Israeli diplomat in Washington, is a Research Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - In the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, 40 of 47 Democrats voted to advance a resolution blocking the sale of bulldozers and 36 opposed the sale of thousand-pound bombs to Israel. Many acknowledged the bombs could be used in Iran, where Israel has been fighting alongside the U.S. If they could, they'd deny our ally the capabilities to fight our enemy. For all the talk of preserving U.S. alliances, that never seems to apply to Israel. Instead they want to punish Israel for working with the U.S. in Iran - which they see through partisan eyes as working with Mr. Trump. It serves the U.S. interest not one jot to hamstring Israel's air force, which cleared the U.S. flight path to Iran's nuclear sites in June, and has now decapitated Iran's military leadership and helped slash its missile arsenal and industrial complex. The armored bulldozers, portrayed as malevolent, are a response to Hamas and Hizbullah's strategy of booby-trapping their own civilian buildings. Israeli capabilities are an asset to the U.S. Israel already seeks to wind down U.S. aid, but these are sales to a fighting ally. The votes to cut off arms in the middle of a war is an ominous turn that will encourage Iran, Hizbullah and their terrorist allies around the Middle East.

(Jerusalem Post) Editorial - For decades, the bedrock of Israel's national security rested on the assumption that the U.S., with bipartisan support, would provide the qualitative military edge needed for the Jewish state to survive. Although the latest attempt in the U.S. Senate to block arms transfers to Israel was defeated on Wednesday, 40 of 47 Democratic senators voted to withhold military hardware from Israel. That means nearly 85% of the Democrats signaled a willingness to leave an ally vulnerable in the middle of a multifront war involving Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The Biden-era language of unwavering support has given way to a Democratic reality in which conditioning, or even blocking, aid is becoming the new baseline. This makes plans for domestic arms independence a strategic imperative. The goal must be a self-sustaining ecosystem in which the IDF's operational tempo is never again dictated by a vote in Washington. Real partnership is built on strength and mutual interest, not dependence. By reducing its reliance on U.S. foreign military financing, Israel could remove itself from America's partisan crossfire. Independence is the only way to ensure that "Never Again" remains a promise Israel can keep by itself.

(The Hill) Alan Dershowitz - Extremists have accused President Trump of "war crimes" for his attack on Iran. Trump reasonably and understandably believed Iran was close to developing a nuclear arsenal, which the mullahs might have deployed against Israel in the near term, and perhaps eventually against the U.S. Regardless of whether the potential timing of this threat fits the traditional definition of "imminent" - right on the verge of happening - it was real and would have been catastrophic if carried out. Accordingly, both the U.S. and Israel had the right - indeed, the obligation - to regard the threat that Iran would soon develop and deploy a nuclear arsenal as sufficiently dangerous to warrant preventive military action. Had either country waited until this nuclear threat was truly imminent, it might have been too late to stop it. We can say this from experience. We waited too long with regard to North Korea, and that rogue nation managed to develop a nuclear arsenal under our noses. As a consequence, the Hermit Kingdom has been constantly threatening the world, and we can do nothing about it. Iran, the world's top state exporter of terrorism, would pose a far more serious near-term threat than North Korea. Former Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans wrote in a 2004 UN report that, "The classic non-threat imminent situation is early-stage acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by a state presumed to be hostile." Israel used such a justification to preemptively destroy both Iraq's and Syria's nuclear weapons programs before their threats became imminent. An even stronger case can be made regarding Iran's nuclear arsenal program, since Iran has threatened to use it against Israel - which its leaders have called "a one-bomb state." Once Iran obtains a nuclear arsenal, it will already be too late for prevention or preemption. The writer is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

(South African Jewish Report) Claudia Gross - During the call with Kenny Struwig, a low boom is heard in the background. It won't be the last. For South African immigrants living in northern Israel, war is not an abstract headline. Struwig lives in Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, in one of the most heavily targeted areas. "It's pretty much all day, every day," he says. "Rockets going over, aircraft infiltrations with drones." His children, aged 13 and 16, no longer attend regular school. "They're pretty much in the house most of the day." When the siren sounds, "you just go into one of the safe rooms and wait. Two minutes, maybe 10 minutes. Then you go back to what you were doing." That routine, repeated dozens of times, has reshaped daily life. "It's become very normalized. You just carry on as if nothing is wrong." There is also the noise from outgoing fire. Tanks and artillery stationed nearby fire into southern Lebanon throughout the day and night. Rockets aren't always intercepted. "One fell about 100 meters from me" while he was driving when a siren went off. He quickly pulled over, and the nearest place was a cemetery, where he hid until it was safe to leave. He speaks about shrapnel scattered across the kibbutz after interceptions. A young woman from his kibbutz was killed when a rocket struck near her. Yet, despite everything, Struwig doesn't speak about leaving. His children have grown up in Israel. Their lives are rooted there.

(JTA) Mark Shpall - My students from de Toledo High School in Los Angeles were on a trip to Israel when the war with Iran began on Saturday morning and we heard the first sirens in Jerusalem. When the alarm goes off, you move quickly to the nearest protected space. For the first 48 hours, the alerts came every few hours. It was not the itinerary we had planned. But the experience revealed something powerful about these young people. What I saw in those shelters was not panic. It was grit. It was strength. It was solidarity. Students checked in on one another. They reassured friends and texted worried parents back home. They thanked hotel staff. As we were checking out, the hotel's general manager told me how impressed she was by the group - how respectful they were toward staff, how calm they remained amid sirens, and how appreciative they were even in the middle of a crisis. There is a widespread belief today that young people lack resilience. That they retreat from difficult realities. That is not what I saw. I saw teenagers who understood that being part of the Jewish story sometimes means standing shoulder to shoulder as one people. And I saw how deeply connected they felt to Israel. As the days passed, the prudent decision was to take our students back home via Egypt. Yet the reaction from many of our students was not relief. It was reluctance. Several told me they did not want to leave Israel. Their instinct was not to run from the experience. It was to remain connected to it. That reaction continues to stay with me. This experience will stay with them for the rest of their lives - the sirens, the shelters, the kindness of strangers, and the sense of community they felt with Israelis.

(Times of Israel) Sarah Ansbacher - In the summer of 1940, residents of Haifa heard air raid sirens for the first time. Italy, under Mussolini and allied with Nazi Germany, had entered the war in June 1940. On July 15, five Italian bombers began targeting British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, setting fire to three oil storage tanks and damaging one of Haifa's power stations. One Arab civilian was killed. Ten Italian bombers returned on July 24, dropping 50 bombs on Haifa and its oil infrastructure, starting huge fires and blocking the refinery's production for almost a month. 28 Arabs, 15 Jewish civilians, and a British police officer were killed. On Sep. 9, six bombers flying from Rhodes intended to strike Haifa once more - but British fighter aircraft turned them back. The bombers redirected towards Tel Aviv, aiming for the port, but instead struck residential areas. 117 Jewish civilians were killed, along with seven Arab civilians and one Australian soldier. One Italian bomber was shot down.

(Quillette-Australia) Zoe Booth - What never ceases to amaze me is how Israel is misinterpreted by the average Australian. If they were to spend just an hour there they'd see a functioning, diverse democracy that's managed to do something our own nation is failing at - having a backbone and being proud of who it is. I wish more Australians would visit Israel for themselves. They would discover a proud nation that knows who it is, where it came from, and what it stands for.