Once again Lebanon’s inhabitants are living through—and dying in—a conflict they are powerless to end. Western leaders like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talk of pulling “back from the brink,” as though doing so were still possible. But what is this if not war? Since last October, when Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border fire in the aftermath of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attacks, more than 2,800 people have died in Lebanon. Over 13,000 more have been injured. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.3 million people—over a fifth of the population—have fled their homes, in what the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, described as possibly “the largest displacement” in the country’s history. Of these, more than 500,000 have crossed the border into Bashar al-Asad’s empire of ruins.  Each day and each night bring more bombardments, more deaths. After months of border fighting, Israel escalated matters on July 30, assassinating the Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr—who the IDF blamed for a missile strike on the occupied Golan Heights—in an air strike on the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik. …