"Who will force Israel to stop?"

#1 Lebanon-Gaza

I usually cover Lebanon and Gaza separately. This week, they belong together because Israel escalated on both fronts and the timing is tied to Iran.

The US and Iran appeared to be on the verge of a ceasefire deal this week. Iran has made clear that any agreement must include Lebanon — meaning Israel would have to stop – or at least appear to stop – its offensive against Hezbollah there.

Israel has a pattern of escalating when ceasefire deals appear imminent, front-loading as much death, dispossession, and destruction as it can before any agreement takes hold. That appears to be what happened here. It's also possible the escalation is the opposite play — an attempt to sabotage the deals just as they near reality.

Either way, the goal is not peace.

• In Lebanon, Israel intensified its occupation and forced displacement of residents this week, violating international law and a ceasefire deal agreed to by both countries in April — one in which Israel committed to respecting Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
  • On the ground. Earlier in the war, Israel forcibly displaced one million residents who lived in the 15 miles between the border with Israel and Lebanon's Litani River. This week, Netanyahu ordered the military to push further into Lebanon, this time to the Zahrani River, about 37 miles north of the border from Israel.
• To that end, Israel captured the Crusader-era Beaufort Castle near the city of Nabatiyeh on Sunday and planted the Israeli flag on it. The castle — a UNESCO-protected heritage site that was granted the agency's highest level of immunity against military attack in 2024 — was previously occupied by Israel from 1982 to 2000. Defense Minister Israel Katz said troops will remain permanently.
• Israeli forces now occupy roughly 2,000 square kilometers — about 772 square miles — of Lebanese territory. That's nearly one-fifth of the country. For perspective, it's roughly the size of Jacksonville, Florida, the largest city by area in the lower 48. This is Israel's deepest invasion into Lebanon in 26 years.
• "If the objective were solely to remove Hezbollah's military presence from areas south of the Litani, operations would likely remain confined to that zone," Imad Salamey, an international relations professor at the Lebanese American University, tells Al Jazeera. "Expanding military activity and evacuation demands farther north may indicate an effort to establish a deeper security belt, create conditions for prolonged territorial control, or secure leverage for future political arrangements.”
• UNICEF said Friday that an average of 11 children have been killed in Lebanon every day over the past week — 77 children in one week. Since early March, 3,412 people have been killed and over 10,000 wounded. Israel claims without any proof that about 3,000 of those are Hezbollah.
• Diplomacy. The situation is alarming world leaders. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu on Sunday, proposing a "gradual de-escalation," Reuters reports. The US proposed that Hezbollah stop all attacks on Israel, and in return Israel would refrain from escalation in Beirut.
  • But it's not Hezbollah carrying out offensive operations, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri argued. Berri said he can guarantee that Hezbollah will commit to a ceasefire. "But who will force Israel to stop its aggression?" he asked.
  • France has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, calling Israel's actions unjustifiable. "France will continue its support for the Lebanese authorities in their efforts to restore state sovereignty and the country's territorial integrity," President Macron wrote on X.
  • Leaders from the UK and Germany also criticized Israel's actions and called on Hezbollah to disarm. Qatar and Egypt called on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon completely.
• Coming up. Lebanese and Israeli military diplomatic counterparts are expected to meet at the State Department on Tuesday and Wednesday, The Times of Israel reports.
• Which brings us to Gaza. If fighting in Lebanon (and Iran) calms down, attention turns back to Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. That's reason enough to put Netanyahu's war machine into overdrive. Again, the goal is to get in as much devastation before fighting slows down elsewhere.
  • Netanyahu ordered the military to expand control there to 70% of the territory — up from 60% and well past the ceasefire lines agreed to with Hamas. If he succeeds, Gaza's 2.1 million remaining residents get compressed into less than a third of the enclave. Katz said that the government's "voluntary emigration" plan will proceed. Human rights organizations and UN investigators describe it as ethnic cleansing — the deliberate, permanent removal of a population from its land.
  • Among the many attacks this week, one Israeli strike killed at least 26 people during the Eid al-Adha holiday, including children.
  • Hamas confirmed that the leader of its armed wing in Gaza was killed in an Israeli airstrike this week.

#2 Trump v. Trump: Government Grift

The federal judge who presided over President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS has reopened it after a bipartisan group of former federal judges filed a motion claiming that Trump and his legal team defrauded the court.

• Remember: Trump sued the IRS over leaked tax returns. Then he dropped the suit — and as part of the settlement, his own DOJ created a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" from taxpayer money. The deal also included an addendum that "forever bars and precludes" the US from pursuing claims and audits against Trump and his family. We later learned that the IRS wanted to fight Trump's case — which was filed outside the statute of limitations — but the DOJ didn't even mount a defense for the agency, which is their responsibility. Instead, they settled with Trump in what is being referred to as the biggest grift in government history.
• This week. Thirty-five former judges asked the court to reopen the case, calling the settlement "collusive from the start" and accusing Trump of abusing the judicial system to win a settlement for his supporters and avoid accountability by getting the IRS to drop any future audits. Judge Kathleen Williams agreed with them.
  • In her ruling, Williams cited a rule that allows the court to investigate whether "an attorney has abused the judicial process." She ordered Trump's lawyers to respond to her questions by June 12.
  • Williams acknowledged the former judges' argument that Trump's attorneys knew from the start that their lawsuit had no merit and filed it solely to justify a settlement the administration wanted to announce. "A party's decision to file a frivolous lawsuit for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement may qualify as such an improper purpose," Williams wrote. Politico
  • On Friday — the same day as Williams' ruling — a separate judge froze the $1.8 billion fund to prevent payouts while legal challenges proceed.
  • Inside the White House, the news is ringing alarm bells, The Wall Street Journal reports. More than a dozen Republican senators are urging the White House to nix the fund. "Attorney General Todd Blanche and other officials hadn't anticipated the level of backlash the fund has generated among Republican lawmakers," the WSJ reports. Some Trump advisers have privately raised concerns that the agreement would drag down conservatives in the midterms and that the fund would be difficult for Republicans to defend on the campaign trail.

#3 War on Iran

Claims that a ceasefire deal was close monopolized the week, only for it to end with Trump demanding more changes, frustrating negotiators and Iranian officials.

• A senior Arab official directly involved in mediating the talks told NBC News that American and Iranian negotiators agreed to the terms of a truce days ago — but both sides have delayed finalizing it. "It was already closed in Doha three days ago; now everyone is playing a game of chicken and egg," the official said, calling the delays "frustrating."
• The deal, according to Axios, would require Iran to clear all mines from the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days while the US gradually eases its blockade on Iranian ports. The US would lift some sanctions, though not all. Over the next 60 days, the two sides would continue talks over nuclear enrichment and broader sanctions relief.
• But at the last minute, Trump wants "tougher terms," The New York Times reports. While the exact details aren't clear, "Trump has been concerned about parts of the potential deal that would include unfreezing funds for the Iranians," the NYT writes. He's been harshly critical of President Obama for doing the same in the nuclear deal signed more than a decade ago.
• US CentCom announced Sunday evening that it had carried out strikes against Iran, claiming self-defense.

• EBOLA OUTBREAK: The Trump administration is defending its decision to build a new healthcare facility at an air base in Kenya for Americans suspected of having or exposed to the Ebola virus, instead of bringing them home to be treated at state-of-the-art medical facilities that already exist. At an off-the-record briefing with reporters, Trump administration officials claimed the decision was made in the interest of their health, Politico reported.
  • But, Kenya’s Supreme Court banned the opening of the facility for now The New York Times reports. “The possibility of such a unit in Kenya has led to criticism of the government. Kenya has never recorded an Ebola case, and the main doctors’ union has expressed concern that the country’s health facilities would be ill equipped to handle an outbreak.” There were conflicting reports Sunday night about whether the ruling was being honored.
  • Ebola’s survival rate is about 50%. “We know that their chances of getting through an Ebola infection would be higher in specialized units that have been designed to care for them,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We have a strong ethical commitment to care for them with the best possible care in the U.S.,” he said.
• ICE DETENTION: Newark has imposed a curfew after a week of clashes between police and protesters outside Delaney Hall, a privately operated ICE detention center. Lawmakers, families, and activists have reported inhumane treatment inside the facility — rotting food, delayed medical care, and isolation of detainees.
  • After visiting on Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the "conditions of confinement we witnessed firsthand and discussed with approximately two dozen detainees at the Delaney Hall detention shock the conscience." DHS responded: "This is a detention center — we do not provide luxury accommodations."
  • NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) — who defended her decision to deploy state troops to secure the facility — said Sunday night that "masked individuals at Delaney Hall attacked the barrier in the protected protest area and began aggressive and dangerous actions against Newark and New Jersey State Police, including throwing projectiles, utilizing the barriers as weapons, and lighting tires on fire in the street."
  • Separately, an AP investigation published this week found that at least 10 men have died by suicide in ICE detention since January 2025. Seven of those deaths occurred since October — already the most suicides in any fiscal year in the agency's history. ICE typically records one or none per year.
• ISRAEL SEXUAL VIOLENCE ALLEGATIONS: The UN has – for the first time – added Israeli military forces to a blacklist of governments and armed groups that have carried out sexual violence — documenting at least nine victims of sexual violence and 14 cases of torture against Palestinians. Hamas is also on the list. Israeli ambassador Danny Danon — who once forced the UN to remove drawings made by Palestinian children from the organization's offices — disputed the allegations and said Israel will cut ties with the UN. "To put us and Hamas terrorists on the same list, that's unacceptable," Danon said.
  • Separately, France is calling for prosecutors to investigate claims of sexual violence and torture against flotilla activists who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and were kidnapped by Israeli forces. If charges are brought, it could lead to criminal proceedings.

• The DOJ is investigating E. Jean Carroll — the writer who successfully sued Trump and won millions in damages after he sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996.
  • “The Justice Department is scrutinizing a statement Carroll made in the course of the civil litigation that no one else was paying her legal fees. It later became public that a Chicago-based organization backed by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, had helped fund Carroll’s case. Trump’s lawyers in the civil case accused Carroll of concealing that information, which they said called into question whether the case was politically motivated," AP News reports.
• A federal judge refused to block a Trump executive order directing DHS to create a list of voters it deems eligible and ordering USPS to deliver mail-in ballots only to those people. The Trump-appointed judge said there was no need to rule against the order yet because no concrete actions have been taken. The judge said the plaintiffs could return to court if the White House moves forward, NPR reports.
• A federal judge has ordered Trump to remove his name from the Kennedy Center in DC, ruling he failed to get congressional authorization. "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," the judge said. He also ruled that the center cannot be closed as scheduled in July for two years of renovations, as Trump had planned. Trump called the judge "an anti Trump Hater."
• Yes, the White House is hosting a UFC fight on the front lawn this month. Yes, it's ridiculous. But, it's also a conflict of interest.
  • Huffington Post reports that Trump bought stock in UFC's holding company, TKO Group Holdings, which stands to benefit from a fight that Trump is hosting and promoting from the White House. "Using the White House to promote a company whose stock you bought while promoting it is one of the worst conflicts of interest you could imagine," said Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.
  • The White House has boasted that many tickets will go to military service members. But to be eligible, personnel "MUST MEET CURRENT WAIST-HEIGHT RATIO and current physical fitness standard," The Washington Post reports. Anyone who attends is expected to pay for their own travel and lodging.

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