President Joseph Aoun is in Washington for the first Lebanese head-of-state visit in 17 years, and he didn't come empty-handed. He's carrying a written proposal for disarming Hezbollah and is pressing Trump personally to force Israel out of the south.

• Aoun met Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sun⁠day at the State Department; Rubio praised Lebanon's "determined effort to reclaim sovereignty" and disarm Hezbollah, according to a State Department statement.
• Tues⁠day's sit-down with Trump is the main event — a Lebanese official says Aoun believes only Trump holds enough leverage to pressure Israel into withdrawing its troops.
• Hezbollah has flatly rejected both the Jun⁠e 26 framework agreement and any direct Lebanon-Israel negotiations, putting Aoun on a collision course with the group inside his own country.
• Aoun stopped short of agreeing to Trump's reported call for a meeting with Israeli P⁠M Netanyahu.

Why it matters: Whether Aoun leaves Washington with a concrete U.S. commitment — or just warm words — will define the next phase of the southern Lebanon standoff.

The Jun⁠e 26 framework that was supposed to start rolling Israeli forces back from southern Lebanon is now hostage to a bigger regional fire. If Israel gets pulled into the renewed U.S.-Iran conflict, observers and Haaretz say the occupation of the south becomes indefinite.

• Israeli involvement would "clearly thwart the plans" for withdrawal, Haaretz reported — and the paper describes Israel as an "unpredictable actor" whose political calculations could shift fast.
• For now, neither Washington nor Tehran wants Israel in the fight: the U.S. says it doesn't "need" Israeli help, and Iran isn't keen on a broader confrontation with the Jewish state.
• Netanyahu postponed a planned Washington visit, with Israeli officials linking the delay to anticipation of military escalation — his approval ratings have dropped sharply, with most Israelis believing Iran emerged stronger from the recent conflict.

What to watch: Whether U.S.-Iran hostilities can be contained is now the single biggest variable in the timeline for Israel leaving Lebanese soil.

Walid Jumblatt's forthcoming Arabic memoir — to be published by Hachette Antoine in Beirut — argues that Lebanese factions reaching out to Israel is no modern anomaly but a pattern woven into the country's political fabric since the French Mandate era.

• Jumblatt traces the trend back to Maronite politicians who communicated with the Jewish Agency before independence, and to Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun's vision of a Christian-centered state with geographic links to northern Israel.
• He recounts Israeli forces occupying Moukhtara in 1982 and Shimon Peres paying him a visit there — a meeting that scandalized allies who accused him of collaborating with the enemy.
• The memoir argues that to⁠day's Lebanese openness to normalizing ties with Israel stems from the "extreme weakness" afflicting states born from European colonialism — a structural condition, not a moral choice.

The bigger picture: Jumblatt's historical framing lands at a moment when Lebanon is literally in direct talks with Israel for the first time in decades, giving these recollections an unusually sharp contemporary edge.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi just made his Washington debut, signing roughly 48 memorandums of understanding with U.S. companies and pitching Iraq as open for business. It's a significant tilt toward the U.S. — and Iran's leadership is calling him "inexperienced" for it.

• al-Zaidi's deals included energy agreements featuring an oil export route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz and a memorandum with Syria to transport Iraqi oil to the port of Banias.
• Iran's supreme leader adviser Ali Akbar Velayati publicly criticized al-Zaidi, calling his conduct during Trump meetings — held shortly after former Supreme Leader Khamenei's funeral — "a great disgrace."
• al-Zaidi said Iraq would no longer need the concept of "resistance" after Sep⁠tember 30, when remaining U.S. forces are set to depart under a prior agreement.
• Analysts warn that U.S. companies operate under strict anti-corruption laws and will need stable institutions — not just signed deals — before any serious investment flows in.

Zooming out: Baghdad's economic opening is reshaping the region's alignment map.

Solomon's Pools — a massive Roman-era reservoir system near Bethlehem that has supplied water to Jerusalem since the second century BCE — is now in Israeli hardliners' crosshairs. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has explicitly threatened to void the 1995 Oslo-era agreements confirming Palestinian ownership of the site.

• The three pools together hold a combined capacity of 250,000 cubic metres, making them one of the largest ancient water systems surviving anywhere in the world.
• On Jul⁠y 10, Israeli soldiers raided the site, firing teargas while children swam in the pools — an unprecedented security incursion into what Oslo classified as Area A, under Palestinian civil control.
• Smotrich called Palestinian ownership "one of the terrible mistakes" of the Oslo Accords; Israeli archaeologist Alon Arad said the site is being used to erode the entire Oslo framework.
• Israeli elections in Oct⁠ober are adding urgency — archaeologists and local Palestinians expect more incursions as the vote approaches.

What to watch: Whether Israel moves to formally seize Solomon's Pools would set a precedent for treating Area A — previously considered inviolable — as open to ad hoc ministerial appropriation.

Nearly three years into the war in Gaza, child labour has gone from rare to routine. With more than 90 percent of families pushed below the extreme poverty line, children are hauling water carts, sifting rubble, and staffing market stalls to keep their families alive.

• The proportion of 10- to 17-year-olds driven into street labour has surged, multiplying more than fivefold compared to pre-war levels, according to UN Women.
• More than 625,000 pupils have been completely deprived of formal education for three consecutive years, following the destruction of approximately 85 percent of school buildings, per the Global Education Cluster.
• Doctors at Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital report a rise in skeletal deformities from heavy labour, alongside what the Gaza Mental Health Programme calls "cumulative toxic stress" in child workers.

The bigger picture: The longer children stay out of school and in the labour market, the greater the risk of permanent dropout — compounding, according to UNICEF, into an educational crisis that will outlast the conflict itself.