The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is a technical truth - on paper. On the ground, the conflict quietly continues every day. On Friday, 12 people were killed and 25 wounded in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon. Among the victims, a child. This isn't an „incident" - this is the reality of a conflict that is officially „over".

The same day, Hezbollah launched several drones at Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon, plus a rocket that was intercepted. Four Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded. This exchange is not the first since the Iranian war reactivated regional tensions - it is a daily occurrence. The ceasefire from mid-April only exists in press releases.

In context, one thing matters: the Lebanese army and the government in Beirut are not active parties in the conflict. They watch their own territory being bombed, rocketed, and responded to. Hezbollah operates as a paramilitary structure tied to Iran, but Lebanon as a state is not formally involved. That means one thing: if the escalation continues, the Lebanese government will be placed before the hardest question - to disarm its paramilitaries, or to accept that the country is divided between the state and the militia.

For Balkan readers, Lebanon is the distilled image of what happens when a state has no control over its own armed groups. The Balkans has that scene in its own history - from the 90s and from later. When paramilitary groups are financed by foreign powers, they do not answer to their own government. They answer to the cash box that pays them.

The ceasefire was mediated by Trump through negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. Now Washington is pushing for direct talks between Israel and Lebanon at the highest level - but even in those talks, Hezbollah and Iran are not at the table. Negotiations without all the relevant players - and we in the Balkans know all of them - are a written-off document before they begin.