The National's Friday live blog logged the Lebanese Health Ministry's running count: six paramedics killed in two Israeli strikes inside the ceasefire window, the second wave in a week. [1] No Lebanese cabinet statement, no Foreign Ministry summons of any ambassador, no European or US official reply, and no UN Security Council emergency session followed by Friday's close. The day-two tape is the empty one.

The paper's Thursday brief on the Harouf strike took the position that the institutional label and the operating tape had separated — three paramedics killed Wednesday in Harouf, the State Department a 45-day extension at the table the same week. Friday's additional paramedic deaths extend the gap, not the institutional answer. The Israeli military's standing language — that targeted strikes accompany civilian-mitigation steps — has not been revised. The Lebanese government has not amended its position from the prior week. The U.S. State Department's "frank and constructive" framing is the most recent official Washington line on the ceasefire.

Medical workers are protected under International Humanitarian Law. Lebanon's running war count puts more than 80 rescuers and medical personnel killed since the war's March 2 start. [1] The "ceasefire" institutional label is now older than 45 days by the count of strikes inside it.

A ceasefire whose tape includes paramedics in the count requires either a state-level statement or a revised institutional label. Friday produced neither.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem