The Lebanon statement is a government document. Hezbollah is not one of its signatories.

That is not a gotcha. It is the enforcement problem. The State Department text says Israel and Lebanon reject any state or non-state actor holding Lebanon hostage, and it discusses Hezbollah fire, South Litani evacuation, Lebanese Armed Forces control, and follow-up diplomacy. [1]

The paper's June 2 article on Lebanon conditions inside the Iran channel warned that public text would not be enough unless it named the operating record. Today's record names the governments and the milestones. It does not print Hezbollah's acceptance.

The skeptical critique catches that gap without pretending the statement does not exist. A deal can be real as diplomacy and still unproven as coercion. That is especially true when the required behavior belongs partly to a non-state actor outside the signature block.

The next question is not whether the United States can publish a better sentence. It is what happens if Hezbollah fire continues, if evacuation does not occur, or if the June 22 follow-up identifies noncompliance without naming a remedy.

For now, the missing signature is not the whole story. It is the receipt the story still lacks.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem