The State Department's Lebanon statement names future Lebanese Armed Forces-exclusive pilot zones in the South Litani Sector. [1] It does not, by itself, answer Beaufort.

The paper's June 2 article on Beaufort Castle as a ceasefire compliance test said geography would judge the diplomacy. The Guardian's live file kept Beaufort, the Litani, and Nabatieh in the same operating map. [2]

That is why the pilot-zone language needs a map, not applause. If the zones stop before the geography that made the prior compliance question sharp, they may be meaningful and still incomplete. If they include it, the public needs to see how control, evacuation, and monitoring work.

The skeptical reading is useful precisely because it does not deny the text. It says the statement is between governments, not yet reality on the ground. That is the correct burden of proof.

June 22 is now the next receipt date. Until then, South Litani is a phrase waiting for coordinates.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem