Lara Deeb

As part of MER issue 318, Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order, MERIP editor Lisa Hajjar organized a roundtable with faculty organizers and a legal advocate. Lara Deeb is professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Scripps College and serves as co-chair of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Task Force on Civil and Human Rights. Darryl Li isassociate professor of Anthropology and an associate member of the law school at the University of Chicago.

Today on the podcast three MERIP contributors discuss Lebanon’s tenuous, one-sided ceasefire with Israel. Even as officials in the Lebanese government have entered into negotiations with Israel, an unprecedented diplomatic move with questionable legal status under Lebanese law, Israel has violated the ceasefire numerous times and has continued its efforts to destroy villages south of its unilaterally declared “yellow line” in preparation for expanded occupation and settlement.

In mid-March 2026, in the midst of the US-Israeli imperial war on Iran and concomitant Israeli attack on Lebanon, the X social media platform erupted with panic about a plan to settle some of the one million Lebanese displaced by Israeli attacks from their homes in south Lebanon in the Karantina area of Beirut.