A UN flag flies from an armoured vehicle of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon during a patrol near destroyed buildings in the village of Kfar Kila in southern Lebanon on August 27.ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images
A United Nations Security Council decision to begin withdrawing UN peacekeepers from southern Lebanon at the end of next year has been criticized for putting an unrealistic timeline on the mission.
A unanimous resolution passed Thursday by the Security Council means the mission of the 10,000-member United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which was supposed to last until the Lebanese army is ready to assume sole responsibility for security in the region, will end on Dec. 31, 2026.
But the Lebanese army is unlikely to be ready to take control by then. In 2024, Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia fought a full-scale war that killed thousands of people and left much of south Lebanon in ruins. The ceasefire in November, 2024, that brought an end to that fighting called for UNIFIL to oversee Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, as well as the disarmament of Hezbollah. Now the multinational peacekeeping mission, which was already struggling to cope with the enormity of its tasks, including helping 1.2 million displaced Lebanese return to their homes, has just 16 months to complete its mission.
“It’s very difficult to put a timeframe, especially on the situation that we are living in these days,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told The Globe and Mail. “It’s not necessarily too realistic.”
The Lebanese government had sought an indefinite extension to the UNIFIL mission, with President Joseph Aoun warning that setting a fixed timeline for its expiry could exacerbate tensions in south Lebanon and undermine his government’s efforts to assert its authority there.
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Mr. Tenenti said that while the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) were “fully committed” to taking over security responsibility for southern Lebanon, the military currently has only 5,000 troops deployed in the region south of the Litani River and needed time to recruit and train new soldiers. “Plus, there is the question of who will pay them,” he added, referring to the cash-strapped Lebanese government’s struggle to pay salaries.
Mr. Tenenti said that while UNIFIL had made progress since the end of the war – discovering 318 Hezbollah arms caches and handing them over to the Lebanese government – it was difficult to envision the Lebanese military taking control of southern Lebanon at a time when the Israeli military still occupies five positions there and Israeli warplanes carry out regular sorties in Lebanese airspace.
“They are asking for the LAF to be redeployed. How can you redeploy if IDF is still present?” Mr. Tenenti said, using the acronym for the Israel Defence Forces. “The redeployment can be done as soon as the IDF withdraws back to Israel.”
Calls for the mission to be brought to an end were led by Tom Barrack, U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal envoy to the region. He said UNIFIL – which initially deployed to southern Lebanon in 1978 and was strengthened after a previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 – had proven itself ineffective. “They haven’t fired a bullet; they haven’t fired a shot. You’re in a worse dilemma than you’ve ever been with Israel and Hezbollah.”
Speaking from the country’s presidential palace in Beirut on Tuesday, Mr. Barrack said the Lebanese government would soon present a plan for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Mr. Barrack, who travelled to Jerusalem afterward, said that Israel “will withdraw in the same cadence” as Hezbollah is disarmed.
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However, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, an outspoken pro-Israeli lawmaker who accompanied Mr. Barrack on his trip, said the onus was on Lebanon to act first. “When Lebanon decides to disarm Hezbollah, then you talk to Israel,” he said.
Disarming Hezbollah is an issue that has long dominated Lebanese politics. While Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim forces gave up their weapons at the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990, Hezbollah did not, citing the continuing Israeli occupation of predominantly Shia Muslim southern Lebanon as justification.
However, Hezbollah retained and expanded its arsenal even after Israel withdrew in 2000, eventually becoming far more powerful – politically and militarily – than the Lebanese state.
Last year’s war, however, left the group – as well as its main patron Iran, which fought a separate, brief war with Israel – weaker than ever. Long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated, and his successor Naim Qassem later said Hezbollah lost 5,000 fighters during more than seven weeks of fighting.
The Lebanese government says more than 3,000 civilians were killed over the same period, while the Israeli army said it lost 60 soldiers. Forty-two UNIFIL peacekeepers were wounded.
Members of the Lebanese police and rescuers check a car after it was hit by a reported Israeli strike in the Masnaa area in eastern Lebanon on Aug. 7. Lebanon said the strike killed at least five people.HASSAN JARRAH/AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Aoun has led the subsequent push for Hezbollah to be disarmed, hoping the move will help his government attract desperately needed international aid. “No party in Lebanon is authorized to bear arms outside the framework of the Lebanese state,” he said in a recent interview with the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Mr. Qassem has in turn accused Mr. Aoun of carrying out an “American-Israeli order to eliminate the resistance” and warned the country could be plunged into a new civil war if the government moves against Hezbollah. “This is our nation together. We live in dignity together, and we build its sovereignty together – or Lebanon will have no life if you stand on the other side and try to confront us and eliminate us,” he said in a televised speech on Aug. 15.
The French-drafted Security Council resolution that was adopted Thursday was seen as a compromise after Mr. Barrack said Mr. Trump wanted to see the peacekeeping mission ended within 12 months.
In a demonstration of how the U.S. intervention is being received in southern Lebanon, a planned three-stop helicopter tour by Mr. Barrack was cancelled after the first stop on Wednesday. Mr. Barrack had earlier referred to Lebanese journalists as “animalistic” and called on them to “act civilized” during a press conference in Beirut.
Protesters in Khiam, a long-time Hezbollah stronghold that was to be Mr. Barrack’s second stop, wrote “Barrack is an animal” on the ground and stomped on a Star of David. Protesters also gathered in the city of Tyre, Mr. Barrack’s planned third stop, vowing to throw their shoes at him – a high insult in Arab culture – if he dared to land.