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Lebanon: Tripartite Committee to Tackle Border dispute between Lebanon and Israel

People look at the northern Israeli town of Metula, from Kafr Kila, southern Lebanon, 12 July 2023. EPA/Ziad Choufi
People look at the northern Israeli town of Metula, from Kafr Kila, southern Lebanon, 12 July 2023. EPA/Ziad Choufi
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Lebanon: Tripartite Committee to Tackle Border dispute between Lebanon and Israel

People look at the northern Israeli town of Metula, from Kafr Kila, southern Lebanon, 12 July 2023. EPA/Ziad Choufi
People look at the northern Israeli town of Metula, from Kafr Kila, southern Lebanon, 12 July 2023. EPA/Ziad Choufi

The tripartite committee composed of UNIFIL officers and senior figures from the Lebanese army and the Israeli side will follow up on the latest Israeli violations against Lebanon’s southern territory, ruling out a feared military escalation between the two countries.

Tensions escalated recently between Lebanon and Israel after Israel in recent weeks built a wall around the Lebanese part of Ghajar, a border town that straddles the Mediterranean country and Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Hezbollah has also erected two tents in a disputed border area in the Shebaa farms, in southeast Lebanon.

American mediation in this conflict has not been recorded but was strictly limited to urging the rival sides to avoid any provocations.

Meanwhile, following the visit of US envoy Amos Hochstein to Tel Aviv on Tuesday, expectations surfaced that a US mediation could possibly be in sight to assist with the demarcation of the land border between Lebanon and Israel.

But Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab told Asharq Al-Awsat that “neither the Americans offered to mediate nor did Lebanon ask for any American effort in this particular matter”.

Hochstein is the US envoy mediating between Lebanon and Israel over their disputed maritime border.

Moreover, and after reports that Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim was tasked with leading negotiations with the US on the matter, unnamed Lebanese sources said the claims were inaccurate.

“Today, and working through a tripartite committee is highly recommended, because at the core of its tasks is to address the violations against the land borders,” Lebanese sources told Asharq Al-Awsat on condition of anonymity.

A monthly meeting between the UNIFIL head in Lebanon and senior officers from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Israeli army is held at a UN position in Ras Al Naqoura to tackle security and military matters between the two countries.

Tension escalated on Wednesday when an explosion near Lebanon’s border with Israel slightly wounded at least three members of the militant Hezbollah group, a Lebanese security official had said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the army “deterred activists with nonlethal means.”

UNIFIL said: “We urge everyone to cease any action that may lead to escalation of any kind.”

Hezbollah had no immediate comment on the incident.

Lebanese officials said that Israel in recent weeks has built a wall around the Lebanese part of Ghajar, a border town that straddles the tiny Mediterranean country and Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Lebanon’s foreign minister asked the country’s permanent mission to the United Nations to file a complaint on the matter.

Israel meanwhile in June filed a complaint with the UN claiming that Hezbollah had set up tents several dozen meters (yards) within Israeli territory. It’s unclear what the tents were used for and what was inside them. They were erected in Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Chouba hills, which Israeli captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981, though Lebanon claims the area belongs to them.

Israel considers Hezbollah its most serious immediate threat, and estimates that it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.

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Arab World

Sudan Army Chief Visits HQ after Recapture from Paramilitaries

People cheer Sudan's de facto leader, armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at the market in Port Sudan on December 29, 2024. AFP/File
People cheer Sudan's de facto leader, armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at the market in Port Sudan on December 29, 2024. AFP/File
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Sudan Army Chief Visits HQ after Recapture from Paramilitaries

People cheer Sudan's de facto leader, armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at the market in Port Sudan on December 29, 2024. AFP/File
People cheer Sudan's de facto leader, armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at the market in Port Sudan on December 29, 2024. AFP/File

Sudan's army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the complex, which paramilitaries had encircled since the war erupted in April 2023.

"Our forces are in their best condition," Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told army commanders at the headquarters close to the city center and airport.

The army's recapture of the General Command of the Armed Forces is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city on the Nile's west bank, nearly a year ago.

In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters, breaking the siege of both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command, just south across the Nile River, reported AFP.

Since the early days of the war, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) quickly spread through Khartoum, the military had to supply its troops inside the headquarters via airdrops.

Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.

The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.

Earlier this month, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.

'Disregard for human life'

With the army gaining ground in central Sudan, the RSF has set its sights on consolidating its hold on Darfur, where it controls every state capital except El-Fasher.

Despite besieging it since May, the paramilitary has not managed to wrest control of the city from the army and its allied militias.

Days after it issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the North Darfur state capital, an attack on the city's Saudi Hospital on Friday killed 70 people and injured dozens, the United Nations said on Sunday.

"The attack, reportedly carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the only functional hospital in El-Fasher, is a shocking violation of international humanitarian law," the UN's resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said Sunday.

"The alarming disregard for human life is unacceptable," said the UN's most senior official in Sudan.

The RSF on Sunday accused the army and its allies of striking the hospital.

The late Friday drone strike destroyed the hospital's emergency building, a medical source told AFP.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X the "appalling" attack took place while "the hospital was packed with patients receiving care".

Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing his group of committing genocide.

A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.

'The best medicine is peace'

The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.

Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.

Particularly in the country's western Darfur region and in Kordofan in the south, families have been forced to eat grass, animal fodder and peanut shells to survive.

"Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace," Ghebreyesus said.

During Sunday prayers in Rome, Pope Francis lamented how the country has become the site of "the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world".

He called on both sides to end the fighting and urged the international community to "help the belligerents find paths to peace soon".