UNIFIL Commander Urges Lebanon, Israel to Resume Talks on Blue Linehttps://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3470481/unifil-commander-urges-lebanon-israel-resume-talks-blue-line
UNIFIL Commander Urges Lebanon, Israel to Resume Talks on Blue Line
Vehicles are seen behind the border wall between Israel and Lebanon, as seen from Rosh Hanikra, northern Israel May 4, 2021. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The head of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon has called on the Lebanese authorities and Israel to resume talks on the technical Blue Line to find agreements on a number of the contentious points along the Line.
Major General Stefano Del Col chaired on Friday this year’s first Tripartite meeting with senior Lebanese and Israeli army officers in Ras Al Naqoura. It was the outgoing UNIFIL head’s last Tripartite meeting.
Addressing both delegations, the UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander reflected on challenges and opportunities he has seen since taking charge of the peacekeeping mission in early August 2018, and on the way forward.
“We must all play our part to move from the technical level towards the higher-level goal of a sustainable peace,” he said. “This is my parting challenge to you all.”
Del Col said UNIFIL’s open line of communications with the parties remains vital, adding that throughout numerous Blue Line incidents, both the Lebanese and Israeli armies remained engaged, providing UNIFIL time and space for de-escalation.
“It is encouraging that you both continued to work closely with UNIFIL throughout each of these incidents to contain the situation and restore stability,” said Del Col. “This demonstrates the critical contribution of our liaison and coordination channels to de-escalate and de-conflict, at the heart of which is our Tripartite forum.”
The UNIFIL Head of Mission also called on the parties to resume the technical Blue Line talks, in order to find agreements on a number of the contentious points along the Blue Line, and to use the Tripartite forum to build on past achievements, and to make progress towards a more stable environment.
Other issues discussed at the meeting included incidents along the Blue Line, airspace violations and serious breaches of the cessation of hostilities in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701.
South Lebanon Caught Between Ali al-Taher and Strait of Hormuzhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5294987-south-lebanon-caught-between-ali-al-taher-and-strait-hormuz
South Lebanon Caught Between Ali al-Taher and Strait of Hormuz
A building reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment (Asharq Al-Awsat)
These small stones were once walls and roofs that made those beneath them believe they were protected from summer heat, winter cold and treacherous winds.
Under those roofs, mothers held their children close and cooked meals to stave off hunger. Children left for school and grew up under their parents’ eyes, amid their grandparents’ smiles and photographs hanging on the walls.
That was before the hurricane. It is no longer.
These stones were once apartment buildings whose residents imagined they were permanent homes and safe shelters.
A colleague explains the ruins. A gutted, burned apartment means a drone struck it in an assassination operation. A mound of rubble means a fighter jet tore down the building, burying those who failed to escape.
You stare at debris tangled with electricity cables. Here are the remains of a balcony where someone once drank tea and rested after working in a field or garden. There are the remains of beds made for sleep, and perhaps for dreams. A coffee pot has lost its purpose forever. The windows died with their walls.
How difficult it is to live near a man named Benjamin Netanyahu. It became harder after the “Sinwar Flood.”
Destruction is seen at a site bombarded by Israel in southern Lebanon (Asharq Al-Awsat)
A Lebanese army soldier advised us not to go farther. The road leads to Ali al-Taher hill, he said. The occupation has turned it into a killing zone and spares nothing that moves.
In the south, people say the hill, whose outskirts the Israeli army has approached, contains tunnels and operations rooms used by Hezbollah fighters. They say Israel is preparing to seize it as soon as the restraints Donald Trump imposed on its movements begin to loosen.
Ali al-Taher has acquired unusual symbolic importance. Experts believe Israel may be willing to bear the losses required to capture it.
We followed the soldier’s advice and settled for inspecting the city’s wounds, including its commercial markets, which the occupation army had condemned to death, leaving what resembled a mass grave.
Then came a buzzing sound from the sky.
My colleague Thaer Abbas said it was an Israeli drone. It circled overhead as if reminding those below that they lived at its mercy, that it could erase them whenever it chose, monitor their movements and count their breaths.
I had heard drones over Beirut before. But near Ali al-Taher, the sound was like knives moving through arteries.
It reminds those beneath it that the occupation’s reach is long. It reminds them they lost the war.
A building that became rubble (Asharq Al-Awsat)
In Nabatieh, people say that what the city endured, despite its horror, was far less severe than what happened to the border villages now in the Israeli army’s grip.
The Israeli army perfected their complete or near-complete erasure, making the return of residents impossible. It left no roof and no wall. It did not spare the trees or electricity poles.
It is frightening to hear that dozens of border villages now resemble Gaza.
Bodies are said to remain beneath the rubble of crushed villages. Drones strike at bulldozers whenever they try to approach, preventing families from recovering their loved ones and shrouding them with handkerchiefs soaked in tears and handfuls of soil.
How cruel for a homeland to become a grave, or a grave in the making.
A man familiar with the map began listing the villages and what remained of them. He feared another round in which Israeli forces would advance towards Ali al-Taher, perhaps encouraging them to move towards other hills.
Israel’s ambitions in Lebanon, he reminded us, are old, particularly its ambitions over the country’s water.
A visitor may hear that the fate of the “Ali al-Taher Strait” is tied to that of the Strait of Hormuz.
Anyone following events needs no reminder of the Iranian thread linking southern Lebanon to the region’s wider crisis. The issue goes beyond Lebanon’s appearance in the first clause of the US-Iranian memorandum of understanding under the heading of a ceasefire.
Extensive destruction in front of Jabal Amel hospital in southern Lebanon (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Iranian connection did not begin with the memorandum. It is deeper and older.
On the road to Tyre and from there to Nabatieh, portraits tell the story: Hassan Nasrallah and his comrades, Khomeini, Khamenei senior with Khamenei junior, and Qassem Soleimani.
There are also portraits of Nabih Berri. We passed near his stronghold in Msayleh, where we had previously visited and interviewed him.
I felt sorrow as I watched Lebanese army soldiers. The Israeli army had destroyed the military’s positions south of the Litani River and killed dozens of its troops.
The army’s story is a tragedy within a country whose story is itself a tragedy.
How difficult it is for an army to be strong in a fragile country, one accompanied by division since its birth and unable to escape it at every major national juncture.
The Lebanese army does not lack competence or courage. What it has always lacked is the firm backing of a unified political decision.
It is repeatedly called upon to carry out difficult missions beyond its capabilities and equipment, without a clear and unambiguous political mandate.
The editor-in-chief in front of the rubble of destroyed buildings (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The story did not begin in recent years.
It began when the late Lebanese army commander, General Emile Boustany, signed the Cairo Agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Lebanon’s authorities were forced to surrender part of the country’s sovereignty to avoid a civil war that would come later.
Lebanon was effectively assigned the role of an open front against Israel while the other fronts fell silent, particularly the Syrian Golan front after the 1973 war.
Southern Lebanon was left suspended on the high-voltage line of military conflict with Israel.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied Beirut. The Lebanese National Resistance Front, known as Jammoul, emerged.
In the mid-1980s, Hafez al-Assad ordered it removed in favor of the “Islamic Resistance” represented by Hezbollah.
The Lebanese-Israeli border was transformed into an Iranian-Israeli border, with the 2006 war becoming one episode in that confrontation.
For decades, Lebanon’s tragedy was marked by collapses and assassinations.
The grave of Kamal Jumblatt. The grave of BaShir Gemayel. The grave of Rene Moawad. The grave of Rafic Hariri.
Everyone who tried to reclaim Lebanese decision-making was beheaded, despite their different positions and methods.
The removal of rubble of destroyed buildings (Asharq Al-Awsat)
On the return journey, I remembered a southerner with whom I had maintained a dialogue for more than three decades.
He was Mohsen Ibrahim, the former secretary-general of the Organization of Communist Action and the Lebanese National Movement.
Ibrahim acknowledged that “the National Movement burdened Lebanon with more than it could bear when it went too far in embracing the Palestinian resistance.”
One day, he surprised me by saying: “Hezbollah is also burdening Lebanon with more than it can bear.”
He spoke years after the assassination of Rafic Hariri and Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria to save Bashar al-Assad’s government.
On the way back, we saw a UNIFIL convoy leaving, never to return.
The international presence along the Lebanese-Israeli border was sometimes useful but always powerless.
The force operated amid Israeli violations it could not prevent and above Hezbollah tunnels being prepared for the next war, which it could do little but ignore.
Lebanon today faces a predicament more difficult than any it has known.
After the “Sinwar Flood,” Hezbollah chose to enter the battle in “support of Gaza.” After the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it chose to wage a war of “revenge.”
The results of both wars can be seen in the occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.
Israel changed its military doctrine after the “Flood.” It no longer accepts living alongside what it calls threats across its borders.
It chose instead to enter the territory of others and establish “safe zones.”
It has clearly decided to remove Lebanon from the military side of its conflict.
That has coincided with international pressure on Lebanon to extend its authority across all its territory through its legitimate forces alone.
That means disarming Hezbollah, or restricting its weapons, as the softer formulation puts it.
Neither Hezbollah nor Iran accepts this.
Hezbollah’s insistence on retaining its weapons has deepened estrangement and prompted talk of other formulas for coexistence, or of a softer form of divorce.
Southern Lebanon hangs from a rope stretching between the situation at “Ali al-Taher” and the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.
Lebanon itself hangs over a crisis among its constituent communities, threatening to confirm that it lost the war in the south and is preparing to lose it in the capital as well.
Plans for Post-War Gaza Face Challenges on the Groundhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5294860-plans-post-war-gaza-face-challenges-ground
11 July 2026, Palestinian Territories, Nuseirat: A vehicle damaged in an Israeli strike is seen at the scene in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, where a Palestinian was killed and others were wounded. (dpa)
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Plans for Post-War Gaza Face Challenges on the Ground
11 July 2026, Palestinian Territories, Nuseirat: A vehicle damaged in an Israeli strike is seen at the scene in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, where a Palestinian was killed and others were wounded. (dpa)
In spite of the ongoing risk of renewed fighting in Gaza, stakeholders have spent months preparing for the post-war phase.
Plans for governance, security and humanitarian relief have begun to take shape, but remain largely theoretical in the absence of a political agreement, credible security guarantees and sustained funding.
Below are some of the key challenges facing local and international players as they seek to rebuild the devastated territory home to more than two million Palestinians.
- Security concerns -
Security remains the cornerstone of every post-war scenario under discussion.
Israel insists Hamas must disarm before any progress can be made, while the Palestinian movement refuses to surrender its weapons before Israeli troops withdraw and a Palestinian governing authority is established.
However, an official from the Board of Peace established by US President Donald Trump to help prepare for post-war Gaza told AFP that Hamas's disarmament was no longer being treated as a precondition for advancing plans on the ground.
"The entire planning is around worst case scenario," he said, referring to a planned pilot "humanitarian zone" in Rafah, in the south.
"We get nothing in the negotiation, but we move forward anyhow."
Among the proposals is an International Stabilization Force (ISF) tasked with helping maintain order in Gaza.
According to the same source, four countries -- Morocco, Kosovo, Albania and Kazakhstan -- are "really engaged" in the initiative.
A logistical base on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing is "close to complete" and would be able to host an initial rotation of around 500 troops before any deployment into Gaza, the official said.
Preparations are also continuing for a Palestinian police force, with around 20,000 applications already received, the official added.
But several diplomats and security sources interviewed by AFP described a process that remains deadlocked.
According to one diplomatic source, training has yet to begin and Israel has rejected the current list of recruits following its vetting process, arguing in particular that a proposed force of 5,000 police officers would be too large for Gaza.
Despite a ceasefire in place since October 2025, daily violence grips the territory as Israeli strikes continue targeting what the military says are violations of the truce by fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
- Little reconstruction -
The humanitarian needs of Gaza remain overwhelming.
The United Nations estimates reconstruction will take years and require tens of billions of dollars, as construction materials and debris-clearing equipment remain in critically short supply.
Despite substantial donor pledges, much of the expected funding has yet to be disbursed, according to the Board of Peace.
"We're working with an amount that for now meets our needs," the board official said, adding that if several humanitarian zones have to be established then "we obviously need more funding".
The board is currently planning a pilot humanitarian zone in Rafah which would accommodate tens of thousands of vetted Palestinians, the official said earlier this week.
- No governing institutions -
Hamas announced recently it intends to hand over administrative responsibilities to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a body set up by the Board of Peace comprising Palestinian technocrats tasked with overseeing day-to-day governance during a transitional period.
But the NCAG has still not even managed to enter Gaza, with several Palestinian and diplomatic sources saying Israel has barred the committee from entering.
For Israel, dismantling Hamas's administrative apparatus falls short of its longstanding demand that the group disarm.
The future role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) also remains unresolved.
Based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank -- a separate Palestinian territory from the Gaza Strip -- the PA remains the international community's officially recognized Palestinian interlocutor.
The NCAG is intended as a temporary body implementing basic services across the strip, with European officials expecting it to work in coordination with the PA.
Several observers, however, warn that the result could be an administration responsible for delivering public services but lacking authority over security forces or border crossings -- leaving it dependent on its international backers while remaining vulnerable to Hamas should the group retain all or part of its military arsenal.
US Delegation in Lebanon to Discuss Israel ‘Pilot Zone’ Withdrawal, Says Officialhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5294843-us-delegation-lebanon-discuss-israel-%E2%80%98pilot-zone%E2%80%99-withdrawal-says-official
A vehicle that was reportedly damaged by an Israeli strike is pictured in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Rumman on July 10, 2026. (AFP)
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US Delegation in Lebanon to Discuss Israel ‘Pilot Zone’ Withdrawal, Says Official
A vehicle that was reportedly damaged by an Israeli strike is pictured in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Rumman on July 10, 2026. (AFP)
A US military delegation met with Lebanon's army in Beirut to discuss the implementation of Israel's withdrawal from a "pilot zone" in occupied territory, a Lebanese military official told AFP on Saturday.
Under a framework agreement reached on June 26, Israel will gradually withdraw from areas of southern Lebanon where it has deployed troops to fight the Iran-backed Hezbollah party.
As part of the agreement, the long-disempowered Lebanese military will take full control of two small areas dubbed pilot zones.
"The American military delegation arrived and began meetings with the Lebanese army command to discuss the mechanisms for implementing the first pilot zone from which the Israelis will withdraw, allowing the Lebanese army to deploy," the official said, requesting anonymity.
"This is the main objective the American military delegation is bringing to Lebanon... it is the translation and implementation of the framework agreement."
US Ambassador Michel Issa told President Joseph Aoun on Thursday that the American delegation was coming to "determine the mechanism" for the deal's implementation.
In Washington, a US official had said on condition of anonymity that "the first pilot zone will launch in a matter of days, and further pilot zones are being mapped out and planned".
US Central Command will coordinate on the zones with both countries, he said.
The agreement -- rejected by Hezbollah -- does not set a timetable for Israel's withdrawal, and Israeli officials have also vowed that their forces will remain in a "security zone" 10 kilometers (six miles) deep as long as Hezbollah remains armed.
The war, which began in early March when Hezbollah entered the wider Middle East conflict on the side of its backer Iran, displaced more than a million people in Lebanon, according to the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA.
On Saturday, the agency said more than 732,000 people had now returned home, up from 640,000 a week before.
That leaves more than 430,000 still displaced, it added.
Israel has pursued intermittent strikes despite a truce in its war with Hezbollah, with Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reporting several in the south on Saturday.
The latest talks between Lebanon and Israel, which have no formal relations but have met for five rounds of negotiations since the start of the war, will take place in Rome next Wednesday and Thursday.
Lebanon conditions its participation on Israel withdrawing from two pilot zones.
The talks precede Aoun's expected visit to Washington later this month at the invitation of his American counterpart Donald Trump.
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