The debate in Lebanon turns on the vacuum that the end of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) mission might leave behind. But the more useful question is not whether these forces should be kept, or a similar force substituted for them, but whether Lebanon is ready to move from managing the conflict to treating its causes: Hezbollah's weapons outside the authority of the state, the decision of war and peace, and the continuing conflict with Israel.
UNIFIL was established in 1978, after the Israeli invasion of the south, to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces, contribute to the restoration of international peace and security, and help the Lebanese government extend its authority. But it began its mission amid a civil war and a continuous conflict between Israel and the Palestinian factions, and later Hezbollah, and in the shadow of a state incapable of controlling its own south.
Its presence did not prevent Israel from invading Lebanon and reaching Beirut in 1982- but that is not enough to judge it a failure, since its mandate never made it a combat force able to repel an invasion or impose peace by force. And after the Israeli withdrawal from most of the south in May 2000, the problem that would dog it was laid bare: the occupation ended in the greater part of the region, but the state did not become the sole security and military authority, while Hezbollah kept its weapons and expanded its capabilities.
The July 2006 war exposed the shortcomings of the existing formula, and Resolution 1701 was issued, widening UNIFIL's mission and raising its numbers to 15,000, before they were later reduced. It became charged with monitoring the cessation of hostilities, supporting the Lebanese army in its deployment, and helping to make the area between the Blue Line and the Litani river free of any weapons or armed forces save those of the Lebanese state and UNIFIL. It was also authorized to use force, without being turned into an army charged with disarming Hezbollah.
For this reason, its failure cannot be reduced to its not disarming the party, because that task was never assigned to it in the first place. The real failure is that its presence did not prevent its area of operations from turning into a wide military zone, did not enable the international community to detect the scale of that early or to enforce Resolution 1701. Its reports and its heavy presence gave a false impression of serious international oversight, while the crisis worsened and the party's military structure expanded.
UNIFIL does not bear the responsibility alone. Successive Lebanese governments held back from carrying out their obligations, and the participating states avoided friction with the party for fear of exposing their soldiers to assault, abduction, or death. Israel, for its part, went on occupying Lebanese land and violating both sovereignty and Resolution 1701, and during the wars struck United Nations positions and put its soldiers in danger.
The contradiction reached its peak with the war in support of Gaza in 2023, and then the war in support of Iran in 2026: thousands of international soldiers present in the south, yet unable to prevent the war or to protect the region from occupation and destruction. Their presence turned, unintentionally, into a cover suggesting the conflict was under international control, while the conditions for its explosion accumulated.
UNIFIL will end its operations on December 31, 2026, after which an orderly withdrawal of no more than a year is to begin, while the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continues alongside unprecedented negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. So will its withdrawal produce a security vacuum? And why the insistence on keeping it, or substituting another force for it, after a failed experiment that ran 48 years and saw four wars, as well as the return of Israeli occupation?
There is no doubt that UNIFIL's presence provided economic benefits to the southerners, secured an important international presence, and performed humanitarian and liaison roles. The force also paid a heavy human price, having faced hundreds of documented incidents and assaults since its creation, and the deaths of some 350 of its members- though not all of these resulted from the wars and the assaults. But the importance of this presence does not cancel the limits of its strategic yield. The infrastructure, the tunnels, the arms depots, and the combat systems Hezbollah built reveal that international oversight did not prevent the area south of the Litani from being turned into a military zone outside the state's actual control.
Contributing to this failure were the constraints of the mandate, the obstacles imposed on the movement of patrols, the divergent interests of the participating states, and their concern to avoid a confrontation that would expose their soldiers to assault or detention- which made them more cautious in holding Hezbollah to account.
It is not UNIFIL's withdrawal that creates the security vacuum, because the vacuum already exists, through the absence of the state. Lebanon needs today a different approach, one resting on strengthening the Lebanese army, tying the Israeli withdrawal to a plan for confining weapons to the hands of the state, and establishing an effective monitoring mechanism under American-international sponsorship that watches over the commitments without replacing the army- which is what the framework agreement with Israel may allow. As for bringing in a force under a different name that operates under the same constraints, that is no solution, but a prolonging of the policy of circumventing the problem. The time has come to implement the framework agreement in letter and in spirit, and to end the need for international forces- not to search for a new force to separate parties preparing for the next war.
