More than a month after a cease-fire agreement required the Israeli army to withdraw completely from Lebanon, it continues to hold five positions just north of the border, which military analysts say are key to preventing terrorist group Hezbollah from reestablishing itself near the Israel–Lebanon border.
Lebanon doesn’t like the Israeli presence, nor does Saudi Arabia. The two countries have jointly demanded that Israel withdraw.
And Lebanon’s newly appointed president told Saudi Arabia’s Asharq news on Feb. 28 that he would ask Riyadh to reactivate a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army that had been halted nearly a decade ago.
France, which oversees the cease-fire agreement along with the United States, has gone so far as to propose placing its troops in those positions, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
An Israeli withdrawal seems unlikely anytime soon, given the incomplete enforcement of cease-fire terms by Lebanon and the U.N., according to Israeli military analysts.
The cease-fire agreement requires the deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL in the south to deter Hezbollah, Israeli military strategist Elliot Chodoff, a retired major in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told The Epoch Times.
He said he believes the southern deployment hasn’t been effectively done yet to prohibit Hezbollah’s reestablishment close to the Israeli frontier.
Israel’s cautious attitude stems from events surrounding the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2006, which was carried out in exchange for similar commitments. UNIFIL and the Lebanese army failed to intervene as Hezbollah fortified the border, constructing a formidable tunnel network designed for an attack on Israel similar to what terrorist group Hamas carried out on Oct. 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead, thousands injured, and more than 250 abducted.
The IDF now exhibits “zero tolerance,” Chodoff said. “If we know about it, we’re stopping it, which is very different from what went on between 2006 and 2023.”
UNIFIL has a weak mandate and is only “nominally deployed,” he said. “They’ve never been used for anything, and that hasn’t changed.”
“They’re a peacekeeping force, not an enforcement force. They’re not going to take aggressive action to enforce an agreement.”
Chodoff said the Lebanese army’s commitment to the project was “iffy” so far. And around a third of its officer corps is Shia Muslim. “Not all of them are Hezbollah, but let’s say that they’re suspect.” The terrorist group is primarily Shiite Muslim.
Moreover, the head of Lebanese army intelligence in the south, who sits in the U.S.-supervised cease-fire agreement war room, was caught giving information to Hezbollah, Chodoff said. The war room’s activities are top secret.
“That doesn’t make us overly confident about the Lebanese army’s effectiveness,” he said.
Lebanon’s New Government
Israel is cautious about the new Lebanese government, which was elected in January and led by President Joseph Aoun, a former army chief of staff, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.Salam is no friend of Israel, Chodoff said. He has called it “the enemy” and frequently accuses it of “genocide.”
Until his election as prime minister, a position Lebanon allocates to Sunni Muslims, Salam was the president of the International Court of Justice and presided over a hearing in South Africa’s genocide lawsuit against Israel.
Salam won a parliamentary vote of confidence on Feb. 28, declaring Lebanon’s army the only body allowed to defend the country in case of war. The vote strengthens the Lebanese army’s hand in efforts to disarm Hezbollah.
That’s a blow to Hezbollah, which has long defended its arms as necessary to defend Lebanon from Israel.
Aoun shows encouraging pragmatism, Moshe Elad, an Israeli academic and retired IDF colonel, told The Epoch Times.
Last week at the Arab League summit in Cairo, Aoun criticized the notion of Arab investment in Gaza without first removing Hamas, Elad noted.
Aoun recognizes that Israel, the war victor, will no longer tolerate Hamas and will return in force to destroy it if necessary, and Israel’s position on Hezbollah is similar, Elad said.
Protecting Border Communities
Elad said the IDF also faces pressure from its own population. Around 60,000 people were formally evacuated by the IDF from Israeli communities close to the border after Hezbollah began rocket strikes on the area in support of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
More left from communities a little further away.
About half of the evacuated residents have returned, Elad said.
“It’s very frightening to people who live 2 or 3 kilometers from the border,” he said. “They don’t feel they are secure there. They are pushing the government and the army not to withdraw until it is fully secured.
“Who will secure it? The Lebanese army? Forget it. UNIFIL, of course not. So, for the time being, the IDF is going to be there, to ensure our people, our settlements, in Metula, in Rosh Hanikra [and other border communities.] They have to know the IDF is on the border line.”
They are, at most, a few hundred meters north of the Blue Line—the U.N.’s withdrawal line set in 2000—and in some cases only a few dozen meters from it. They represent “tactical adjustments”—minor movements an army makes forward or backward to fortify its position, he said.
Each post is a high point giving the IDF a view north into Lebanon, and preventing Hezbollah from using the vantage point to spy south into Israel.
The five positions span Israel’s 75-mile frontier with Lebanon, from the sea to just north of Israel’s northernmost community, Metula. There is a post on a hill across the border from Metula. The other four posts are located north of the Israeli border communities of Shlomi, Zar'it, Avivim, and Margaliot.
Chodoff noted that the terrain of northern Israel, stretching into Lebanon, is a single mountain formation, gradually rising in elevation as it goes north.
The World War I-vintage border between Israel and Lebanon, which was never surveyed or agreed upon by the two countries, does not take the region’s topography into account, he said. Neither does the Blue Line.
The elevated posts allow the IDF to safeguard northern Israeli communities, some of which are surrounded by higher Lebanese hills and mountains to their north.
