After US-Brokered Ceasefire, Israel Continues to Occupy Southern Lebanon; US Pushes to End UN Peacekeeping Mission

The US-brokered Lebanon-Israel ceasefire agreement has not brought withdrawal. According to NPR, its journalists Jane Arraf and Jawad Rizkallah entered Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon with a Finnish rapid-response unit of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and witnessed Israeli forces establishing new semi-permanent positions in the area while systematically preventing civilians from returning home.

NPR described what they saw along the way: "We have entered Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory for several miles, and within a radius of several miles there is not a single person to be seen. You can see evidence that Israel is indeed here — two Israeli flags hanging on a building we just passed, flying above a landscape completely devastated — burned fields, demolished houses."

UNIFIL Deputy Commander Hervé Lecoq told NPR that Israeli forces have built new semi-permanent positions in the area and refused requests to restore civilian infrastructure. Hebrew road signs and Israeli military vehicles hidden beneath camouflage netting were visible along the road. According to NPR, the Israeli defense minister said the related destruction is intended to prevent threats, and has made clear that Israel wants to ensure Lebanese residents have no homes to return to.

Military operations continue. The Lebanese government said that Israeli attacks over the past week have killed at least 28 people, including women and children — a figure that has not been independently verified. As the UNIFIL convoy traveled, NPR reported that journalists saw smoke rising and drones circling near the village of Mansouri. Finnish peacekeepers' radio communications recorded the scene: "There's a drone right above Mansouri." "There's an explosion, smoke there."

For 48 years, UNIFIL's mission has been to document ceasefire violations along the Lebanon-Israel border, making it one of the United Nations' longest-running peacekeeping deployments. According to NPR, Israel and the United States have ensured that the mission is terminated this year, and efforts to extend it "appear unlikely to succeed." This means that as Israeli forces build semi-permanent positions on newly occupied territory and prevent the rebuilding of civilian facilities, the primary mechanism that has monitored this border under international law over the past half century is about to exit the stage.

The United States' role runs through both ends of this logical chain: it brokered a ceasefire agreement with no clear timeline for withdrawal and reconstruction, and together with Israel pushed for the cancellation of international monitoring of the agreement's implementation. Ceasefire and occupation thus coexist, with peacekeeping and dismantling advancing in tandem.