The drawdown of the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission will likely have disastrous consequences for the Middle East at large.
In another historic moment for the Middle East, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has voted to temporarily renew and eventually end one of its oldest peacekeeping missions in the region. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) will continue its operations until December 2026, with much of the following year being committed to a drawdown. The decision to end the peacekeeping operation is ultimately shortsighted, counterintuitively contributing to future instability while undermining a sustainable solution to the long-running Israel-Lebanon border dispute.
The UNIFIL mandate goes back decades to the late 1970s, when UNSC Resolutions 425 and 426 established the peacekeeping operation and demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, where it was fighting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Historically, the mission had received widespread support that allowed for easy annual mandate renewals at the UNSC. However, in recent years, that dynamic has shifted.
While Israel has long expressed its disdain for UNIFIL, arguing the mission has failed to uphold its mandate while turning a blind eye to Lebanese Hezbollah’s actions along the disputed Israeli-Lebanese border, the United States more recently began criticizing the body. That shift led to protracted negotiations in 2024 regarding UNIFIL’s renewal, notably occurring just before Israel invaded its northern neighbor. Washington, under the administration of former US President Joe Biden, adopted Tel Aviv’s criticism of UNIFIL, arguing it was ineffective in stymying Hezbollah while retaining general support for the mission. Thus, after some haggling, an extension was reached.
To be sure, the peacekeeping operation is hardly perfect. During its tenure, Hezbollah has expanded its capacities in south Lebanon and across the country. The group launched numerous attacks on northern Israel — especially post-October 7 — and reportedly boasted the largest missile supply of any non-state armed group in the world, making it the most formidable of such groups globally. Following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and Hezbollah’s joining of the group’s assault on Israel with rocket attacks on northern Israeli communities, concerns about the group’s capacities only increased as Israel shifted its security doctrine.
However, UNIFIL’s faults are hardly a reason to give up on the mission, especially today. With Israel once again occupying sovereign Lebanese territory — indefinitely according to some Israeli leaders — the peacekeeping operation is needed more than ever. Coupled with Beirut’s efforts to disarm all armed groups across the country, the UNIFIL mandate is as relevant today as ever.
Regardless of its shortcomings, UNIFIL still plays an essential role in monitoring the Israeli-Lebanese border and southern Lebanon more broadly. The mission does discover and destroy Hezbollah weapons caches. It also accuses Israel of territorial violations. While hamstrung in ways that are not unlike other UN peacekeeping operations, UNIFIL is central to accountability efforts that ultimately keep the peace — no matter how imperfect.
For Lebanon, this line of thinking bolsters its support for UNIFIL. With the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) lacking the capacity to fully control an arms monopoly, UNIFIL can and does serve as a force multiplier. In Beirut’s eyes, it is foolish to demand an expedited disarmament campaign against the country’s strongest military force while demobilizing an internationally backed peacekeeping operation that can and does support the LAF.
But for Israel and the United States, demobilizing is now the point. Tel Aviv and Washington view UNIFIL as a mechanism that has given officials in Beirut an excuse to not move on Hezbollah disarmament. For these leaders, the only way to truly disarm Hezbollah is through maximum pressure — not unlike that of Israel’s other regional enemies. With US President Donald Trump largely acquiescing to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eight months into his second term, maximalist objectives that strictly consider Israeli security reign supreme.
Herein lies the point of ending UNIFIL. Israel has always desired freedom of action in Lebanon, invading the country multiple times but failing to dislodge non-state armed groups opposed to it, as opposed to inducing the creation of new ones — including and specifically Hezbollah. In this regard, a peacekeeping force has only added layers of complexity to Israeli military goals while painting Tel Aviv as a serial violator of basic international legal principles like state sovereignty.
As the thinking likely goes, removing UNIFIL from the equation opens up Lebanon for unconstrained Israeli operations. It serves as a backup plan should Beirut fail to disarm Hezbollah. Just as in Syria, Tel Aviv desired an operating environment where it could create facts on the ground wherever it perceived threats to the state to exist — especially post October 7.
This reasoning risks a civil conflict between the state and Hezbollah should the disarmament process fail. That process faces real prospects of failure, especially if Israel continues to occupy Lebanese territory, as it effectively boosts Hezbollah’s raison d’être of “resistance” to Israel as an occupying entity. Indeed, removing UNIFIL from Lebanon sets the LAF and Beirut’s reformist government up for failure from the start — which may be the goal.
If Israel believes that disarmament is not realistic, or if it believes that a strong Lebanese state is a threat to its interests, the approach of ending UNIFIL fits as a tactic within the broader strategy of weakening Tel Aviv’s neighbors. That line of thinking would fit its new security doctrine, which externalizes security by occupying neighboring territory, allowing it to operate with relative ease to strike real or perceived enemies and making maximalist demands of these neighbors to go against their interests, as opposed to Israeli ones.
At minimum, removing UNIFIL marks another cynical decision amid numerous similar moves since October 7 to “change the face of the Middle East.” Such a strategy is bound to fail because the region cannot be remade through fire and brimstone. Trauma does not dissipate when one side of a conflict demands and declares absolute victory at all costs and by any means, killing and destroying with ease all that its neighboring communities hold dear without being able to claim total victory. Rather, it sets the stage for the next war, as is all too painfully familiar in the broader Israel-Palestine conflict.
A smart approach would centralize decisions that provide Beirut with the confidence it needs to disarm non-state armed groups while undermining Hezbollah’s resistance mantra without splitting the country into its various sectarian and political factions. Unfortunately, both Washington and Tel Aviv appear committed to the same hawkish policies that have failed across the region for decades, largely out of political expediency. This rarely results in positive policy outcomes. The results will show for themselves, likely in disastrous ways.
About the Author: Alexander Langlois
Alexander Langlois is a contributing fellow for Defense Priorities. Langlois holds a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from American University, where he specialized in global governance, politics, and security. He is a foreign policy analyst and writer, with publications in various outlets such as The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Sada, Atlantic Council’s MENASource, Lowy Institute, Gulf International Forum, the New Arab, the Nation, Inkstick, and the National Interest.
Image: Shutterstock/Sebastian Castelier
