Libanon

On day 10 of the war engulfing the Middle East, UN agencies on Monday reported massive displacement across the region, along with surging food and fuel prices that risk increasing hunger and suffering for the most vulnerable. In Lebanon alone, nearly 700,000 people including around 200,000 children have been forced from their homes, “adding to the tens of thousands already uprooted from previous escalations”, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.

The Israeli military has told civilians living in a large swathe of southern Lebanon to leave their homes immediately and move north of the Litani River because of intended military action against Hezbollah. The sweeping orders came as hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed group continued to escalate. 

A Hezbollah official on Saturday said that "resistance" was the only option after Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed eight of its operatives. On Friday, the Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah command centres in eastern Lebanon and targets linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in the south. … Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun also condemned the attacks, which came just days after the government said the army will start implementing the second phase of its plan to disarm Hezbollah in the south of the country.

UN peacekeepers temporarily suspended patrols and other activities along parts of the ‘Blue Line’ in southern Lebanon after the Israeli military said it would release what it described as a non-toxic chemical substance near the frontier, the UN said on Monday.

Lebanon will need some sort of international force after the withdrawal of the United Nations’s UNIFIL mission scheduled for 2027, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said during a visit to Paris on Saturday. … “We will always need an international presence in the south, and preferably a UN presence, given the impartiality and neutrality that only the UN can provide,” Nawaf Salam said the day after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Israeli military said it struck four crossings along the Syria-Lebanon border on Wednesday that were used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons, after earlier launching fresh strikes on the militant group in Lebanon.

Peacekeeping operations in the Middle East are facing mounting security risks, funding pressures and political uncertainty, the head of UN peacekeeping warned on Friday. Briefing journalists by video link from Jeddah following an extensive visit to the region, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said there has been an uptick in dangerous incidents involving peacekeepers and the fragile environment in which missions are operating.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said an Israeli tank fired near its peacekeepers on Monday, and warned that such attacks were becoming “disturbingly common.” … UNIFIL has acted as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon for decades, and recently has been working with Lebanon’s army to support a year-old ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.

The end of 2025 was the army’s self-imposed deadline to complete the first phase of its plan to bring all weapons in the country under state control. … But Israel already has a verdict on the army’s performance. It says Hezbollah still has a presence close to the border and is rebuilding its military capabilities “faster than the army is dismantling [them]”. The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has a different take. It says there is “no evidence” that Hezbollah’s infrastructure has been rebuilt.

A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon says Lebanese militant group Hezbollah must be disarmed by December 31. As that deadline nears, tensions are rising along with concerns of civil war or more Israeli attacks.