UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix mentioned right this moment that the redeployment of the military in southern Lebanon is crucial to any viable answer to finish the continued battle between the Israeli military and Hezbollah.
“Restructuring the Lebanese armed forces is completely central to any sustainable answer,” Lacroix mentioned throughout a gathering with reporters, together with AFP correspondents, on the finish of his three-day go to to Lebanon.
“We begin from the fundamental precept that the return to implementation of a peace settlement can be primarily based on the implementation of UN decision 1701,” which ended the earlier struggle between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, he added.
This decision stipulates that solely the Lebanese military and the Blue Helmets may be deployed on Lebanon's southern border with northern Israel to patrol alongside the Blue Line and act as a buffer zone between Hezbollah fighters and the Israelis. forces.
Learn extra: The US ambassador submitted a cease-fire plan to the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament
Since 2006, this pressure has allowed, regardless of skirmishes, to take care of calm, which was damaged in October 2023 by cross-border exchanges of fireside and a yr later by open struggle between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL/FINUL) will solely have the ability to have a “vital” position if all sides “totally adjust to the implementation of Decision 1701,” he clarified.
In mid-October, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati mentioned he was prepared to extend the armed forces within the southern a part of the nation in order that the military might management the world within the occasion of a ceasefire with Israel.
“At the moment we have now 4,500 troopers within the south and we wish to improve them to between 7,000 and 11,000,” he mentioned, including that the federal government, which depends on worldwide help as a result of nation's financial collapse, would start recruiting “1,500 new troopers.”
Greater than 3,380 folks have been killed in accordance with Lebanese authorities because the battle started in October 2023, when Hezbollah opened a entrance in opposition to Israel to help Palestinian Hamas in Gaza.
Most human losses have been recorded because the finish of September.
Supply: RES-MPE
