As the UN's longest-serving presence on the Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel counts down to its exit, a European replacement is being floated as the answer.
The real choice facing Beirut, however, is between a security arrangement written in Washington and one it builds itself.
For 48 years, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been deployed across the country's southern border villages.
It never deterred the wars fought across the Blue Line - a 120-kilometre (75-mile) temporary demarcation boundary established by the United Nations on 7 June 2000 to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
What they did, consistently, was watch, record, and report, and in a region where every side contests every account, that act of witnessing carried weight of its own.
Few in Lebanon expect the UN body's exit to change the balance of force. “UNIFIL was merely an eyewitness,” retired Brigadier General Saeed Qazah, a military expert, told The New Arab.
Operating under Chapter VI of its mandate, it could only record violations and report them to the UN. Its absence, he argued, “will not change the military reality on the ground as much as it will leave a logistical and economic vacuum”.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's push for an extension was blocked by a US-Israeli veto, and he had welcomed a French-Italian idea for a European Union force to take UNIFIL's place. On Monday, the contours of that EU role took a more concrete shape.
European Union foreign ministers agreed to establish a new support mission in Lebanon to advise and train the country's military and internal security forces. It would have an initial mandate of three years.
But the European option still lacks the mandate, consent, and the American backing it would need.
UNIFIL's real successor is being negotiated elsewhere, and what awaits Lebanon after December is less a handover than a test of whether the state can do alone what it has long outsourced.
A European force without a shape
The new European mission "will advise and assist the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces to strengthen territorial control, border security, and internal security," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a statement on Monday.
Over 10 EU members are reportedly willing to contribute people and resources to it, but more operational planning is required before it is launched. An EU official told Reuters this week that the mission hoped to deploy personnel in the coming months.
But retired Brigadier General Saeed Qazah sees a deeper flaw.
“UNIFIL could not prevent the Lebanese-Israeli conflict or control the land and the border, and European forces will have no effective role there either,” he said.
Enforcing peace would require a Chapter VII mandate, which a Russian and Chinese veto would block. “No country is willing to send its soldiers to fight or sacrifice their lives on behalf of the Lebanese army,” he added.
Consent is the other wall. Political analyst Ali Sbeiti says Israel refuses to give Paris any role, given their disputes over regional files and the Gaza war. Qazah agrees that no foreign force can deploy on the border without the approval of both Lebanon, Israel, and a UN resolution.
The one exception, he said, “is a mission limited to training and logistical support for the Lebanese army, away from the border. The only feasible European mission, in other words, is the one that does least of what UNIFIL did”.
UNIFIL's real successor is being negotiated elsewhere
Writer and political analyst Nader Hijaz points to the "third party" under discussion in talks between Beirut and Israel, a body that would verify implementation of the framework agreement.
“That is, in practice, the field replacement for UNIFIL,” he said. Whether it would merely monitor or hold broad powers, such as searching homes and seizing weapons, is unresolved, and a deal has been deferred until after Israel's elections.
On one point, Hijaz is categorical. “Washington will never accept any force that is not under direct American command,” he told The New Arab. The US and Israel, he said, are open to a specific Italian role but not a French one.
Sbeiti adds that the Europeans lack the nerve to act in the south without explicit American blessing. The successor, in short, is being decided in a US-brokered process, on a timetable set by Israeli politics.
Beirut and Hezbollah's calculations
The Lebanese state and army would welcome almost any arrangement that averts a vacuum, and President Joseph Aoun immediately expressed backing for the EU’s announcement this week of a security support mission.
Hijaz notes that military cooperation with France and Italy is already established, and Sbeiti describes an official welcome for any friendly presence, even as a mere eyewitness.
Hezbollah, however, is harder to read. Its secretary-general, Naim Qassem, has called the US-sponsored framework agreement a red line and a surrender of sovereignty, holding up instead the US-Iranian memorandum signed in Islamabad.
Qazah expects the party to reject any foreign force, since it does not want a witness to its breaches, “just as Israel does not want neutral forces bearing witness to its violations”.
Sbeiti, however, disagrees. “Hezbollah can no longer block a plan the state backs, and has no fundamental problem with France, given shared understandings between Paris, the party and Tehran,” he told The New Arab. “The main knot remains with the American and Israeli sides,” he noted.
Hijjaz, meanwhile, says the party's stance will hinge on whether a force operates south of the Litani or beyond it, and whether it pursues the group's weapons. Either way, the decisive veto lies outside Lebanon.
What south Lebanon loses
The mission is exiting in its worst hour. It has recorded a sharp escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, with hundreds of projectiles on some days. It still fields more than 7,400 troops from 46 countries, its backbone European, and seven peacekeepers have been killed in hostile attacks in 2026 alone.
Ceasefires have collapsed in succession, from April's arrangements to the US-sponsored Trilateral Framework in June, and Israeli forces still hold positions inside Lebanon that Beirut says block the army's full deployment.
Washington led the push to end the mission, favouring arrangements outside the Security Council, as in Gaza. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned of a vacuum, arguing the UN offers a neutrality no other actor can match, and more than two-thirds of parliament petitioned for UNIFIL to be strengthened, not withdrawn.
Since 1978, and especially after its reinforcement following the 2006 war, UNIFIL has been an economic engine for the border villages.
At its peak, Qazah said, more than 15,000 soldiers in a narrow area drove spending, services, and procurement. Their departure will cut “a vital economic artery” in a region already devastated by Israeli strikes.
Three roads after December
The first is direct military coordination between the Lebanese and Israeli armies, favoured by Washington and Israel and signalled by US envoys' talk of opening crossings once the weapons file is closed. Lebanon rejects it as security normalisation.
The second is a multinational force with European troops under American command, which depends on a wider regional deal and US-Iranian understandings and Israel's elections.
The third is self-reliance: Qazah argues the government can declare the border villages a military zone under National Defence Law No. 102 of 1938, placing all security forces under army command and allowing curfews, closures and searches.
A European coalition will remain ink on paper without a UN mandate, the consent of both parties and an American guarantee against escalation. None of these is in Beirut's gift. The world is not handing the south to a new guardian; it is handing it back to the Lebanese state. Lebanon can assert its sovereignty through its own army or risk a vacuum that turns the border strip into an open front once more.
For Qazah, the choice is already clear. Imposing security, he said, is the exclusive responsibility of Lebanon's political leadership, which must give the army firm orders “to impose security by military force, not by begging for it or imposing it by consensus”.
Alaa Sarhal is a Lebanese journalist
This article is published in collaboration with Egab
Edited by Charlie Hoyle