Israel has occupied an additional 4,000 square metres of southern Lebanese territory by constructing a section of wall north of the UN-delineated Blue Line, the UN peacekeeping mission said on Friday.
The breach comes nearly a year after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah ended months of cross-border fighting.
The UN's peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Unifil, said its observers surveyed last month “a concrete T-wall erected by the [Israeli military] south-west of Yaroun", a village in Nabatieh governorate.
Israel also occupies five other points inside Lebanese territory, which the Israeli military says it is controlling for strategic reasons following the end of last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Under the terms of a November 2024 ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to halt attacks on Israel and Israel was to withdraw from Lebanese territory.
Unifil said it had informed the Israeli military of its findings and requested that Israel remove the structure, but the mission did not clarify whether Israel had responded.
“The survey confirmed that the wall crossed the Blue Line, rendering more than 4,000 square metres of Lebanese territory inaccessible to the Lebanese people,” Unifil said.
The peacekeeping force said Israel had additionally crossed the Blue Line into south-eastern Yaroun in the process of constructing another section of wall, but it did not specify how far the wall crossed into Lebanese territory.
“The wall is part of a broader plan whose construction began in 2022,” the Israeli military told AFP. “Since the start of the war, and as part of lessons learnt from it, the [military] has been advancing a series of measures, including reinforcing the physical barrier along the northern border.”
“It should be emphasised that the wall does not cross the Blue Line,” it added.
However, images circulating online appear to show a fortified wall extending northwards beyond the Blue Line, demarcated by the UN after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, near the Israeli town of Avivim.
Unifil said the new construction, along with Israel’s continued military presence at several posts inside Lebanon, violates Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN force says the Israeli military has continued to fortify the five positions held by its troops inside Lebanese territory over the past year since the ceasefire.
Israel says it will not pull back unless Hezbollah is disarmed.
Earlier this week Lebanese media reported that Israel was building a section of wall encroaching into Lebanese territory between the villages of Aitaroun and Maroun Al Rass, a few kilometres away from Yaroun.
Unifil representative Dany Gaafary told The National at the time that, while Israel was building a wall in that area, it was clearly within Israeli territory.
