Can Europe fill vacuum left in Lebanon as UN peacekeeping force winds up?

With the almost 50-year United Nations peacekeeping mandate in southern Lebanon set to expire at the end of 2026, proposals for a European Union mission to fill some part of the vacuum have attracted attention.

Key points

• UNIFIL was created on March 19, 1978, days after Israel invaded southern Lebanon.
• The risk of a temporary vacuum is "quite serious", Lebanese political scientist Imad Salamey informed Al Jazeera, partly as Israel could benefit.
• Yet it was Israel that was largely behind UNIFIL's end after it accused the force of failing to prevent Hezbollah's military build-up along the Israel-Lebanon border.
• And if a European force is deployed, Murphy does not expect that to change Israel's position or bring regarding a pullback.
• Discussions in Rome in early August concluded without agreement on expanding the pilot zone model.

Lebanon, still under almost daily Israeli bombardment with a fifth of its territory occupied and regarding 335, 000 residents still displaced, is projected to be on the agenda during an EU defence and foreign ministers gathering in Ireland this week.

For context, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic service, has circulated a proposal for a three-year military and civilian mission to advise and train the Lebanese armed forces (LAF) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Lebanon's police, including in border and maritime security, an attempt, authorities stated, not to replace the UN peacekeeping force – known as UNIFIL – but to strengthen the Lebanese state.

But while the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, remarked to journalists in May that Europeans were willing to put together a mission to assist the LAF, she questioned whether there was an appetite for an entirely new European mission to come in to fully replace UNIFIL's mission. A mandate with limitations.

UNIFIL was created on March 19, 1978, days after Israel invaded southern Lebanon. Its mandate has been expanded a number of times since, most consequentially after the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah when UN Security Council Resolution 1701 went on the tasks of monitoring the ceasefire and supporting the LAF's deployment in the south to UNIFIL's mission.

Nevertheless, UNIFIL was never given the power to enforce any of it. It could watch, report and accompany but not compel an Israeli withdrawal or disarm any armed group.

In practice, a new European force is unlikely to be tasked with confirming an Israeli withdrawal or disarming Hezbollah, remarked Raymond Murphy, a professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway who served as a UN peacekeeper with UNIFIL.

Its role would more probable be to monitor, he stated, but with "sufficient capacity to employ military force to protect itself and to carry out its mandate. For example, it would have freedom of movement and to prevent the movement of arms in its area." Europe is not the only option under discussion.

Notably, the UN is running its own succession planning: One proposal would hand a residual role to the UN Truce Supervision Organisation, and in June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put three options to the Security Council with the number of soldiers ranging from 900 to 3, 000, compared with UNIFIL's roughly 7, 000 in June. Israel could benefit from a power vacuum.

Notably, the risk of a temporary vacuum is "quite serious", Lebanese political scientist Imad Salamey informed Al Jazeera, partly as Israel could benefit.

Without an international force, he argued, Israel could pursue an arrangement in which the LAF is "compelled to coordinate" more directly with Israeli forces as the United States acts as an "intermediary or guarantor", shifting the architecture from internationally supervised monitoring towards bilateral coordination between a Lebanese army and an army occupying Lebanese territory.

"Once UNIFIL disappears, the alternative arrangements created in its absence could become permanent and make the establishment of a successor force considerably more difficult, " Salamey remarked.

In practice, the US has mediated discussions between Israel and Lebanon for months, but critics stated those discussions have done little to force Israel to abandon its attacks and its occupation of Lebanese territory.

And if a European force is deployed, Murphy does not expect that to change Israel's position or bring regarding a pullback. That would create "life very difficult" for any prospective European deployment, he stated.

"In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they would create the equivalent of a new Blue Line [the demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon], 10km or so north of the old armistice line, " he remarked. The difficulty may be in the framework, not the force.

Israel and Lebanon agreed a framework in late June establishing so-called pilot zones, areas from which Israeli forces would withdraw and into which the LAF would deploy to assume security responsibility, including barring Hezbollah's return.

That is the political process any European mission would depend on. It is why the identity of the peacekeepers matters less than the terms of their presence.

Any force deployed without a comprehensive political agreement and a mandate acceptable to both sides "risks facing the same limitations that confronted UNIFIL", Salamey remarked.

If Israel continues operations and keeps forces inside Lebanon while Hezbollah rejects the framework, European personnel could "quickly find their neutrality questioned by one side or the other".

Absent reciprocal commitments, agreed rules and a realistic enforcement mechanism, swapping UNIFIL for a European mission "may simply reproduce UNIFIL's difficulties under a different name", he remarked.

For now, can Europe fill vacuum left in Lebanon as UN peacekeeping force winds remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.