What Is the U.N. Resolution That Tried and Failed to Keep the Peace in Lebanon?

A 2006 resolution by the United Nations Security Council ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war but failed to keep the peace. Now, diplomats are fighting an uphill battle to revive the measure and pull the Middle East back from the brink of all-out war.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which sought to create a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon, has not prevented fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group.

The cost of 1701’s failure is easy to see: Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in northern Israel to escape Hezbollah rocket fire. And Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah has set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing more than one million people and killing more than 2,400 over the past year, most of them in the past few weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

On Oct. 1, Israel invaded Lebanon yet again, in an attempt to create the secure buffer zone that 1701 had promised to ensure.

“If the State of Lebanon and the world cannot keep Hezbollah away from our border, we have no choice but to do so ourselves,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, said on Oct. 1, shortly after announcing the ground invasion.

Here’s what you need to understand about the U.N. resolution, why it failed and the difficult road ahead to ending the current conflict in Lebanon.

Here’s what you need to know:

• What is Resolution 1701?
• What went wrong?
• What happens next?

United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, was intended to demilitarize southern Lebanon and protect Israel from cross-border attacks by Hezbollah.

It called on Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon and for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River. The area between the Litani and the border, where much of the fighting had taken place, was to become a buffer zone, controlled by the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeeping forces.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701 in August 2006. It called for “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons” other than those belonging to Lebanon’s government and the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.

What went wrong?

The resolution was never fully put in effect. UNIFIL was not empowered to use force against Hezbollah. And the Lebanese Army was unwilling or unable to impose its will on Hezbollah, which is also a political party with significant power in the Lebanese government.

For years, U.N. and Lebanese Army forces largely stood by and watched as Hezbollah built up a large and deadly presence close to Israel’s border, one that Israel’s military says it is determined to clear out.

That allowed Hezbollah to assemble fighters and munitions within striking range of northern Israel — and enabled it to launch thousands of rocket attacks into Israel over the past year in solidarity with Hamas since that group led the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel and set off a retaliatory war in Gaza.

More than 60,000 people have fled their homes in northern Israel to escape the rockets.

Hezbollah has said its presence in the demilitarized zone is justified because Israel did not withdraw from the disputed land known as the Shebaa Farms. Israel claims the area was part of the Golan Heights that it took from Syria in 1967, a position backed by a U.N. assessment.

What happens next?

Amos Hochstein, President Biden’s de facto envoy on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, said in Beirut this week that 1701 was the only solution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. He said additional measures were needed to ensure it was carried out “fairly, accurately and transparently.”

The U.N. resolution “was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that no one did anything to implement it. The lack of implementation over those years contributed to the conflict that we are in today,” Mr. Hochstein said on Monday after meeting with Lebanon’s Parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, a key interlocutor between the United States and Hezbollah.

Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that the United States and its allies — including Gulf Arab states aligned with Israel against Iran and Hezbollah — should make clear that they would strongly support Lebanon’s government if it deployed meaningful army forces into the U.N. buffer zone.

But there is no easy path to get Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a retooled version of 1701 or to withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has vowed to keep fighting until Israel withdraws from Gaza. Resolution 1701 also called for “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon,” not only in the country’s south. That implies demilitarizing Hezbollah entirely — an even mightier task.

Israel, for its part, seems determined to dismantle Hezbollah and create the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that 1701 promised but never delivered.

“In the absence of any diplomatic resolution to stop that rocket fire, we will do the job of pushing Hezbollah back behind the Litani River for the simple objective of getting our people back home,” added David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesman, this week.

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.