United Nations Resolution 1701

United Nations Resolution 1701, resolution passed by the United Nations (UN) Security Council on August 11, 2006, during the 34-day Lebanon War in 2006. The resolution, whose adoption by the warring parties led to the end of hostilities, called for an immediate ceasefire, the deployment of Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers to southern Lebanon, and the withdrawal from the same area of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party that first formed in the 1980s to resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that began in 1982. The provisions of the resolution were not fully carried out after the cessation of hostilities, leading to renewed interest in enforcing those provisions in 2024 when Israeli forces again invaded Lebanon.

History of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel

The background underlying the resolution long predates the 2006 war and reflects decades of tensions between Lebanon and Israel. In March 1978, early on in the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), Israel sent troops into southern Lebanon as far as the Litani River, about 20 miles (30 km) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, to respond to cross-border raids by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), one of the primary belligerents in the civil war. Within days the UN Security Council passed Resolution 425, calling for Israel to end its military activity and withdraw its forces from Lebanon, and established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), to confirm the withdrawal and assist the Lebanese government in ensuring its authority in southern Lebanon. The IDF withdrew in June, but, as the civil war continued for many years afterward, the “interim force” remained in southern Lebanon far longer than its original six-month mandate.

As the civil war intensified, the IDF again invaded Lebanon in 1982, and, despite a partial withdrawal by mid-1985, its forces continued to occupy southern Lebanon for several years after the war. Hezbollah, one of the few militias of the civil war era that were not forced to disarm, engaged in a sustained guerrilla campaign against the IDF until the latter’s forces withdrew in 2000. The withdrawal was overseen by UNIFIL, which demarcated a so-called “Blue Line” to verify the IDF’s withdrawal along the disputed Israel-Lebanon border, whose exact limits had not been formally established. In June the United Nations, assisted by UNIFIL, confirmed the IDF’s withdrawal. Hezbollah’s presence in southern Lebanon subsequently grew, and in October it abducted three IDF soldiers near the border in order to negotiate the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners whom the IDF had detained during its occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2004 Hezbollah exchanged the remains of those soldiers, along with an abducted Israeli businessman, for Israel’s release of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.

The 2006 Lebanon War and the passage of Resolution 1701

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah attempted to repeat the prisoner exchange by abducting two Israeli soldiers (and in taking such action it killed eight others). But Israeli leaders were resolved to disabuse the militant group of the notion that it could attack soldiers with impunity and launched a major operation, including a ground offensive on July 22 intended to push Hezbollah away from the Israeli border and north of the Litani River. The war proved highly destructive and came at a high cost of life, prompting the intervention of the UN Security Council in August.

Resolution 1701 was adopted unanimously by the Security Council’s permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and its nonpermanent members (Argentina, Congo, Denmark, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Peru, Qatar, Slovakia, and Tanzania). Among the key provisions of the resolution were:

• A full cessation of hostilities by both Hezbollah and Israel
• The withdrawal of the IDF and Hezbollah, as well as their weapons and assets, from the area between the Blue Line and the Litani River
• The disarmament of Hezbollah
• The deployment of a strengthened UNIFIL peacekeeping force to monitor the resolution’s implementation and assist the Lebanese government in extending its authority throughout southern Lebanon

By August 14 Israel, Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government had each accepted the conditions of the resolution, bringing the war to an end after 34 days.

Implementation and reemergence of conflict in 2023–24

Although the hostilities ended and the IDF withdrew from Lebanon, Hezbollah did not withdraw to north of the Litani River. It maintained a presence near the border, and in 2022 it began agitating Lebanon’s border disputes with Israel. Nor did Hezbollah disarm: in fact, it built up its military assets over the following decades, and at its peak in 2024 it was the world’s most heavily armed nonstate actor, with an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 rockets and ballistic missiles. Moreover, it had grown into a major pivot in the Axis of Resistance, arming, training, and coordinating among the militant groups involved in the Iran-backed network. When Israel launched the Israel-Hamas War in response to the October 7, 2023, attacks—which were made possible with training from Hezbollah—Hezbollah and other members of the Axis of Resistance began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas.

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After nearly a year of the IDF focusing its attention to the Gaza Strip and containing the conflict with Hezbollah to occasional targeted air strikes, the IDF intensified its strikes against Hezbollah in September 2024. As Israeli ground troops invaded southern Lebanon in October for the first time since 2006, Israeli leaders said that the IDF aimed to degrade Hezbollah’s infrastructure and arsenal and called on residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate to north of Al-Awwali (Awali) River, more than 35 miles (60 km) north of the Israel-Lebanon border. Mediation efforts looked into ways to enforce UN Resolution 1701—and especially the provision of Hezbollah withdrawing to north of the Litani River—as the basis of a potential ceasefire.