Why an 18-year-old UN resolution is critical to ending the Lebanon-Israel war

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN

(CNN) — With a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire now in force, an 18-year-old United Nations resolution has resurfaced as a blueprint for ending the war.

US President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Israel and Lebanon accepted a proposal that is “designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities” with Hezbollah. The deal went into effect at 4 a.m. local time Wednesday (9 p.m. ET on Tuesday).

The 60-day cessation of hostilities aims to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was adopted to end a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, and had kept relative calm in the area for nearly two decades. That lasted until the day after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel last year, when Hezbollah attacked in solidarity, beginning more than a year of conflict.

The resolution stipulated that Israel must withdraw all its forces from southern Lebanon, and that the only armed groups present in south of the Litani river should be the Lebanese military and UN peacekeeping forces.

The United States, which is mediating between Israel and Lebanon in the current conflict, believes a return to the principles of the resolution is in the interest of both parties, but has insisted on a mechanism to enforce it more strictly. Israel has argued that Hezbollah has breached the resolution multiple times by operating close to its border. Lebanon says Israel regularly breached the agreement over the past two decades by sending fighter jets into its airspace.

Here’s what we know about the resolution and why it is critical to a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

A brief history

Israel launched an invasion into Lebanon in 1982, sending tanks all the way to the capital Beirut, after coming under attack from Palestinian militants in the country.

It then occupied southern Lebanon for almost two decades until the year 2000, when it was driven out by Hezbollah, created – with backing from Iran – to resist the Israeli occupation.

In 2000, the UN established the so-called Blue Line, a “line of withdrawal” for Israeli forces from Lebanon. That boundary now serves as the de facto border between the two countries.

Lebanon has however claimed that Israel did not complete its withdrawal from the country, continuing to occupy the Shebaa Farms, a 15-square-mile (39-square-km) patch of land Israel has held since 1967.

Israel claims the Shebaa Farms area is part of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria and later annexed. The international community – with the notable exception of the United States – considers the Golan Heights to be occupied territory belonging to Syria.

Resolution 1701

Israel invaded Lebanon again in 2006 after Hezbollah killed three soldiers and kidnapped two others – in an effort to compel the release of Lebanese prisoners. The war lasted just over a month and resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, as well as 170 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

On August 11, 2006, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701, which called for “a full cessation of hostilities” by Hezbollah and Israel.

The resolution demanded that Israel withdraw all its forces from southern Lebanon, and for the Lebanese government and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) “to deploy their forces together throughout the south.” No other armed personnel would be permitted in the area.

It also called on the Lebanese government “to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.”

A 10,000-troop UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL is the main body tasked with implementing Resolution 1701 on the ground.

A UN-mediated prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah in 2008 saw the return of the remains of the two Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for five Lebanese prisoners. Israel later released the bodies of some 200 Arabs.

Escalation since October 8

Hezbollah began firing at the Israeli-held Shebaa Farms on October 8, 2023, in what it later said was solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, a day after Gaza-based Hamas launched a major attack on southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage. Israel fired back.

Between October 8, 2023 and the end of June, UNIFIL detected 15,101 cross border trajectories, of which 12,459 were from Israel into Lebanon, and 2,642 Lebanon into Israel,” the UN said on October 1, adding that “while most exchanges of fire have been confined to within a few kilometers of either side of the Blue Line, several strikes have reached as far as 130 km into Lebanon and 30 km into Israel.”

Since then, cross border skirmishes continued but were contained along the Israel-Lebanon frontier, until September this year, when Israel expanded its war aims to including the return home for residents of the north, who were displaced due to cross border attacks from Hezbollah, which said that it would only stop attacks on Israel once a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. That was followed by a massive aerial assault on Lebanon, and the October 1 ground invasion into the country.

Where each party stands on 1701

The US has relayed to Lebanon a proposal that lies within the parameters of UN Resolution 1701 and aims to achieve a 60-day cessation of hostilities, a Lebanese official has told CNN before the deal went into effect.

It focuses on stricter mechanisms to implement Resolution 1701 in the south of the country and on the role of the Lebanese army in doing so, the official said, adding that it also deals with smuggling routes through the country’s international borders.

The proposal also requires Israeli ground forces, operating in southern Lebanon since October, to withdraw.

But some officials in Israel have said that simply returning to 1701 is not enough, insisting that Israel must retain the right to strike Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after a ceasefire deal should violations occur.

Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right Israeli minister of finance, has said that “full operational freedom” for the Israeli military in southern Lebanon is “a non-negotiable condition.”

“We are changing the security paradigm and will not return to decades of concepts of containment and threats without response. This will not happen again,” he said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has dismissed reports of demands to give the Israeli military operational freedom in south Lebanon as “speculation,” adding that he hasn’t seen such a clause in the proposal.

Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who leads the Hezbollah-allied Amal party and is the interlocutor in talks with Hezbollah, has said that the proposal he received from the US does not include mention of Israeli military operational freedom in Lebanon, adding that the US knows that such a demand would be “unacceptable.”

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has said that “there has been an exchange of different ideas for how to see what we believe is in everyone’s interest, which is the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

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CNN’s Abbas Al Lawati contributed reporting.