Israel-Lebanon Border

The Israel-Lebanon border runs roughly 120 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast at Rosh HaNikra/Ras al-Naqoura eastward to the slopes of Mount Hermon. Its modern alignment traces back to the 1923 Paulet-Newcombe Agreement between Britain and France, which fixed the boundary between Mandatory Palestine and the French Mandate for Lebanon and Syria. After Israel's establishment, the 1949 Israeli-Lebanese Armistice Agreement reaffirmed this line as the de facto frontier.

Following Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the UN cartographic team delineated the Blue Line as a technical line of withdrawal to confirm Israeli compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426 (1978). The Blue Line is not a formal international border; Lebanon and Israel both register reservations at various points.

Key unresolved areas include:

• Shebaa Farms – a roughly 25 km² area at the junction with the Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria in 1967; Lebanon claims it as Lebanese, while the UN has treated it as Syrian territory pending Syrian-Lebanese demarcation.
• Ghajar – a village straddling the Blue Line, with its northern half technically inside Lebanon but under Israeli control.
• Maritime boundary – disputed until the October 2022 US-mediated maritime delimitation agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which resolved competing claims over gas-bearing waters including the Karish and Qana fields.

UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon established in 1978 and expanded under Resolution 1701 (2006) after the Second Lebanon War, monitors the Blue Line and the area south of the Litani River. The border has remained volatile: the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and the cross-border exchanges of fire beginning 8 October 2023 following the Hamas attack on Israel, both centered on this frontier. A US- and France-brokered ceasefire took effect in November 2024.