UN Security Council Team Meets Aoun, Inspects South as Israeli Tensions Mount

Updated by Eric Kikomeko at 1454 EAT on Friday 5 December 2025

UN Security Council Team Meets Aoun, Inspects South as Israeli Tensions Mount

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun met Friday with a visiting United Nations Security Council (UNSC) delegation to discuss rising tensions with Israel and ongoing international efforts to curb Hezbollah’s armed presence. The meeting came one day after a series of Israeli air raids struck southern Lebanon, according to the National News Agency (NNA).

During the talks, Aoun urged the delegation to press Israel to adhere to the November 2024 ceasefire, which he said has been violated almost daily, and to withdraw from remaining areas it continues to occupy in the south.

“We look forward to pressure from your side,” Aoun said, according to remarks carried by the NNA.

The president noted earlier that the UN delegation — which is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Lebanese Army Commander Rodolphe Haykal — would tour southern Lebanon to assess the situation firsthand. The visit, he said, would allow the envoys to “see the real picture of what is happening there,” as the army moves ahead with a plan to dismantle Hezbollah’s weaponry.

The UN visit comes amid tentative signs of deeper engagement between Lebanon and Israel, which have technically remained in a state of war since 1948.

On Wednesday, civilian representatives from both countries held their first direct talks in decades — a development the United States hailed as a step toward “security, stability, and a durable peace.”

Salam described the meetings as “positive” but cautioned against overstating their significance, noting that they were not part of any normalisation track and focused solely on implementing the 2024 truce.

On Thursday, Israel’s military conducted strikes in four villages in southern Lebanon — the latest in a series of attacks carried out despite the truce. Israel said the targets were Hezbollah-linked sites. The raids have resulted in civilian casualties and damage to homes and infrastructure, according to local authorities.

Al Jazeera’s Beirut correspondent, Zeina Khodr, said the strikes indicated that “negotiations will be held under fire, until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.”

Aoun’s information minister, Paul Morcos, said the government views the negotiations with Israel — scheduled to resume on December 19 — as the only viable path forward. “There is no other option but negotiation. This is the reality, and this is what history has taught us about wars,” Aoun, a former army chief, told a cabinet meeting, according to Morcos.

Aoun underscored “the need for the language of negotiation — not the language of war — to prevail,” while affirming that Lebanon would make no concessions regarding its sovereignty, Morcos added.

The November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon requires both sides to halt hostilities, with Lebanon responsible for preventing armed groups from launching attacks across the border and Israel obligated to cease offensive military operations.

However, Israeli forces continue to hold at least five positions inside Lebanese territory and have not withdrawn despite the terms of the agreement. They have also carried out near-daily strikes across Lebanon that have killed more than 300 people — including at least 127 civilians — according to the UN.

Israel says its operations target Hezbollah personnel and infrastructure in an effort to prevent the group from rebuilding its military capabilities.

Lebanon’s government has pledged to move toward disarming Hezbollah, but the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, has rejected the prospect as long as Israel continues its attacks and maintains positions on Lebanese soil.

Qassem said in recent days that Hezbollah reserves the right to respond to the assassination of its senior military commander in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month. He described the killing of Haytham Ali Tabatabai as “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime,” adding that the group “has the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.”

Credit to Aljazeera

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