Introduced late last week, the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is “holding” in the sense that it’s still being called a ceasefire, but with Israel’s weekend introduction of a Gaza-style “Yellow Line” it seems increasingly apparent this ceasefire will neither cease fire nor stop the Israeli destruction of southern Lebanon.
In Gaza, Israel established “Yellow Lines” that effectively cut the strip in half, with the external half being wholly under IDF military control, and has prevented displaced Palestinians from crossing that line to try to return home. They have similarly treated those areas within the yellow line area as a “free-fire zone” irrespective of whether this is nominally a ceasefire in place. This is a big part of why Gaza “ceasefires” have done little to actually end the enormous level of Israeli military violence therein.
The Lebanon Yellow Line doesn’t cut the country wholly in half, but it does encompass dozens of towns and villages, and interestingly, it actually crosses the Litani River in central Lebanon, which during the invasion Israeli officials presented as their boundary to which they were intending to occupy.
IDF map shows “yellow line” area of southern Lebanon | Image from X
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presented it as a “10-km deep security buffer zone,” though Defense Minister Israel Katz was more clear that Israeli troops have been ordered to “use full force” while operating within the yellow line south, including destroying any homes “believed to have been used by Hezbollah.”
Already, Israel is presenting its own violations of the ceasefire as enforcement of the Yellow Line that they arbitrarily established, and is accusing people approaching that line of “violating” the understandings of the ceasefire, which they responded to by opening fire on them.
Throughout the first ceasefire weekend, Israel has not only attacked and killed people, but continued the systematic demolition of homes across southern Lebanon, most notably in the town of Bint Jbeil, which was a site of heavy fighting before the ceasefire.
Defense Minister Katz had already established that one of the military goals of Israel’s March 3 invasion was to totally destroy Lebanese towns and villages along the border, suggesting that the continued occupation of the Yellow Line region is at least in part about giving the IDF more time to conduct mass demolition of homes in the region, and to ensure that the civilian population can’t return home before that is accomplished.
