Time to End UNIFIL

Every United Nations peacekeeping force should work toward its own dissolution. Otherwise, it is no peacekeeping force; it is a welfare program for participating nations funded by the United States’s taxpayers and the rest of the world.

High on the list of these offenders is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Established 47 years ago to keep the peace between Israel and Lebanon, UNIFIL can no longer claim to be an “interim” force — it currently boasts 13,000 personnel and a $538 million budget. Worse, UNIFIL has utterly failed to uphold its own mission.

Since 2006, following the end of a war sparked by Hezbollah, UNIFIL has been tasked by the U.N. Security Council to help Lebanon’s Armed Forces keep Hezbollah down and out of southern Lebanon and to maintain security of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Yet, UNIFIL did nothing to rein in Hezbollah after October 2023, when it launched salvo after salvo of rockets and missiles into Israel. A February 2025 incident at Beirut’s airport illustrated its prowess: Hezbollah supporters mobbed the UNIFIL’s deputy commander’s convoy, torching his vehicles and injuring the commander.

UNIFIL has proven more often a liability than an asset. Its bloated forces in Lebanon’s south prop up Hezbollah’s local economy and are often attacked by Hezbollah, sometimes forcing the Israel Defense Forces to rescue UNIFIL personnel. Worse still, in 2024, Hezbollah operatives captured by Israeli forces confessed to bribing UNIFIL peacekeepers for access to outposts and surveillance equipment.

Despite its significant budget and troops, UNIFIL has failed to disarm Hezbollah or make any progress to uproot its military presence in Lebanon’s south. UNIFIL’s impotence further shields Hezbollah through a ruse: that by funding UNIFIL, the international community is actively working to solve the problem.

UNIFIL does offer some limited value in conducting maritime interdictions of arms headed for Hezbollah, neutralizing landmines and unexploded ordinance, and maintaining the physical integrity of the line that separates Israel from Lebanon. Yet the ideal provider of Lebanon’s security should not be the United Nations. Lebanon’s own sovereign forces, the LAF, should conduct these missions. The U.N. member states that financially support UNIFIL should shift to support and empower the LAF, not perpetuate UNIFIL’s mediocrity.

UNIFIL’s mandate was intended to supplement the work of the Lebanese Armed Forces, and historically, its capacities were only a sliver of the LAF’s. However, since 2019, the LAF’s budget has shrunk from $2 billion in 2019 to only $241 million in 2023 as a result of Lebanon’s economic crash. UNIFIL’s budget is now more than double that of the LAF.

Since the November 2024 ceasefire with Israel, the LAF has done more to assume control over the south of Lebanon than UNIFIL ever did in nearly 20 years. The LAF now controls over 80% of the land south of the Litani River and is routinely seizing Hezbollah’s weapons. The international community is misallocating resources today; UNIFIL comes at the expense of the capacity of the LAF and the bolstered sovereignty of Lebanon.

Fortunately, a good opportunity to nix UNIFIL is coming up. UNIFIL’s mandate requires renewal by the Security Council annually before the end of August. While the U.S. (and other U.N. member states) do not have the luxury of stopping their own funding to peacekeeping missions unilaterally, Washington could simply veto renewal of UNIFIL and end its mission and costs altogether.

The international community and the U.S. would be better served spending that $538 million on the LAF instead — a move that would directly support U.S. national security objectives to protect and defend Israel and work toward peace — and would be in line with the president’s efforts to tie U.S. foreign aid more directly with U.S. interests and values.

Thanks to the Trump administration’s bold leadership in Beirut, Lebanon finally has a government once again — one that has a historic opportunity to limit the role of Hezbollah. There is a narrow window for the Lebanese people — and their armed forces — to take their country back from the clutches of Hezbollah. UNIFIL must get out of the way.