The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) agreed on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, that Lebanon must not be left facing a “security void” when the United Nations peacekeeping force in the south of the country pulls out at the end of the year, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said after the group's meeting in Paris — but he acknowledged there had been no breakthrough on what should replace the force.

Source: AFP

The ministers also backed “the need to move quickly toward a new security architecture” for Lebanon once the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) expires at the end of the year, Barrot said. In their final communiqué, the ministers declared: “We underscored the need for a robust, credible, and long-lasting security architecture in Lebanon in support of the Lebanese Armed Forces.”

A 48-year-old mission is ending

UNIFIL has patrolled the border area between Lebanon and Israel since 1978. It now counts some 7,500 personnel from nearly 50 countries. Under pressure from the United States, the UN Security Council voted last year to end UNIFIL's mandate on December 31, 2026, and the mission is then to draw down and withdraw during 2027.

The Paris agreement follows the warning this site reported on November 4, when the UN's peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the end of UNIFIL — with no follow-on arrangement agreed — risked leaving a security vacuum in southern Lebanon, and Lebanese leaders told him they feared border incidents could turn into clashes with no one left to stop them. Read the earlier report: UN warns of security vacuum as UNIFIL's mandate ends

Military mission, or a civilian one?

What comes next is where the allies still differ. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that he had discussed the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the Paris meeting and suggested that what replaces UNIFIL “doesn't have to be a military mission, it could be a civilian mission.” Rubio said the United States is working on a mechanism to monitor implementation of agreements between Lebanon and Israel in pilot areas, and that any new arrangement would require approval from both Lebanon and Israel.

France and Italy have taken a different line: in June 2026 the two countries announced they wanted a multinational coalition to succeed UNIFIL, in coordination with the European Union and the United Nations, to strengthen Lebanon's sovereignty and its armed forces — although Italy is reported to be resisting parts of the French-led plan. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told AFP in October that the bloc favoured a UN peacekeeping mandate in south Lebanon, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said peacekeepers will still be needed after the mandate expires, a position likely to face opposition from the United States and Israel.

Why the south is so sensitive

Southern Lebanon is the borderland where Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group and political movement, has long held sway. During the broader Middle East war, Hezbollah attacked Israel, which responded with massive airstrikes and a ground invasion that Lebanon says killed more than 4,300 people. Israel now maintains troops in a self-declared “security zone” running around 10 kilometres (six miles) inside Lebanon along the border. Diplomats fear that if the peacekeepers leave with nothing in their place, small border incidents could escalate with no buffer and no independent witnesses on the ground.

The G7 meeting in Paris on Monday and Tuesday brought together Rubio and his counterparts from Germany (Johann Wadephul), Britain (Ed Miliband), Canada (Anita Anand), France (Barrot), Italy (Antonio Tajani) and Japan (Toshimitsu Motegi), with the Middle East, the Iran war and the Ukraine war at the top of the agenda. Lebanon was France's most urgent diplomatic priority at the meeting, and Paris has been seeking to establish an international presence mechanism within weeks of UNIFIL's mandate ending.

What happens next

The deadline is now less than eight weeks away. The open questions are whether Washington's civilian-verification idea gains ground, whether France and Italy can reconcile their positions on a successor force, and whether both Lebanon and Israel — whose agreement any arrangement needs — accept whatever mechanism is proposed. For now, the G7 has agreed on the problem, not the answer: no security void, but no agreed replacement either.