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BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's president on Saturday asked the country's foreign minister to work on filing a complaint against Israel for building a wall on Lebanese territory.
President Joseph Aoun's office said in a statement that it had asked Lebanon's foreign minister to include in the complaint a statement from the U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, which is stationed along the border with Israel.
UNIFIL said in a statement on Friday that the Israeli army had erected a wall southwest of the Lebanese village of Yaroun.
UNIFIL said the wall crossed the border line, making more than 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) of Lebanese territory “inaccessible to the Lebanese people.”
UNIFIL said it reported its findings to the Israeli military and asked them to tear down the wall.
He stressed that the wall's construction violates a UN Security Council resolution that ended the 14-month war between Israel and the political-military group Hezbollah through a US-brokered ceasefire reached last November. UNIFIL added that the wall violates “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon.”
The Israeli military says the wall, whose construction began in 2022, is part of a broader fortification plan along the border.
He pointed out that since the start of the war, the Israeli army has been promoting a number of measures, including strengthening the physical barrier along the northern border.
The Israeli military has stressed that the wall does not cross the Blue Line, the UN-drawn border between Lebanon and Israel, which UNIFIL monitors and patrols.
The war between Israel and Hezbollah began when the political militant group began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas's deadly incursion into southern Israel sparked a war in the Gaza Strip.
Israel responded with bombings and airstrikes in Lebanon, and both sides became embroiled in an escalating conflict that escalated into a full-scale war by the end of September 2024.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor using a generative artificial intelligence tool.
