Israel has no intention of staying permanently in southern Lebanon, but any withdrawal will depend on whether the Lebanese army can keep Hezbollah from returning to the border, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said.
In an exclusive interview on MBN’s The Diplomat, Danon warned that Israeli forces would act unilaterally if the Lebanese state fails to prevent Hezbollah from returning. Speaking with MBN Washington Bureau Chief Joe Kawly, the ambassador made clear that while Israel has no long-term claims to Lebanese land, its exit depends on Beirut’s ability to prove it can secure the area.
“We don’t want to stay in southern Lebanon,” Danon told The Diplomat. “We have no desire. We have no claim to the land. This land belongs to Lebanon. Not to Hezbollah, not to us. It belongs to the Lebanese people. But for us to live safely, we have to push away Hezbollah.”
The warning comes just days after Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered security framework on Friday, June 26, 2026, aimed at ending a border war that began on March 2. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the framework was designed to restore Lebanese sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and allow Israel to return to its borders once threats from Lebanon are removed.
Behind the Eleventh-Hour Drama
The path to Friday’s signing ceremony at the State Department was precarious. During the interview, Kawly cited exclusive information obtained by MBN from a Lebanese diplomatic source about the role Saudi and Qatari pressure played in resolving last-minute friction around the talks.
The friction came after several days of public and private tension around the negotiations. Earlier in the week, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, had described the talks as a “train wreck,” criticizing what Israeli officials saw as an effort to link the Lebanon file to broader U.S.-Iran understandings.
Axios later reported that the talks stalled Thursday over the terms and locations of Israeli withdrawals before senior U.S. officials pushed to close the gaps. A Lebanese diplomatic source told MBN that Saudi and Qatari pressure also played a role in resolving the dispute, followed by a call from Rubio to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Danon rejected the suggestion that Netanyahu had been pressured.
“I know Netanyahu very well,” Danon countered. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is not being pressured. He takes the right decisions for Israel. And I can tell you, it’s not only now. For a very long time, he wanted to see a movement toward Lebanon.”
Danon maintained that Netanyahu’s ultimate approval came after close consultation with military professionals rather than outside political figures. However, the U.N. ambassador did acknowledge intense regional maneuvering, criticizing attempts by outside international powers to insert themselves into the border monitoring mechanism.
“There were talks in other places about different mechanisms that would involve many other countries, not from the region, to be involved in what’s happening on the ground,” Danon said. “So we prefer to speak directly all together with the U.S., with Lebanon, rather than to have — I don’t want to mention all the names of those countries, but you can Google it and see countries that have no connection to the region. And all of a sudden they should be the one to monitor what’s happening on the ground. That’s not a recipe for success.”
Direct Messaging and U.S. Monitoring
The agreement is already facing an immediate test on the ground. On Sunday, Israeli forces destroyed what Israel said was a 200-meter-long Hezbollah tunnel in the border town of Majdal Zoun. Israel said the United States was informed ahead of the attack.
Hezbollah said the Israeli attacks were a violation of the ceasefire and said it was monitoring what it described as Israeli violations, while reserving the right to defend Lebanon and its people.
Because Lebanon refuses direct military contact with Israel, the two countries rely on Washington to pass messages. Danon said that over the last few months, Israel and the United States set up a system to send warnings about security threats to the Lebanese side through American intermediaries. He noted that Israel has experience with this setup from past crises, but its long-term goal is direct military-to-military lines like those it has with Egypt and Jordan.
Israel also does not want the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which has patrolled the southern border since 1978, to remain the main security force in the area.
“We don’t want the UNIFIL force to stay in the region,” Danon said. “We want to work directly with the Lebanese military. They should be the one protecting the border of Lebanon.”
The United States is expected to play a central role in monitoring implementation. Reuters reported that Washington will facilitate a Military Coordination Group, while Axios reported that U.S. military officers will work with the Lebanese army on the initial pilot areas to verify that Hezbollah is not present there.
To finalize the logistics, U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper arrived in Beirut on Monday. Cooper met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Rodolph Haykal to discuss developments in Lebanon and the implementation of the agreement’s security arrangements.
The core mechanism of the agreement ties a phased Israeli withdrawal from the security zone currently held by its forces to the verified disarmament of Hezbollah and other nonstate armed groups. Under the framework, the Lebanese Armed Forces are slated to take control of designated “pilot zones” while compliance is tracked on the ground. The pilot zones, according to Israeli maps cited by Reuters, include areas around the southern Lebanese villages of Froun, Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh and Ghandouriyeh.
When pressed on whether this open-ended mandate means an indefinite Israeli military footprint if the process stalls, Danon drew a parallel to Israeli operations in the West Bank.
“We see it actually as a similar situation with the Palestinian Authority,” Danon said. “We have agreements with them. They are dealing with terrorist activities in Judea and Samaria. But if there is a scenario where we know that they don’t want to fight Hamas, or they don’t have the capability to go and arrest Hamas terrorists, we do it ourselves. But we always prefer that it will be the PA that takes action against the radicals. Same with Lebanon.”
Clause 7 of the agreement says nothing in the framework prevents either government from exercising its inherent right to self-defense under the U.N. Charter. Danon framed that provision as preserving Israel’s ability to act if the Lebanese army cannot stop Hezbollah from returning.
“If they are not doing it, or they are not capable of doing that, we will not sit idly by and wait for Hezbollah to assume the position and attack us,” Danon warned. “We will take actions.”
Political Standoff in Beirut
While diplomatic and military mechanisms move forward, the agreement has magnified severe political fractures inside Lebanon. President Aoun welcomed the framework as a vital initial step toward restoring full state authority up to the international border, thanking U.S. President Donald Trump for his involvement.
Hezbollah and its allies have fiercely opposed the framework. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a vital ally of Hezbollah, publicly slammed the U.S.-mediated framework, branding it a series of “diktats” that infringe on Lebanese rights. Berri warned that forcing the national army to confront and disarm Hezbollah is a deliberate provocation meant to trigger an internal civil war. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem mirrored this rhetoric, declaring the agreement “null and void” and an outright surrender, while senior Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati pronounced the accord “effectively dead” on arrival because of its unworkable terms.
Danon dismissed the pushback from pro-Iran factions as a symptom of a shifting regional balance of power, pointing to recent regional military setbacks suffered by Tehran.
“They are trying to dictate. They are trying to influence. They are failing in that. They are frustrated,” Danon said of the Iranian leadership. “There is frustration in Tehran because they lost a lot of assets in the last few months and the feeling that they are losing control over Lebanon today. And I think it’s a good sign.”
The Road to the ‘Good Fence’
For Israel, the framework is being messaged as part of a broader strategy by Prime Minister Netanyahu to realign the political landscape of the Middle East by expanding the alliance of moderate voices against regional proxies. Danon expressed a long-term aspiration that Lebanon might eventually join the Abraham Accords alongside the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, expanding upon the historic peace treaties Israel shares with Egypt and Jordan.
To illustrate this vision, Danon invoked a personal childhood memory of visiting the Israel-Lebanon border with his parents, recalling a time when the frontier was known locally as the “Good Fence” because of regular cross-border movement and contact.
“I remember we used to call it the Good Fence,” Danon said. “Why the Good Fence? Because we had a very good relationship. We had people coming from Lebanon. And I think we can go back to those days of normalization.”
“But you have to make sure the radicals are not taking over,” he added.
