Israel's military has occupied up to 10 kilometers inside southern Lebanon as it works to dismantle what it describes as an extensive Hezbollah tunnel system running beneath the border zone, according to AP.

The ground phase began on the night of September 30, 2024, when IDF units — including the 98th Division — crossed into southern Lebanon in a coordinated maneuver, per a 2025 IDF case study on the operation. Since then, forces have moved steadily into a belt of territory that straddles one of the most heavily fortified non-state defensive networks in modern history. Israeli soldiers have located and displayed tunnel entrances during the operation, AP reported in October 2024. The IDF says it has uncovered approximately three kilometers of underground passages so far, some with booby-trapped shaft entrances.

The tunnels were not built for resupply or communications alone. According to IDF documentation, Hezbollah constructed the network with the explicit goal of enabling surprise incursions — abductions of Israeli civilians and soldiers among them — a posture that mirrors the cross-border raid doctrine Hamas used in the October 7, 2023 attack. Israel has also struck an underground tunnel connecting Lebanon to Syria, along with infrastructure near the key border crossing, extending the interdiction effort beyond the immediate combat zone.

The Infrastructure Problem

The depth of the physical infrastructure Hezbollah built in the south is the central complicating factor for any post-conflict arrangement. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River and prohibited unauthorized armed forces in the south. The tunnel network — built well after 1701 passed — constitutes a systematic violation of that framework. Israel has cited this record explicitly as justification for the current operation, and the argument carries legal and diplomatic weight even among governments broadly critical of Israeli conduct in Lebanon.

Holding 10 kilometers of Lebanese territory while simultaneously demanding the tunnels be cleared creates an obvious structural tension. Lebanon's central government lacks the capacity to enforce 1701 on Hezbollah's military wing; UNIFIL, the UN force stationed in the south, has neither the mandate nor the firepower to do so. That gap is what allowed the tunnel infrastructure to be built in the first place, and closing it will require a political arrangement that does not yet exist.

Continued Exchanges and the Kiryat Shmona Question

Active fire exchanges have not ceased during the ground operation. The IDF identified and struck a Hezbollah launch site in southern Lebanon following rocket fire toward Kiryat Shmona, the northern Israeli city that has been a consistent target throughout the conflict. Kiryat Shmona sits roughly eight kilometers from the Lebanese border; its civilian population has been displaced for extended periods since October 2023. The city functions, in effect, as the barometer for whether any ceasefire or buffer arrangement is genuinely holding.

Rocket launches from within the contested zone — regardless of whether they come from Hezbollah's formal military apparatus or affiliated factions — directly undermine the case for Israeli withdrawal. That dynamic gives hardliners on both sides a structural incentive to keep the exchanges going: each launch resets the clock on diplomatic pressure for a pullback.

The broader negotiating environment, as of late June 2026, has not produced a durable arrangement. The 10-kilometer occupation line is not a recognized boundary; it reflects the current limit of IDF forward positioning, and Israel has given no public timeline for withdrawal. Any framework that eventually emerges will need to answer whether an international or Lebanese Armed Forces presence can credibly replace IDF troops in the buffer zone — and whether the tunnel infrastructure that remains can be verified as destroyed rather than simply abandoned. Neither question has a clean answer today.