Litani

The Litani is Lebanon's longest river, running approximately 170 kilometres from the Bekaa Valley near Baalbek before turning west to the Mediterranean near Tyre. It has no cross-border flow into Israel or Syria, making it uniquely Lebanon's internal water resource. The Litani River Authority operates Qaraoun Dam for hydropower and irrigation, providing roughly a quarter of Lebanon's electricity generation capacity. The river's lower gorge defines a natural boundary between the more densely populated southern coastal strip and the interior highlands, a topography that made it a logical military and diplomatic line from the late 1970s Onward. Its significance is political as much as geographical: every major Israeli military operation in southern Lebanon since 1978 has used the Litani as the stated outer limit of its objectives, and every post-war framework has returned to it as the disarmament boundary.

The Litani has marked the outer limit of Israeli military ambitions since Operation Litani in 1978, which pushed PLO forces north of it. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the river and prohibited armed forces other than the Lebanese army south of it. That line was never enforced; Hezbollah's continued presence south of the Litani became the justification for every subsequent Israeli military action.

In April 2026, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 14 people north of the Litani on 26 April, pushing beyond the 10-kilometre buffer zone , and Defence Minister Katz declared the IDF would seize all territory south of the river, roughly 800 to 900 square kilometres. By 1-2 June 2026, Israeli forces captured Beaufort Castle above the Litani and advanced approximately 10 km north toward the Zaharani river, the deepest push into Lebanon in 25 years .

The Litani is the central geographic reference in Washington's round-5 Lebanon-Israel track (sessions on 23 and 25 June): the framework calls for Lebanese Armed Forces pilot zones south of the river and Hezbollah disarmament south of it as a condition for political talks . The pilot-zone handovers (the first of which was Debbine on 22 June) are the operational test of whether the Litani can function as a real security line rather than a legal reference. Iran's precondition for staying at the Geneva table is an end to the Lebanon war on all fronts; the Litani line and whether Israeli forces withdraw south of it is the practical measure of whether that precondition is met.