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 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 political justification for every subsequent Israeli military action.

In April 2026 the river's symbolic weight became acute: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 14 people north of the Litani on 26 April, pushing beyond the 10-kilometre buffer zone. The IDF issued forced-evacuation orders for seven towns north of the river, with Hezbollah warning it would not stand down while ceasefire violations continued. Defence Minister Katz had declared the IDF would seize all territory south of the river, roughly 800 to 900 square kilometres.

By 1 to 2 June 2026, Israeli forces captured Beaufort Castle above the Litani — held for the first time since the 2000 withdrawal — and advanced approximately 10 km north of the Litani toward the Zaharani river, the deepest push into Lebanon in 25 years, at the cost of Staff Sgt Adam Tzarfati's life. The Zaharani advance occurred while Israeli and Lebanese delegations sat in Washington negotiating a framework that would require Hezbollah to pull back to the Litani. UNIFIL, deployed under Resolution 1701 with roughly 10,000 troops, remains south of the Zaharani without enforcement authority.