Day four of the Lebanon truce saw a "yellow line" dispute over a 10km buffer the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is maintaining inside Lebanese territory, per Al Jazeera1. Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet Israeli troops would not withdraw from the buffer.
The Lebanon truce was announced on Truth Social without prior cabinet consultation, and the Yellow Line dispute is the first operational stress test of a ceasefire that has no agreed line of demarcation. The 10km depth is meaningful: it puts IDF positions inside villages on the Lebanese side of the Blue Line, the UN-demarcated border, with the force posture of an occupying buffer rather than a withdrawing one. Hezbollah has fired on Tel Aviv as recently as 10 April under truce cover; the buffer is operating as the tripwire between restraint and resumption.
For Lebanese civilians inside the buffer the immediate consequence is displacement under a truce notionally in force. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has no mandate to remove IDF positions, and the Lebanese Armed Forces cannot move into the buffer without escalating the dispute. A counter-view from Israeli officials is that the buffer is a temporary operational necessity until Hezbollah disarms under the Lebanon ceasefire's Annex B; Lebanese officials argue the annex requires reciprocal withdrawal that the 10km posture pre-empts. Both readings can be true simultaneously, which is why the dispute is load-bearing rather than cosmetic.
