A deceptive calm reigned in Deir Kifa, at the base of the French contingent deployed as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). In the sky, four drones were spotted monitoring the area. In the late morning of Thursday, November 2, as French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu visited French soldiers deployed in Operation Damam, artillery fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army was already intense along the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel, the "blue line," 25 kilometers to the south. At the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, caught in the crossfire, UN soldiers were taking cover.
"If there's ever a time when we need surveillance and deterrence to avoid escalation, it's right now," said Lecornu. "It's in nobody's interest to put UNIFIL in an untenable situation, because it's in nobody's interest for UNIFIL to leave." Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, this UN peacekeeping force of over 10,000 personnel, deployed by 48 countries, has been operating in a deteriorating environment. Clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli army are becoming more intense by the day. They have already claimed 70 lives in southern Lebanon, including 52 Hezbollah fighters and seven civilians, according to Agence France-Presse. Eight soldiers and one civilian have been killed on the Israeli side, according to the Israeli authorities.
"The stability of Lebanon is an absolute priority, and it depends on the role of UNIFIL," asserted Lecornute. Deployed since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978, the UN force has seen its mandate extended, since the end of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, to a mission of observation and "deconfliction" – but not intervention. It operates in partnership with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), whose 2,000 men are deployed in southern Lebanon. Through its various channels, France is getting the message from the two sides that there is no appetite for war, but the escalation along the border is leading to fears that things could spiral out of control. Lebanon, already plunged into a serious economic and political crisis, "doesn't need a war, to say the least. Not to mention the fact that such a war could have major escalatory effects on the region as a whole," warned Lecornu.
On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech will be heard by everyone at the Deir Kifa base. The 550 French soldiers stationed there – out of the 700 in Operation Daman, one of the UN force's largest contingents – form, along with 150 Finnish soldiers, a rapid reaction force under the command of UNIFIL. With their airspace surveillance system, consisting of three Cobra and Martha radars, they have observed a clear increase in exchanges of fire and drone overflights throughout the UN intervention zone: a rectangle measuring 60 by 40 kilometers. "Since October 8, we have had over 1,500 detections over the entire zone. In other words, anything that crosses the 'blue line' from one side to the other," pointed out Captain Murielle.
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