Senior Israeli defense officials have quietly told their American counterparts that they would rather deal directly with the Lebanese army than continue working alongside the UN peacekeeping force operating in southern Lebanon, according to a report aired Monday on Kan News.

Officials within Israel’s defense establishment have grown increasingly frustrated with UNIFIL in recent weeks, describing the force as having turned adversarial toward the IDF. In unusually blunt terms, senior figures conveyed to American officials that UNIFIL “causes more harm than good,” and expressed a clear preference for direct coordination with Lebanon’s military without UN involvement near the border.

The shift in attitude comes as UNIFIL’s mandate in southern Lebanon approaches its end-of-year expiration. Israeli officials have pointed to what they describe as problematic coordination and a string of statements issued by UNIFIL that they view as hostile to Israel and the IDF.

Since the ceasefire agreement that halted fighting on Israel’s northern front, IDF-Lebanese army coordination has been routed through Washington as part of the broader ceasefire implementation framework. Israeli security officials have indicated they are open to direct talks with the Lebanese military in the future, particularly if Beirut moves to disarm Hezbollah — a step they see as a precondition for lasting calm along the border communities.

Meanwhile, competing visions for how to secure Lebanon’s borders are taking shape internationally. The Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper *Al-Akhbar* reported in late December 2025 that a European-backed plan is in the works to place international monitors along Lebanon’s borders with both Syria and Israel. Israel reportedly opposes any arrangement resembling UNIFIL’s current model, and has indicated a preference for Britain specifically to take on an oversight role, potentially through a network of observation towers along Lebanon’s northern, southern, and eastern land borders.

Britain has already floated a concrete proposal along these lines. The pan-Arab newspaper *Asharq Al-Awsat* reported last July that London formally offered to supply Lebanon with monitoring towers to be deployed along the Israeli border, framing the initiative as a means of reinforcing stability and ensuring compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The offer was presented during Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s visit to Beirut. Lebanese officials neither accepted nor rejected the proposal outright, but signaled that their immediate priority is consolidating the existing ceasefire before taking on new border arrangements.