Israel violates Lebanese airspace 13 times a day, on average

Polygraph | Newsletter n°262 | 12 August 2024

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Situation

Joe Biden recently extended a national emergency declared by George W. Bush in 2007 permitting the US government to freeze the property and assets of people who “infringe upon or undermine Lebanese sovereignty” (see E.O. 13441, “Blocking Property of Persons Undermining the Sovereignty of Lebanon or Its Democratic Processes and Institutions”).

Defending Lebanese sovereignty is also the primary justification for US military aid to Lebanon, which reached $1.6 billion between FY2018-22. This pales in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars in weapons recently approved for Ukraine and Israel, but those are major outliers. Lebanon has been among the top recipients of US military assistance pretty much every year since 2006.

In his notification to Congress, Biden justified extending the Bush-era national emergency because “Certain ongoing activities, such as Iran’s continuing arms transfers to Hezbollah…serve to undermine Lebanese sovereignty, contribute to political and economic instability in the region, and continue to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Biden offered the exact same justification when he renewed it in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Israel’s repeated violations of Lebanese sovereignty weren’t mentioned in any of them.

A day after Biden renewed the national emergency to protect Lebanese sovereignty, Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr — and killed at least five civilians, including two children — in a drone strike in Beirut. Last week, several Israeli warplanes were recorded buzzing other areas in Beirut. Some broke the sound barrier to create sonic booms, which sound an awful lot like explosions:

^Source: Al Jazeera, Aug 10.

Airspace violations

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006) ordered the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Since then, Israel has effectively built a summer house over the country. From January 2007 to December 2022, 22,355 Israeli military aircraft have violated Lebanese airspace, according to Air Pressure’s extremely impressive database. Add up the overflight time of each of those aircraft and you get eight and a half years' worth of airspace violations.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN recently reported nine violations of Israeli airspace by aircraft from Lebanon between 18 March – 16 May 2024. That works out to about one violation per week, on average. Between 8 October 2023 and 20 June 2024, UNIFIL detected 3,426 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, or about 13 violations per day. (Note: These figures only track violations by aircraft — UNIFIL tracks projectiles fired into Lebanon and Israel separately.)

The chart below expresses Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace in terms of overflight hours (UNIFIL reports these data in four-month increments so the graph’s set up that way too). From 21 October 2023 to 20 June 2024, the Israeli military violated Lebanese airspace for 11,541 flight hours. In other words, Israel chalked up 16 months’ worth of airspace violations in just eight months.¹

If this average was maintained through 12 August 2024, Israel has spent more than 14,000 flight hours violating Lebanese sovereignty since October.

For as much money as the US invested in Lebanon’s armed forces since 2006, it could have provided the country a top-shelf air defense system to defend against Israeli incursions into Lebanese airspace. But doing so would screw around with the US’ desired regional order, and a key feature of that regional order is ensuring Israel can terrorize its neighbors without consequence. For that reason, US military aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces is restricted to “counterterrorism assistance” — the US is training and equipping the LAF to challenge Hezbollah, not Israel.

^Alt text for screen readers: Israel has spent over 11,500 flight hours violating Lebanese airspace since October. This green-ish column chart shows Israeli flight hours violating Lebanese sovereignty in four-month increments from 21 June 2022 through 20 June 2024. 21 June to 2 November 2022, 257; 3 November 2022 to 20 February 2023, 206; 21 Feb to 20 June 2023, 187; 21 June to 20 October 2023, 322; 21 October 2023 to 20 February 2024, 5,859; 21 February to 20 June 2024, 5,682. Overflight time data: UNIFIL.

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1. Remember, total overflight hours is the combined duration of each aircraft’s flight time. So if two Israeli jets entered Lebanese airspace at 1pm and left at 2pm, that’s two hours violating Lebanese airspace.