For thousands of years, Tyre in southern Lebanon was one of the most important cities in the Phoenician world. Ships set sail from here to establish colonies across the Mediterranean, including the famous Carthage. Today, it is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring impressive archaeological remains, one of the largest Roman hippodromes in the world, and a sandy coastline considered one of the most beautiful in Lebanon.
On paper, almost all the ingredients for tourism success are present here: Thousands of years of history, the sea, a Mediterranean climate, heritage sites, and a local atmosphere. Yet for decades, the security reality stood between Tyre and its tourism potential.
In 2026, this reality grew even harsher. Renewed fighting brought with it Israeli strikes, evacuation orders, and the widespread displacement of residents in southern Lebanon, including the inhabitants of Tyre. Following the ceasefire that took effect in June, residents began to return gradually. By early July, restaurants and cafes had reopened, and families returned to gather along the seashore.
However, the recovery remained fragile. Renewed strikes and exchanges of fire in August illustrated just how quickly southern Lebanon can shift from an appearance of routine back into conflict.
The tourists who were not tourists
For decades, people arrived in Tyre from many countries around the world, including Italy, Spain, France, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Ghana, and Malaysia. Yet they did not come for a vacation. These were soldiers serving in UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon since 1978.
What began as a temporary mission evolved into one of the UN’s longest-running peacekeeping operations. Over the years, UNIFIL brought soldiers, officers, and civilian employees to southern Lebanon, alongside international advisers, contractors, diplomats, aid workers, and visiting delegations.
As of August 2026, the entire force comprised approximately 7,460 peacekeepers from 46 countries. UNIFIL headquarters is located in Naqoura, south of Tyre, while the Western Sector operates from Shama. This meant that the international military presence became an integral part of the economic and social fabric of the Tyre region.
Anyone who imagines that UNIFIL personnel simply live inside military bases misses a significant part of the story. Over nearly five decades, an entire economic ecosystem developed around this international presence: Hotels, restaurants, transportation services, food suppliers, rental apartments, contractors, and local businesses.
Traditional tourism in Tyre was repeatedly harmed by wars, political instability, and Lebanon's economic crises. In parallel, the international presence created a different source of demand, one that did not necessarily depend on the tourist season, but rather on peacekeeping activities, diplomacy, and the international organizations operating in the area.
One venue that clearly illustrates this is the Rest House Tyr Hotel & Resort. The hotel, which opened in its current format in 1995, spans one of the most attractive stretches of coastline in the city. A private beach, palm trees, restaurants, guest rooms, and event facilities made it the type of resort Tyre could have become had more stable conditions existed in the area.
Yet over the years, the hotel also became a familiar destination for the international community in southern Lebanon. It hosted visitors, meetings, and events tied to diplomatic activity, development, and international work. The hotel thus became more than a commercial tourism business. It developed into part of the civilian hospitality infrastructure of a region that hosted a large, permanent international presence for years.
The hotel that burned and rebuilt
Peace, of course, never arrived in Tyre in full. The hotel survived years of conflicts in southern Lebanon, the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, the Second Lebanon War in 2006, economic crises, and recurring clashes along the border.
Then came 2019. During the wave of mass protests in Lebanon, the Rest House shifted from a tourist symbol to a political symbol. On October 18, protesters set parts of the complex on fire amid widespread public rage against the Lebanese political establishment.
The property was publicly identified with Randa Berri, the wife of veteran Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, though claims regarding the hotel's ownership and political connections were and remain subject to dispute. The structure survived, and following restoration work, the hotel resumed operations. It was another chapter in the story of a hotel that repeatedly found itself at the intersection of tourism, politics, and instability.
In many ways, the Rest House became a microcosm of Tyre itself: A Mediterranean city built over thousands of years for merchants, visitors, and travelers, yet forced to learn to survive in a reality where ordinary international tourism struggled to exist.
Who will replace thousands of clients?
There are no authoritative figures documenting the cumulative number of overnight stays generated in Tyre by UNIFIL and the international community around it. Yet after nearly five decades of rotating shifts of soldiers, civilian personnel, contractors, diplomats, experts, aid organizations, and visiting delegations, it is difficult to ignore the economic impact of this presence on the hospitality and services sector in the region.
Here lies one of the most contentious debates surrounding UNIFIL. Supporters of the force argue that it contributes to stability in southern Lebanon while simultaneously providing employment, contracts, and income for local communities. Conversely, UNIFIL's critics contend that pumping money into an area where Hezbollah holds deep military, social, and political influence indirectly benefits the local economy in which the organization operates.
The American research institute JINSA strongly criticized UNIFIL's operations, arguing that the international presence helped sustain an economic environment from which Hezbollah benefited. The UN rejects the claim that its mission serves Hezbollah, emphasizing that UNIFIL operates under a Security Council mandate, cooperates with Lebanese authorities and the Lebanese Armed Forces, and maintains ties with local communities as part of its peacekeeping mission.
Either way, there is one point on which UNIFIL's supporters and critics might agree: After nearly half a century, southern Lebanon would have looked economically different without the international presence.
And this time, it is no longer a theoretical question.
End of an era in southern Lebanon
The UN Security Council decided that UNIFIL's current mandate will be its last. Under Resolution 2790, the force is scheduled to cease operations on December 31, 2026, after which an orderly and safe withdrawal process for its personnel will begin, expected to take up to a year.
The end of UNIFIL's operations could represent much more than a shift in the security setup along the Israel-Lebanon border. It could also lead to the gradual disappearance of an economic presence that has existed in southern Lebanon since 1978. In Israel, UNIFIL has traditionally been viewed almost exclusively through a security lens: Whether it succeeded in curbing Hezbollah, implementing Security Council Resolution 1701, and contributing to stability along the border.
In Tyre, one can also view the force through another lens: An economic one. For hotel owners, restaurateurs, taxi drivers, landlords, construction companies, suppliers, and shopkeepers, UNIFIL was never just a peacekeeping force. It was also a client. For nearly 50 years, soldiers, officers, civilian employees, and members of the international community consumed services, rented properties, dined in restaurants, and purchased products and services from local businesses, in a region repeatedly hit by wars, instability, and economic crises.
And what will happen when they leave? From an Israeli perspective, it is difficult to imagine the scale of such a connection. If thousands of international peacekeepers had lived permanently for decades around cities like Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, or Tiberias, using hotels, renting apartments, dining at restaurants, and purchasing services from local businesses, their presence would have inevitably become part of those cities' economic life. For many residents and businesses in southern Lebanon, that is precisely what UNIFIL represented.
The irony of Tyre
Perhaps herein lies Tyre's greatest irony. One of the great trading cities of the ancient Mediterranean, a place that for thousands of years depended on foreign merchants, sailors, and visitors, found itself in modern times relying in part on a different kind of foreign visitor: Peacekeepers, UN personnel, and the international community that grew around them. The force intended to help maintain security simultaneously became part of the economic landscape of the population among which it operated.
Now this relationship is approaching its end. UNIFIL is scheduled to cease operations at the end of 2026, even as discussions continue over what international mechanism, if any, might replace it in the future. Meanwhile, southern Lebanon remains unstable. Even after the June ceasefire allowed families and businesses to return to Tyre, the renewed violence demonstrated how uncertain the recovery remains.
When an international force becomes one of the most vital sources of livelihood in its vicinity for decades, its departure is not merely a security matter. It could also prove to be a major economic event for the city. For Tyre, which relied for thousands of years on visitors arriving from across the sea, the big question now is who will come after them.