A convoy of armored vehicles carrying French peacekeepers barreled through the hills of southern Lebanon that were ground zero in last year’s bruising war between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The closer the convoy draws to the border, the emptier the villages become and the more buildings have been reduced to rubble.

Some are marked by tattered Lebanese flags, or flags bearing Hezbollah’s insignia of a defiantly raise fist brandishing a Kalashnikov.

From a UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) base on a mountainside overlooking the village of Kafr Kila, the town below appears as a wasteland of crumpled concrete.

On an overlook point opposite the base, one of five points that Israeli forces are still occupying despite a ceasefire inked in November, bulldozers have cleared and leveled swathes of the hilltop.

Farther west along the border in the Saluki Valley, a goat herder tending his flock watches as UNIFIL peacekeepers trek up the steep wooded terrain on the opposite side of the road, while the buzz of an Israeli drone is audible overhead.

Hezbollah's heavier weapons - long-range missiles and drones - have remained out of sight, and a heated political battle is ongoing in Lebanon amid domestic and international calls for the group to give up its remaining arsenal.

UNIFIL faces a contentious vote on renewing its mandate at the UN Security Council in the coming days.

Israel and prominent voices in the Trump administration describe the force as an ineffectual waste of money that is merely delaying the goal of eliminating Hezbollah’s influence.

Lebanon's government wants the peacekeepers to remain until Israel withdraws from the points it is holding and the overstretched and cash-strapped Lebanese army has the resources to patrol the border area on its own.

AP video by Fadi Tawil and Mahammad Aounti