Guterres rejects Netanyahu’s call to evacuate UNIFIL from southern Lebanon

The peacekeeper force won’t evacuate southern Lebanon, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutters said Sunday night as he rejected Israel’s call that they leave the area for their own safety.

“Peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly” along Lebanon’s border with Israel, Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, “The Secretary-General reiterates that the safety and security of UN personnel and property must be guaranteed and that the inviolability of UN premises must be respected at all times,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a public appeal for the evacuation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) from the area that was now an IDF-Hezbollah battle zone.

“The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields,” Netanyahu said in a video statement in Hebrew.

The perch of the 10,000-member force has become particularly precarious after the IDF entered southern Lebanon at the start of October to oust the Iranian proxy group from that area.

“It is time for you [Guterres] to remove UNIFIL from Hezbollah’s strongholds and from the fighting areas,” Netanyahu stated.

He rephrased in English: “Mr. Secretary-General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately."

“We regret the harm to UNIFIL soldiers, and we are doing our utmost to prevent such harm. But the simplest and most obvious way to ensure this is simply to withdraw them from the danger zone,” Netanyahu stressed.

He spoke after a number of incidents in which IDF fire hit UNIFIL bases on the Lebanese side of the north border, injuring some of the peacekeepers.

International community responds

The hits have angered the international community, which has already been upset with Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah, even though most global leaders believe that the non-state actor must vacate Lebanon.

Italian President Giorgia Meloni was the latest leader to express outrage. In a phone call with Netanyahu, she called the attacks “unacceptable” and stressed that the peacekeepers must be protected at all times, according to her office.

The United States and a number of other European countries – chief among them France and Spain – have criticized Israel over the attacks.

“Unfortunately, several European leaders are applying pressure in the wrong place,” Netanyahu stated. “Instead of criticizing Israel, they need to direct their criticism at Hezbollah, which is using UNIFIL as a human shield.

Guterres, Dujarric said, has stressed that “UNIFIL personnel and its premises must never be targeted.  Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law, including international humanitarian law. They may constitute a war crime.”

“All parties, including the IDF, to refrain from any and all actions that put our peacekeepers at risk,” Dujarric said.

Guterres and UNIFIL accused Israel of deliberately targeting its facilities.

Before dawn on Sunday, two IDF Merkava tanks destroyed the main gate at a UNIFIL post in Ramyah and forcibly entered the compound, the UN said. The tanks left 45 minutes later after “UNIFIL protested through our liaison mechanism, saying that IDF presence was putting peacekeepers in danger,” the UN said.

About two hours later, some 15 peacekeepers suffered skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions to munition rounds fired by the IDF some 100 meters away.

The IDF soldiers also stopped a critical UNIFIL logistical movement near Meiss Ej Jebel, denying it passage, the group said.

The IDF said Hezbollah had fired anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops, wounding 25 of them. The attack was very close to a UNIFIL post, and a tank helping evacuate the casualties under fire then backed into the UNIFIL post, it said.

“It is not storming a base. It is not trying to enter a base. It was a tank under heavy fire, mass casualty event, backing up to get out of harm’s way,” the military’s international spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told reporters.

In a statement, the military said it used a smoke screen to provide cover for the evacuation of the wounded soldiers, but its actions posed no danger to the UN peacekeeping force.

In a Friday incident, two UN peacekeepers were wounded by an Israeli strike near their watchtower, which served as UNIFIL’s main base in Naqoura. UNIFIL said an Israeli bulldozer had also knocked over barriers at UN positions near the Blue Line, denoting the frontier between Lebanon and Israel, while tanks had moved into the vicinity.

Two Indonesian UN peacekeepers were hurt on Thursday after falling from a watchtower following Israeli tank fire, after which Israel said its troops had opened fire nearby.

The IDF is investigating the incidents but has said that its forces were operating against Hezbollah in those areas.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN in New York, Danny Danon, said on Sunday it was “incomprehensible” that the United Nations would not move peacekeepers out of areas in southern Lebanon where Israeli forces are battling Hezbollah terrorists.

He also said in a statement the details of an incident on Sunday involving UNIFIL were being investigated.“Hezbollah terrorists are using UNIFIL outposts as hiding places and as places of ambushes. The UN’s insistence on keeping the UNIFIL soldiers in the line of fire is incomprehensible,” Danon said.

UNIFIL, whose force draws on personnel from 50 countries, has been stationed at the Israeli-Lebanese border since 1978. It has been tasked since 2006 with monitoring violations to the UN Resolution 1701, which set out the ceasefire terms that ended the Second Lebanon War that year. UNIFIL forces also came under IDF fire during that war, and some were evacuated.

Resolution 1701 mandates that armed non-state actors such as Hezbollah must not be allowed to operate in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.

Hezbollah, however, entrenched itself in that area despite UNIFIL’s presence.

The UN Security Council is expected to debate a second Resolution 1559 from 2004, which also called for Hezbollah to withdraw from the area by Israel’s border.

Reuters contributed to this report.