UNIFIL's failed role in Lebanon: Acting as Hezbollah's human shield - analysis

Even in an upside-down world where rape and kidnapping are justified as “resistance,” where protesters march through major Western cities hailing terrorists, and where self-defense is characterized as “genocide,” a statement issued on Monday by the foreign ministers of Italy, Germany, France, and Great Britain was still staggering.

The statement, made after five members of the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were wounded in separate incidents in southern Lebanon, called on Israel and all parties to ensure the safety of UNIFIL personnel and allow UNIFIL to carry out its mandate.

“We reaffirm the essential stabilizing role played by UNIFIL in southern Lebanon,” the statement read.

The stabilizing role played by UNIFIL in southern Lebanon?! Who are they kidding? The foreign ministers must be referring to another southern Lebanon – maybe Lebanon, Pennsylvania – not the 850-kilometer area from the Blue Line to the Litani River. Because, in that area, “stability” is not exactly the byword. 

Terrorists don’t generally pound another country with scores of anti-tank missiles, rockets, and drones from an area where peacekeepers are fulfilling a “stabilizing role.”

UNIFIL was originally set up in 1978 after the IDF’s Operation Litani cleared PLO terrorists out of southern Lebanon following the Coastal Road massacre. 

Charged with confirming Israel’s withdrawal, UNIFIL’s force was also tasked with helping the government of Lebanon, mired at the time in the midst of a civil war, to regain authority over the region.

The force was significantly expanded by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in 2006, which ended the Second Lebanon War. 

It was also charged, among other roles, with ensuring southern Lebanon was free of arms and militias.

No one expected the 10,500-strong force to actively engage Hezbollah in combat, but Jerusalem did expect that the force would provide regular, honest accounts of efforts by Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, to turn the region into a forward base for an eventual attack on Israel.

A miserable failure 

UNIFIL failed miserably in even that simple task.

Hezbollah has been building up fortifications and transferring weapons to southern Lebanon for years, but in a 2017 report to the UN Security Council, the Irish commander of UNIFIL at the time, Maj-Gen. Michael Beary declared, “I have no evidence, nor have I been provided with any evidence of weapons transfers into my area of operations. We are extremely active in the area, and if there was a large cache of weapons, we would know about it.”

An incredulous Nikki Haley, then the US ambassador to the UN, said Hezbollah openly bragged about its stockpiled weapons; only the UNIFIL commander remained “blind” to this.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres backed Beary at the time and said the UN was unable to confirm Israel’s claims that Hezbollah was arming itself in southern Lebanon.

What a joke.

What does Guterres think – that the Hezbollah attack tunnels full of equipment and weapons the IDF is unearthing each day in southern Lebanon just magically appeared?

That the rockets and missiles stored in scores of homes in the area materialized out of thin air?

It is now the same Guterres who is rejecting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeals to evacuate the UNIFIL forces from the combat zone in southern Lebanon.

The result of this refusal, Netanyahu said in a video message on Monday, is that UNIFIL is serving as Hezbollah’s human shield.

An IDF spokesperson said that in the last month alone, Hezbollah fired 25 rockets at Israel from positions near UNIFIL posts, including one attack that killed two IDF soldiers.

Given that UNIFIL has done little to prevent Hezbollah from bombarding Israel from southern Lebanon since October 8, and given that it did nothing to report Hezbollah’s massive buildup in the region over the years, the claim by the European foreign ministers that the organization is a force for stability is utterly baseless.

Ridiculous accusations 

Furthermore, the accusation that Israel is deliberately targeting UNIFIL personnel is ridiculous. 

Israel cannot tolerate a situation where Hezbollah terrorists believe they can fire near UNIFIL positions and be immune from an Israeli response.

UNIFIL, to ensure that their personnel are not harmed, should withdraw from southern Lebanon. 

And top-tier European foreign ministers, to retain credibility in Jerusalem, should direct their condemnations at Hezbollah for brazenly violating the 1701 resolution, putting UNIFIL at risk rather than at Israel for defending itself against terrorists.