Israel has always had a thorny relationship with the United Nations. In recent weeks, it has become even thornier, after the U.N. accused Israeli armed forces of having fired on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon amid fighting in that area with Hezbollah.
The U.N. mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, has said at least five peacekeepers have been injured and some of its bases damaged. The peacekeeping force also said that on Oct. 13, two Israel Defense Force (IDF) tanks destroyed the main gate of UNIFIL’s post in Ramyah, close to the Israeli border, and “forcibly entered” to request the base to turn out its lights. The same day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged UNIFIL to leave the area and get “out of harm’s way” but denied that the targeting of the mission was deliberate.
These incidents drew the fierce condemnation of both the U.N. and the countries whose troops are stationed in southern Lebanon with UNIFIL, including France, Italy, and Spain. The United States urged Israel to take measures to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers. The U.N. said it is staying in southern Lebanon, with Western leaders openly and forcefully supporting such decision.
“We’ve been targeted several times, five times under deliberate attack,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Reuters last week. “I think the role of UNIFIL at the moment is more important than ever. We need to be here.”
At the same time, many analysts and the Israeli government are raising doubts about the role UNIFIL has had over the past few years, in particular in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when the tit-for-tat clashes between Israel and Hezbollah began and then spiraled into airstrikes on the southern area of Lebanon and on its capital of Beirut and more recently into Israel’s invasion of the country. They say UNIFIL wasn’t effective and had provided insufficient reporting on Hezbollah’s activities and buildup in southern Lebanon. Israel has recently accused Hezbollah of using UNIFIL’s blue helmets as human shields.
“It had mostly symbolic roles,” said Olivier Roy, a political scientist at the European University Institute in Italy. “One was to show the interest of the international community in peace in the region. Another was to be part of this symbolic balance of power to maintain the tensions into some sort of acceptable level of violence and reciprocity without moving into a full confrontation.”
UNIFIL was first established in 1978 by U.N. Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426 to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon after an invasion that year; restore peace and security; and assist the Lebanese government in retaking effective control of the area. Its mandate was expanded in 2006 with Resolution 1701, adopted after a 34-day war between Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the IDF that year.
Resolution 1701 included a range of tasks for UNIFIL, such as monitoring the end of hostilities between the two sides and accompanying and supporting the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) as they deployed in the south of the country, including along the so-called Blue Line, which is the U.N.-designated line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The mission, which has around 10,500 peacekeepers coming from 50 countries, was also supposed to coordinate such activities with the governments of Lebanon and Israel while assisting in providing civilians access to humanitarian aid and in the return of the displaced.
More crucially, it was tasked with assisting the LAF in establishing an area between the Litani River and the Blue Line “free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons” other than the Lebanese government’s and UNIFIL’s. Resolution 1701 authorized the U.N. mission “to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind.”
But Hezbollah expanded its military presence in the area, placing rocket launchers and deposits of weapons and building underground tunnels close to the Blue Line, and routinely harassed and attacked UNIFIL’s patrols, stopping them from entering large portions of southern Lebanon.
Last June, a Lebanese military court formally accused five members of Hezbollah and its allied Amal Movement of killing an Irish peacekeeper. The peacekeeper, Sean Rooney, was killed in December 2022 after the UNIFIL vehicle he was riding in was fired on in southern Lebanon.
Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, said Resolution 1701 succeeded in stopping the war, which had been stalemated. However, UNIFIL “obviously” didn’t succeed in creating the buffer area in southern Lebanon free of any Hezbollah military presence, he added.
“I don’t blame UNIFIL per se for the inability to enforce the mandate,” said Feltman, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Resolution 1701 was passed under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Security Council bylaws, so the mission cannot enforce it militarily, unlike it could have done if it were approved under Chapter 7, he said.
It was also envisioned that the LAF would deploy in large numbers alongside UNIFIL, but that never happened. This meant they failed to do their part in preventing Hezbollah from reinventing itself in that area, he added.
“Where I do fault UNIFIL is for its lackluster reporting to the Security Council of what was actually happening in southern Lebanon between 2006 and basically now,” he said. “UNIFIL regularly pulled its punches in its reporting to the Security Council. When it stated to the Security Council that they saw no evidence of signs of armed elements in southern Lebanon, that was either disingenuous or they simply weren’t looking or they didn’t see it because Hezbollah prevented them to go into certain areas in southern Lebanon at certain times—which it’s true, they did.”
According to UNIFIL’s recent quarterly reports, the mission reported many instances of “freedom of movement incidents,” in which its patrols were prohibited to enter specific areas, with plainclothes individuals threatening or attacking the peacekeepers and stealing or damaging their equipment. In some cases, the LAF or local authorities intervened to protect the peacekeepers.
In 2022, UNIFIL reported an increase in the number and severity of these instances, although they represented a small fraction of cases compared with the number of patrolling activities. And they went on increasing, depriving UNIFIL of the possibility of entering sensitive areas.
In the latest report for the four months ending June 20, there were 38 such instances that involved armed threats, firing of weapons, stealing of equipment, or blocking of communication signals.
UNIFIL said it continuously coordinated with the LAF to secure unrestricted access to the entire area of its operations but the LAF “continued to object to some patrol routes proposed by UNIFIL to expand the Force’s presence outside main routes and municipal centers, on the grounds that they were either private roads or areas of strategic importance,” according to the report.
In particular, despite repeated requests, UNIFIL didn’t get full access to several “locations of interest,” including sites used by Green Without Borders, which the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned last August, saying it had provided support and cover for Hezbollah’s operations along the Blue Line over the last decade while purporting to be an organization of environmental activists. As for the incidents, the mission said it regularly reported them to both the LAF and local authorities.
Looking forward, Feltman said he doesn’t advocate for the replacement of UNIFIL with a different mission and that UNIFIL could be part of the solution to the current conflict.
“I think the Israelis are going to be much more skeptical about the 1701 mandate given the experience of the last 18 years,” he said. “I don’t preclude UNIFIL. But there has to be some mechanism that would provide that kind of candid, honest assessment about what’s happening in southern Lebanon that goes beyond what UNIFIL has provided.”
UNIFIL could be part of the mechanism that would encourage Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, but “I don’t think it can just be UNIFIL,” he added.
David Schenker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs during the Trump administration, said UNIFIL had the important role of convening tripartite meetings with representatives from the Israeli military and the LAF.
“This, at times, helped to de-escalate things,” said Schenker, now a fellow at the Washington Institute. However, these meetings have been suspended since last October, closing an important channel of communication during times of crisis.
“Washington may try to patch up UNIFIL’s many deficiencies, but it must do so with a clear understanding that the force has repeatedly failed its mission and squandered its credibility,” he said.
In order to do so, Schenker said, if UNIFIL were to remain in the south of Lebanon, it would have to recover the trust of Israel and the United States by monitoring the entire area and honestly calling “balls and strikes.”
Although its reporting has improved, he said, the force should include maps in its reports to clearly pinpoint the areas where access has been denied because the LAF describes them as “strategically sensitive” or “private property.”
At the same time, he added, Lebanon’s caretaker government, although weak and uneager to confront Hezbollah directly, should still be expected to prosecute the group’s members who harass UNIFIL peacekeepers. Beirut should also be held accountable for failing to secure its border with Syria, which has been a key transfer point of weapons to Hezbollah.
The United States, France, and other European countries that underwrite the Lebanese military’s equipment and salaries should condition further assistance on performance to encourage Lebanese forces to be more professional and cease denying access to UNIFIL in large swaths of southern Lebanon, Schenker said.
UNIFIL should then be provided with more technical surveillance capabilities while its headcount is reduced, he said, because the organization has shown only marginal efficacy and there is a growing risk the peacekeepers are being used as human shields.
Finally, UNIFIL’s mandate should be renewed more frequently than once a year, as it currently is, because it might require urgent modifications to the force or the mandate itself.
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