Published in the Jerusalem Post, 14 October 2024
“The force has repeatedly failed its mission and squandered its credibility” – that is the uncompromising verdict on UNIFIL in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s paper of August 24, 2024.
The supreme irony of
the situation lies in the very title of the body – the United Nations Interim
Force in Lebanon. Never was an organization less interim than
UNIFIL. Today, 46 years after it was established by the UN Security
Council, it is still in place. Originally a 4,500-strong
peacekeeping mission, it now comprises some 10,000 troops drawn from up to 50
countries. And, irony on irony, the one thing the interim force has
failed to do throughout its 46 years is keep the peace.
Expelled from Jordan in
1970, the PLO under Yasser Arafat settled itself in Lebanon. It took control of the southern region,
turned it into a militarized zone, and used it as a base for attacking
Israel. On March 11, 1978 a PLO group
landed by sea near Tel Aviv and hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway. They then
went on a shooting rampage, killing 38 Israeli civilians, including 13
children, and wounding over 70 others. Three
days later Israel invaded Lebanon in an effort to push the PLO back over the Litani
and away from its northern border.
In response the UN Security
Council (UNSC) called on Israel to withdraw, and set up UNIFIL. Its remit was to confirm Israel’s withdrawal,
restore peace and security, and assist Lebanon’s government regain effective
authority in the south – a rather difficult aspiration, since Lebanon was then three
years into its long-running civil war – a power struggle between Shia and Sunni
Muslims, Christians and Palestinians.
Following the arrival of UNIFIL, Israeli withdrew from most of the territory it had occupied. It left its Christian militia allies, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), in control of a strip of territory well south of the Litani river, in which they established a "security zone". This they maintained until Israel’s full withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
Despite the presence of
UNIFIL, which seemed incapable of exercising any sort of control, the PLO
quickly reestablished itself south of the Litani, and continued launching
cross-border attacks and rocket fire into northern Israel. In response, Israel
conducted air raids and artillery strikes on Palestinian positions.
Then, on June 3, 1982 in
the center of London, a breakaway Palestinian terrorist group attempted to
assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov. He was critically injured, and was in a coma
for three months. The incident was
sufficient to trigger a large-scale military operation against the PLO, undertaken
in coordination with Lebanese Christian militias.
Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese border, advanced
up the country and soon reached Beirut. Once there they captured PLO
headquarters and ordered the PLO out of the country.
The departure of the PLO
did not, unfortunately, mean that UNIFIL could be disbanded. For it was in that same year, 1982, that Hezbollah
was founded, with the active support of Iran and its IRGC (Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps). Its prime
declared purpose was to remove Israel, and all other foreign entities, from
Lebanese soil.
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah operatives ambushed an IDF patrol along the Israel-Lebanon border, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two others. Israel responded with precision air strikes on Hezbollah assets, prompting the launch over the next month of some 4,000 Katyusha rockets targeting northern Israeli cities.
Passed in August 2006, UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the hostilities, expanded UNIFIL, required Lebanon to assert its sovereignty in the south, forbade the rearming of terrorist groups, and required the “unconditional release” of the kidnapped soldiers — whose bodies Hezbollah only returned as part of a 2008 prisoner exchange with Israel.
UNIFIL was either
incapable or unwilling to exercise its expanded powers. As a result its
presence in ever-increasing numbers has done nothing to prevent Hezbollah
taking over the whole of south Lebanon, and allowing it to become the
world’s most heavily armed non-state actor, with much of its arsenal
concentrated in UNIFIL’s area of operations.
UNIFIL’s mandate has to be renewed on an annual basis. During a visit to Israel in late November 2023, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called for a “thorough re-evaluation” of UNIFIL’s mission,
There are some 10,000
UNIFIL troops deployed across southern Lebanon. They have done virtually
nothing to control the persistent bombardment of Israel over the past year, or
to fulfil their remit to push Hezbollah north of the Litani. Since Hamas
attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, up to 80,000 residents of
northern Israel have had to evacuate their homes. There could
therefore have been little surprise in UNIFIL headquarters when, on September
30, the IDF notified the force commander of their intention to undertake
limited ground incursions into Lebanon.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN undersecretary-general for peace operations, told reporters that UNIFIL will remain in its positions in south Lebanon despite Israel’s request that it vacates some areas before it launched its ground operation against Hezbollah.
In short, having failed
notably over decades to fulfil its peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL now has units scattered across a battlefield,
and has turned into a positive liability. As Israel’s prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu told the people of Lebanon in his TV talk on October 8, a
peaceful future for Lebanon depends on freeing themselves from the burden of
Hezbollah. For Lebanon once again to enjoy peace and a positive
future, Israel’s effort to overcome Hezbollah needs to succeed.
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