Israel’s ‘Attack’ on UNIFIL Peacekeepers

For many days, the IDF has been warning, pleading, begging the UNIFIL troops that are positioned near Hezbollah bases in Lebanon to move out of the way, for their own safety. Those troops have steadfastly refused to move. Hezbollah has ignored its solemn commitment to pull back its forces north of the Litani River, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Not only has it not pulled back, but it deliberately places both its combatants and weapons close to UNIFIL troops, thereby making the IDF’s task of fighting the terror group hellishly difficult. Now the IDF has fired at Hezbollah, and in the fog of a war at close quarters, where UNIFIL troops have not heeded warnings to move aside, two UNIFIL “peacekeepers” were mildly injured.

All hell has, of course, broken loose against those terrible Israelis. They are now accused of “attacking” the UN peacekeepers, or in a variant headline, of “striking” the UN peacekeepers. In other words, we are expected to believe that the IDF deliberately tried to kill UN peacekeepers, when these incidents were clearly accidental. The Israelis are not fools; they have done everything they can to warn the peacekeepers away from areas close to Hezbollah outposts, and certainly the IDF would never have deliberately attacked UNIFIL troops. The IDF knows perfectly well what the world’s reaction would be if it hit any of those peacekeepers — an unassuageable outrage against the IDF that, in fact, is now on vivid display. Has there ever been a war in such a densely populated urban environment where such accidents have not happened?

For 18 years, since 2006, UNIFIL in Lebanon was supposed to have been making sure that Hezbollah pulled back from the border with Israel to beyond the Litani River. But it never did what it was tasked with doing, for it was afraid of tangling with Hezbollah. UNIFIL turned a blind eye as Hezbollah dug tunnels across the Blue Line that demarcated the border between Israel and Lebanon. It did nothing as Hezbollah infiltrated communities in Lebanon’s south, and stockpiled some portion of its 150,00 rockets and missiles near the border with Israel. In December 2023, Hezbollah launched a rocket attack just 20 meters from a UNIFIL compound, no doubt in the hope of provoking an Israeli retaliation that might inflict damage on a UN position. UNIFIL did not demand that Hezbollah keep its forces further away from UNIFIL; it issued only a weak statement about Hezbollah’s exploiting UNIFIL’s location being “unacceptable.” Hezbollah brushed that off, as it has every other UNIFIL complaint during the past 18 years. Early in October, a Hezbollah roadside bomb wounded several peacekeepers. UNIFIL responded only by suspending its patrols for three days, a suspension that no doubt pleased Hezbollah.

Under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, UNIFIL also has a charge to “assist the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in taking steps towards the establishment between the Blue Line [the border between Israel and Lebanon] and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons.” Here too, the LAF’s inability to prevent Hezbollah’s buildup in the very area it was supposed to abandon demonstrates UNIFIL’s failures. UNIFIL’s imperative to cooperate with the LAF is nonsensical, given the LAF’s own willful ignorance of Hezbollah activities and its subversion of UNIFIL’s mission by obstructing the installation of UNIFIL surveillance equipment. The LAF is terrified of Hezbollah, and will do nothing to anger it by cooperating with UNIFIL. A high-ranking Israeli officer, Brigadier General Assaf Orion, has documented how the LAF plays “an active part in concealing Hezbollah’s prohibited military operations.”

What explains UNIFIL’s failure to carry out the task it was assigned, to keep the area between the border and the Litani River free of Hezbollah weapons and combatants? A lack of political will tops the list. The UN is already riven by anti-Zionism and antisemitism. UN officials, from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Francesca Albanese, the antisemitic Special Rapporteur on Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who believes Israel is guilty of “genocide” in Gaza, are turning a blind eye to Hezbollah’s refusal to adhere to UNSC Resolution 1701.

Does anyone in his right mind think that the IDF would deliberately “attack” or “strike” UN peacekeepers? What possible benefit could the Israelis gain by such a move? The only decent response of governments should be to call for Hezbollah to remove itself from its deliberate proximity to UNIFIL compounds and to stop using those peacekeepers as human shields. Instead, the governments of Italy, France, and Ireland — three of the nations that have contributed troops to UNIFIL — have already condemned Israel for what they claim is its “attack on the peacekeepers.”

Middle East Eye’s headline was typical: “Israeli assault on UN peacekeepers sparks worldwide condemnation.” Yet Israel did not carry out an “assault” on UN peacekeepers, did not “target” UN peacekeepers, did not “attack” UN peacekeepers, though the world’s media has accused it using those terms.

Instead, the IDF did everything it could, over several days, to persuade the UN peacekeepers to move out of harm’s way, and to stay as far away as possible from Hezbollah combatants and weapons. The UNIFIL troops did not move. The IDF aimed at Hezbollah targets, and in two out of many hundreds of firings it inadvertently hit UNIFIL positions, and slightly wounded two UNIFIL soldiers when the observation tower they were on was toppled by IDF fire. That is the whole story. And it is Hezbollah, not the IDF, that is to blame for putting UNIFIL troops at risk.