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Lebanese army, UNIFIL must ‘step up,’ Israeli envoy says

Speaking in Arabic to the Lebanese people, Danon said that’“the land of Lebanon belongs to the Lebanese, not the Iranians.’

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The Biden administration favors a “diplomatic solution” to the conflict on Israel’s northern border, Robert Wood, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.

Wood did not call for a ceasefire in his remarks on Thursday during the session on increased hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group, which controls Southern Lebanon.

“The solution to this crisis is not a weaker Lebanon,” Wood said. “It’s a strong and truly sovereign Lebanon, protected by a legitimate security force, embodied in the Lebanese Armed Forces.”

Lebanon’s government and its army are supposed to enforce Security Council Resolution 1701, which was designed 18 years ago to bring permanent peace to the country after the 2006 Lebanon War.

The resolution calls for disarming Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and restoring full Lebanese sovereignty in the south. Despite the resolution being in effect for 18 years, Hezbollah has flourished.

The terror group has fired some 10,000 rockets at the Jewish state since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas’s terror attack on southern Israel. Hezbollah has proclaimed solidarity with Hamas. Both are U.S.-designated terror groups.

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Israel has degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities severely over the past month, including sabotaging and donating pagers and other communications equipment belonging to Hezbollah terrorists en masse.

“As an act of spy craft, it is without parallel, one of the most successful and inventive penetrations of an enemy by an intelligence service in recent history,” The Washington Post reported.

The Jewish state has also eliminated the terror group’s entire leadership structure.

The Israel Defense Forces requested earlier this week that troops from the U.N.’s Israel-Lebanon peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, relocate out of certain areas near the border to allow the IDF to operate during its ground incursions in Lebanon without putting UNIFIL troops in harm’s way.

The U.N. force, which has regularly heeded Hezbollah’s demands to stay out of certain areas that the mission is mandated to patrol and investigate, for fear of drawing the terror group’s ire, opted not to listen to Israel’s request.

Nicolas de Rivière, the French U.N. ambassador, told the Security Council on Thursday that Paris still backs a three-week ceasefire that it and Washington proposed last month.

Wood told the global body that the Biden administration is working toward a diplomatic solution without mentioning a ceasefire.

“Colleagues, the United States has been clear: a diplomatic solution between Israel and Lebanon along the Blue Line is the only path to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both Lebanon and Israel to return safely to their homes,” he said.

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“Even as Israel has a right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, it needs to minimize harm to civilians, particularly in the densely populated areas of Beirut,” he added.

Biden administration officials have suggested publicly that they support the IDF’s efforts to further degrade Hezbollah, after initial anger following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to endorse a ceasefire and instead order the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, then the terror group’s secretary-general.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, stated on Thursday that Israel is “fulfilling our obligations to ensure” the enforcement of Security Council resolutions related to Israeli-Lebanese peace.

“The council must support us in our efforts,” he said.

Speaking in Arabic to the Lebanese people, Danon said that “the land of Lebanon belongs to the Lebanese, not the Iranians.”

The Israeli envoy implored the Lebanese army and UNIFIL to “step up” and fulfill their duties.

“The Lebanese people have been held hostage by an Iran-backed terror organization,” Danon told the council. “Hezbollah has established a terrorist state within a failed state.”