U.S. and Israel: UNIFIL’s mandate should be eliminated or reshaped

The allies charge that it has failed in its mandate to prevent Hezbollah from rearming after the Second Lebanon War.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel and the United States oppose the automatic extension of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) due to its ongoing failure to prevent Hezbollah from rearming after the Second Lebanon War.

A UN Security Council vote on the subject is set for later this month.

The two allies are petitioning other members of the council to either eliminate UNIFIL’s mandate completely or to substantially limit its mission to transferring all its security responsibilities to the Lebanese government within one year, and then withdraw from its positions in southern Lebanon.

There are about 10,000 soldiers in the peacekeeping group, who come from such countries as diverse as Spain, Bangladesh and Finland, with France supplying the largest contingent.

Israel has long complained that the international force has not properly fulfilled its mission for the last two decades.

While UNIFIL was established in 1978 to act as a buffer on the border between Lebanon and Israel, its mandate was expanded after the 2006 war to “contribute to de-escalation and the protection of civilians, in accordance with UNSC Resolution 1701,” which ended the conflict sparked by Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.

The peacekeepers were supposed to help the Lebanese government regain control of the southern portion of the country from Hezbollah, which had turned the region into its own fiefdom, from which it regularly threatened Israel.

However, UNIFIL has rarely taken action against any illicit Hezbollah activity, primarily because, under threat of violence, it almost always heeds the terror organization’s warnings to stay away from any place the Iranian proxy does not want the group to see.

Now Israel sees an opportunity for real progress in the reassertion of Lebanese sovereignty over the area, which it believes will bring quiet to the border.

“The Lebanese government’s recent decision to begin disarming Hezbollah underscores that this may be a once-in-a-generation chance to act against the organization,” an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.

In a Beirut Cabinet meeting last week, the Lebanese army was ordered to prepare a plan to force all nonstate actors to hand over their weapons to government agencies by the end of the year.

This marked a first for the country, which had never dared make such an open move against the powerful Iranian proxy whose political party is also a part of the government.

Shiite ministers affiliated or allied with Hezbollah walked out before the vote in protest, and the organization said it would not heed the order.

Whether UNIFIL officers knew of the possible threat to its existence is unknown, but on Thursday they announced together with the French army that the Paris contingent had discovered a whole system of Hezbollah terror tunnels under the villages of Tayr Harfa, Zibqine and Naqoura near the Blue Line border with Israel.

UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said that during “routine operations” in coordination with the Lebanese army, the French troops had found “a vast network of fortified tunnels and hideouts” belonging to Hezbollah that held hundreds of missiles and rockets and their launchers, anti-tank mines and other explosives, and crates upon crates of ammunition.

The force added that as of Aug. 4, it had identified a total of 302 Hezbollah arms caches in southern Lebanon.