“We were completely at the mercy of Hezbollah” (former UN peacekeeper)
Last week (10/15/24), a Wall Street Journal Editorial noted that “
The UN peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, had one mission: to keep armed terrorists out of southern Lebanon, where they could fire at Israel. It failed so miserably that Israel has had to go to war to clear out the terrorists. What is UNIFIL doing now? It refuses to fight, refuses to move, and accuses Israel of endangering its non-peacekeepers.
Over 11 months, Hezbollah fired more than 8,500 rockets and missiles into Israel, mostly from southern Lebanon, right under UNIFIL’s nose. The region, which was UNSC-free of militias, was soon crawling with the world’s best-armed terrorists. But the peacekeepers said little and did on the spot.
Now, interrogations of several captured Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon revealed that things are much worse than the administration even imagined. According to the Israel Hayom exposé, captured terrorists testified that Hezbollah paid UNIFIL personnel to use its bases for its operations, and that Hezbollah also occasionally took over and used UNIFIL security cameras at sites along the Israeli border. Given the examples of corruption and UNIFIL’s complete failure to stop Hezbollah from establishing themselves on the border, UNIFIL appears not only ineffective, but on the same page as Israel’s enemies.
UNIFIL told The Jerusalem Post on 10/21/24 that information about Hezbollah terrorists paying its members to use their positions in Lebanon is of value.
These alleged bribes and use of UNIFIL equipment violate its mandate. According to the report, after accepting the accusations of cooperation with Hezbollah, Israel plans to end cooperation with UNIFIL, relying more on the Lebanese army in the future.
History repeats itself
A former UN soldier in southern Lebanon told the Danish tabloid B.T. on Sunday 20.10.24 that he has been in his service 10 years ago “we were completely subordinate to Hezbollah”. The Danish citizen, referred to in the article as “Michael”, was deployed as part of the UNTSO (U.N. Truce Supervision Organization), which works closely with the UN’s UNIFIL.
UNTSO’s task is to monitor and report violations of UN Resolution 1701. The resolution ended the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 and continued non-state forces (Hezbollah) to disarm and not go south of the Litani River.
“We were completely under Hezbollah,” says Michael. “We had limited freedom of movement. We have never operated after dark for fear of Hezbollah. So they had free time in the evening and at night.”
He emphasized that he was speaking on his own behalf as an individual and not on behalf of UNTSO. He said that as he and his colleagues at UNTSO and UNIFIL drive around various towns in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah members will use them when they hope to enter areas they believed Hezbollah was operating. “They didn’t want us to see what they were doing,” Michael said.
“When we patrolled the Blue Line, we saw ‘civilians’ very close to Israeli military installations taking pictures. When that happened, we pulled back and watched from a distance; we were generally instructed to do so,” he added.
They were not allowed to document any activity. “It was forbidden to take photos, and if we did, we would end up with the locals confiscating our cameras. It happened to my colleagues in UNIFIL and UNTSO,” he said.
Michaelsi that his ability to report what happened to the Security Council was also limited because Hezbollah terrorists seized with him if he continued to gather evidence. “Some outsourced UNIFIL and UNTSO staff were also vocal supporters of Hezbollah,” Michael recalled.
Regarding the obstacles created by Hezbollah, Michael claimed that when reports of violations were made, nothing was done.
“We reported daily violations of Resolution 1701 to our superiors, including specifically restrictions on our freedom of movement, and were instructed to report all violations, regardless of their number. But nothing ever happened…it just confirmed for me what I had experienced in other countries I was sent to: the UN is incompetent.”
My assessment
The news about direct payments from Hezbollah to UNIFIL may be true for individual troops, because peacekeepers from many developing countries serve in UNIFIL, where attitudes towards corruption are more commonplace. The fact that payments would have gone to UNIFIL’s management sounds more implausible. Rather, I see the ineffectiveness of UNIFIL as a result of the UN’s general bias towards Israel, when Israel’s opponents are treated more sympathetically by the UN and its sub-organizations, both in decisions and on the ground.
As the Northern Arrow operation continues, in my opinion, UNIFIL should withdraw from being a human shield for Hezbollah and let the Israeli army finish the mission that originally belonged to the UN. At the same time, it would be good to investigate the allegations of corruption made about UNIFIL, so that when the armistice/peace comes, it would be better equipped to take on the monitoring tasks of UN Resolution 1701.
Sources include Jerusalem Post, Jewish News Syndicate, Wall Street Journal
The article first appeared in the Finnish online publication Ariel-Israelista Suomeksi
