The United Nations said on Sunday Israeli tanks had burst through the gates of a base of its peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, the latest accusation of Israeli violations and attacks that have been denounced by Israel’s own allies.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the United Nations to evacuate the troops of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force from combat areas in Lebanon. Hours later, the force reported what it described as additional Israeli violations, including two Israeli Merkava tanks destroying the main gate of a base and forcibly entering before dawn that morning.
Soon after the tanks left, shells exploded 100 metres away, releasing smoke which blew across the base and sickened U.N. personnel, causing 15 to require treatment despite wearing gas masks, it said. It did not say who fired the shells or what sort of toxic substance it suspected.
It also accused Israel’s IDF military of halting a logistics convoy. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the statement.
Because the Peacekeepers aren’t there to fight a war, that’s not their role. The real question is, what are they still there for? There is no real answer from the UN about this. Their mission was to try to disarm Hezbollah, which they clearly they didn’t accomplish. Now Hezbollah is using the weapons the UN was supposed to remove (but didn’t) to fight the IDF. And the UN is apparently just going to leave Peacekeepers stranded in the middle of a warzone because they’re still pretending there isn’t a war happening? Or are they hoping for a conflict to occur between the Peacekeeping force and the IDF? Like is the UN now trying to escalate the conflict? Really, what are they trying to accomplish?
Sure, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and the UN is a very incompetent organization. But this is getting so it goes beyond being able to be explained by incompetence.
The UNIFIL mandate is clear and well known. You can read it for yourself if you actually cared. Hezbollah is not mentioned anywhere on the page funnily enough.
Yeah, is the UN trying to escalate the conflict by being attacked, blown up and chemical weapon’d by Israel?
I bet that damn UN is going to get away with it too!