Upon the news that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon will be ending its mandate, I will refrain from saying “good riddance.” It would be insufficient, after all. In fact, I wish UNIFIL only the greatest riddance in the world, a riddance the likes of which few have ever seen. A riddance that would be the envy of all the riddances that came before it.
Any time I mention some of UNIFIL’s old scandals, I hear from readers who are truly shocked. For UNIFIL stood out among the various agencies of the United Nations as the one that never tried to disguise its alliance with Israel’s genocidal enemies. Even UNRWA, the agency that became an adjunct of Hamas in Gaza, went through the motions of attempting to establish plausible deniability.
As I wrote recently, in 2006 UNIFIL stood accused of broadcasting sensitive Israeli troop movements during the war in Lebanon with Hezbollah. I picked up the phone and called the office of the UN secretary general to ask for confirmation. The office gave me the personal mobile number of a senior UNIFIL official on the ground in Lebanon. I called him and asked him about the allegations. He nonchalantly admitted on the record that yes, the allegations were correct.
But we don’t have to go back to 2006—or all the way to 2000, when UNIFIL withheld video proof of Israelis being kidnapped by Hezbollah—to understand why we should just give UNIFIL the gold watch and wave them off into the sunset. As I am writing this, proof of UNIFIL’s purposeful futility is all around us.
Israel and Lebanon, with the help of the United States, are engaged in negotiations over the disarming of Hezbollah. Almost 20 years ago, the Second Lebanon War ended with a UN Security Council resolution requiring Hezbollah to disarm. So why are we still negotiating over something that has been required for two decades by previous negotiations? Because the UN is useless, that’s why. And the consequences are visible all around the Mideast.
So this week, the U.S. decided it would only agree to the renewing of UNIFIL’s mandate if it would be the last such renewal. That way, UNIFIL could start preparing for the end. After 2026, it’ll pack up and go, ending nearly a half-century of thumb-twiddling.
UNIFIL allowed Hezbollah to build tunnels under the UN buildings. So it is nothing more, really, than a human shield on behalf of the Iranian satrapy keeping Lebanon destabilized for decades. Which means that Hezbollah will be weaker once UNIFIL is gone. That is a damning statement, but it is true: When Israel discovers tunnels under non-UN structures, it can go right in and neutralize them. The UN’s very presence in South Lebanon objectively serves Hezbollah.
Don’t take my word for it, take UNIFIL’s. After the 2006 war, the New York Times asked the UN agency the following question: What would you say you do here? UNIFIL’s response was, essentially: Everything we’re allowed to do, which is nothing.
“They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects,” the Times reported. “If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.”
What is their mission, then, exactly? “The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army.”
There’s got to be more to it than that, right? After all, I support Lebanese sovereignty, and I don’t wear a blue beret and fatigues.
The problem with the resolution that established UNIFIL, the Times explained, is that “the resolution’s diplomatic language skirted a fundamental question: What kind of policing power would be given to the international force?”
It was a passive resolution, if there is such a thing. “The goal is to be viewed as a peacekeeping force, not an occupier,” the Times wrote.
That at least gives us a benchmark to go by. Was South Lebanon peaceful? I think we can all agree that 47 years is a fair time period to test a thesis. Anyway, as the U.S. envoy to the UN said yesterday, “The United States notes that the first ‘I’ in UNIFIL stands for ‘Interim.’” Two years from now, that will finally be true.
