UNIFIL is ineffective and fails to fulfill its peacekeeping mission - opinion

‘The force has repeatedly failed its mission and squandered its credibility” – that is the uncompromising verdict on UNIFIL in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s paper of August 24, 2024.

The supreme irony of the situation lies in the very title of the body – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Never was an organization less interim than UNIFIL. 

Today, 46 years after it was established by the UN Security Council, it is still in place. Originally a 4,500-strong peacekeeping mission, it now comprises some 10,000 troops drawn from 50 countries. And, irony upon irony, the one thing the interim force has failed to do throughout its 46 years is keep the peace.

A glance at the map of Lebanon shows the Litani River running north to south down the country, and then taking a sharp right-hand turn toward the Mediterranean. 

The territory lying between the river and the Lebanon-Israel border to its south, varying in width between six and 28 km., is where the numerous UNIFIL bases are located.

Expelled from Jordan in 1970, the PLO under Yasser Arafat settled in Lebanon. It took control of the southern region, turned it into a militarized zone, and used it as a base for attacking Israel. 

On March 11, 1978, a PLO group landed by sea near Tel Aviv and hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway. They then went on a shooting rampage, killing 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, and wounding over 70 others. Three days later, Israel invaded Lebanon in an effort to push the PLO back over the Litani and away from its northern border.

In response, the UN Security Council (UNSC) called on Israel to withdraw and set up UNIFIL. Its remit was to confirm Israel’s withdrawal, restore peace and security, and assist Lebanon’s government regain effective authority in the south – a rather difficult aspiration, since Lebanon was then three years into its long-running civil war, a power struggle between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Palestinians.

Following the arrival of UNIFIL, Israel withdrew from most of the territory it had occupied. It left its Christian militia allies, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), in control of a strip of territory well south of the Litani River, in which they established a “security zone.” They maintained this until Israel’s full withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

UNIFIL 'incapable of exercising any control'

Despite the presence of UNIFIL, which seemed incapable of exercising any sort of control, the PLO quickly reestablished itself south of the Litani, and continued launching cross-border attacks and rocket fire into northern Israel. 

In response, Israel conducted air raids and artillery strikes on Palestinian positions. 

Then, on June 3, 1982, in the center of London, a breakaway Palestinian terrorist group attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov. 

He was critically injured and was in a coma for three months. The incident was sufficient to trigger a large-scale military operation against the PLO, undertaken in coordination with Lebanese Christian militias. 

Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese border, advanced up the country, and soon reached Beirut. They captured PLO headquarters there and ordered the PLO out of the country. 

The PLO’S departure did not, unfortunately, mean that UNIFIL could be disbanded. In that same year, Hezbollah was founded with the active support with the active support of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

Its declared prime purpose was to remove Israel, and all other foreign entities, from Lebanese soil. It launched its first attack on the IDF in November 1982.

UNIFIL’s mandate did not directly include confronting non-state militias – a factor that has doubtless contributed to UNFILF’s ineffectiveness over the years. 

Hezbollah, on the other hand, while never formally engaging with UNIFIL, has consistently obstructed or interfered with its activities. Ever since 2020, Hezbollah has been establishing and strengthening its military footprint in the heart of UNIFIL’s area of operations. 

Worse, in June 2007, a car bomb killed six UNIFIL members and wounded two others. In December 2022, five Hezbollah-linked militants were charged with conspiracy and murder in a shooting attack that killed an Irish UNIFIL peacekeeper and injured three others.

Israel responded with precision air strikes on Hezbollah assets, prompting the launch over the next month of some 4,000 Katyusha rockets targeting northern Israeli cities. 

Passed in August 2006, UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the hostilities, expanded UNIFIL, required Lebanon to assert its sovereignty in the south, forbade the rearming of terrorist groups, and required the “unconditional release” of the kidnapped soldiers – whose bodies Hezbollah only returned as part of a 2008 prisoner exchange with Israel.

UNIFIL was either incapable or unwilling to exercise its expanded powers. 

As a result, its presence in ever-increasing numbers has done nothing to prevent Hezbollah from taking over the whole of south Lebanon, and allowing it to become the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor, with much of its arsenal concentrated in UNIFIL’s area of operations.

UNIFIL’s mandate has to be renewed on an annual basis. During a visit to Israel in late November 2023, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called for a “thorough reevaluation” of UNIFIL’s mission, citing cross-border attacks on Israel by Hezbollah as an indication that the peacekeeping mission was not working as intended. 

The “rules of engagement need to change,” he said. Nevertheless, in August UNFIL’s mandate was again renewed with no significant changes beyond a renewed emphasis on the need for coordination between UNIFIL and the Lebanese government.

Once again Hezbollah, the real malign power in Lebanon, did not feature in the resolution.

There are some 10,000 UNIFIL troops deployed across southern Lebanon. 

They have done virtually nothing to control the persistent bombardment of Israel over the past year or to fulfill their remit to restore Lebanese governance south of the Litani. 

Since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah has maintained a persistent bombardment of northern Israel and up to 80,000 people have had to evacuate their homes. 

There could therefore have been little surprise in UNIFIL headquarters when, on September 30, the IDF notified the force commander of their intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon. 

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN undersecretary-general for peace operations, told reporters that UNIFIL will remain in its positions in south Lebanon despite Israel’s request that it vacate some areas before it launched its ground operation against Hezbollah. 

By staying put, UNIFIL is exposing its troops to possible collateral death or injury; indeed, two peacekeepers were injured when IDF fire damaged a UNIFIL observation post on October 9. 

Having failed notably over decades to fulfill its peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL now has units scattered across a battlefield and has turned into a liability. 

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Lebanese people in his TV talk on October 8, a peaceful future for Lebanon depends on freeing themselves from the burden of Hezbollah. Israel’s current operation to overcome Hezbollah must succeed. 

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.