A United Nations force working in Lebanon has failed in its mission to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling weapons, even allowing terrorists to establish attack positions right under its nose, and is now putting itself in “harm’s way” of Israel’s ground operation, Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
The Israeli prime minister responded to international criticism of reports that his forces deliberately fired at U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) personnel over the weekend, saying the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has “repeatedly asked” for the supposed peacekeepers to withdraw from Hezbollah strongholds, “and has been met with repeated refusals, all aimed at providing a human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”
The U.N. has itself called “on parties to refrain from all actions putting peacekeepers at risk.”
UNIFIL was formed in the 1970s and has more recently been responsible for disarming Hezbollah. Despite costing around €502 million between July 2023 and July 2024, the agency has clearly failed in this area. Reports also show that the terrorist group has succeeded in establishing attack positions “within a stone’s throw” of a UNIFIL base.
“To build a tunnel like this you need a lot of equipment,” IDF General Yiftach Norkin told The Daily Telegraph while highlighting one such position.
You can’t hide it. It’s very odd to us that the U.N. didn’t see these activities.
About a week after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was barred from Israel for turning the body into “a tool for Hamas propaganda,” writer and human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer said it was impossible for the U.N. to say it did not know what Hezbollah was doing.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, added that “since it has colossally failed, why not disband UNIFIL already?!”
The U.N. also faces serious allegations that another of its agencies—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)—has been infiltrated by Hamas.
