(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - The tunnels dug by Hizbullah and reaching from Lebanon into Israel are quite obviously a violation of Israeli sovereignty, and a violation of the governing UN Security Council resolutions, 1559 and 1701. Those resolutions demand that the Lebanese government exercise sovereignty in all of Lebanon. Resolution 2373, adopted in August 2017, added that the Security Council "recalls its authorization to UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind." The existence of these tunnels, dug from precisely the area of southern Lebanon that UNIFIL is meant to patrol, means that this area is indeed "utilized for hostile activities." But UNIFIL will likely do nothing. The writer, a senior fellow at CFR, handled Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
2018-12-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive