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Source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/unifil-follies-turn-deadly-lebanon
International Peacekeeping Mission in Lebanon a Costly Failure
(Tablet) David Schenker - In December, an Irish peacekeeper serving in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was killed. UNIFIL was established in 1978 to stabilize the frontier between Israel and its enemies across the Lebanese border. Today, the Israel-Lebanon border region remains precarious, and UNIFIL peacekeepers are increasingly threatened. There is little doubt that Hizbullah was responsible for the peacekeeper's death. Not only does the militia tightly control the area in which the killing occurred, it has a history of inciting against and attacking UNIFIL, whose mandate is to help ensure that south Lebanon is "free of any armed personnel, assets, and weapons" other than the Lebanese Armed Forces. In its biannual reports to the Security Council, UNIFIL openly concedes its failure to interdict weapons destined for Hizbullah. The latest UN reports tell a harrowing story of a spike in the pattern of harassment and assaults on UNIFIL forces, typically perpetrated by men in "civilian clothes" who effectively deny UNIFIL access to Hizbullah's military sites in south Lebanon. Moreover, in collusion with Hizbullah, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) - which received $236 million in U.S. funding in 2021 - routinely obstructs UNIFIL operations and access. UNIFIL's mission has clearly become untenable. While UNIFIL provides a useful forum for talks between the Israeli and Lebanese militaries, the peacekeepers will never play a role in constraining Hizbullah or securing the frontier. With Hizbullah increasingly threatening UNIFIL and with Lebanon actively obstructing the mission, it's incumbent on the U.S. to reassess the utility of the deployment and of America's unqualified support for the LAF. The writer, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, is director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.