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Fire the UN Forces in Lebanon

(Wall Street Journal) Eugene Kontorovich - As Israel fights Hizbullah's army in Lebanon, it has found a new foe: the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. Having failed at its mission of neutralizing the Hizbullah threat, UNIFIL is now actively interfering with Israel doing the job. UNIFIL failed to prevent or ameliorate the Second Lebanon War in 2006, which Hizbullah began with a cross-border raid to take Israeli hostages and continued with a heavy rain of rockets on Israel. UN peacekeepers have done nothing to stop Hizbullah as it has turned southern Lebanon into an armed camp from which to attack Israel. UN peacekeepers come from places like Ghana and Bangladesh. They have little motive or incentive to risk their lives to protect Jews from Islamist Shiites. Most contingents participate in peacekeeping because the UN pays contributing nations $17,000 a year for each peacekeeper, far above military salaries in most countries. UNIFIL was created to keep peace in Lebanon, but has instead enabled Hizbullah's aggression. U.S. taxpayers pay nearly 30% of UNIFIL's $550 million budget - essentially subsidizing indirect assistance to Hizbullah. UNIFIL is easy to fix. Its mandate must be reauthorized every year, or it simply ends. UNIFIL's current mandate expires in August 2025. There is no rational basis for reauthorizing it. The writer is a professor at George Mason University Law School and a scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum.
2024-10-18 00:00:00
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