IRISH TROOPS are to serve again in Lebanon for at least a year and possibly up to four years, following acceptance by the Dáil of a UN request to serve as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil).
All parties and Independent TDs accepted the deployment but concern was raised that Defence Force personnel were still required as peacekeepers in a country decades after they were first deployed there in 1978.
While the UN will reimburse the exchequer much of the costs, the State faces an additional bill up between €7.5 million and €8 million for the deployment.
An advanced group of 90 personnel go to Lebanon on May 23rd, with the main body of 440 of the mechanised infantry contingent departing at the end of June.
They will serve with Finnish troops who will be deployed later in the year. Defence Force personnel served with Finnish soldiers in Lebanon in 2006-2007 and again with the UN mission in Chad.
Introducing the motion in the Dáil yesterday, Minister for Defence Alan Shatter said: “Lebanon continues to be viewed by the international community as a volatile environment requiring a robust and extensive international presence.
“Unifil plays a vital role in stabilising southern Lebanon and in particular the area adjacent to Israel. An effective Unifil presence helps to neutralise the potential for renewed conflict between Israel and either Lebanon or elements in Lebanon, which would have potentially very negative and extensive onward impacts across the wider Middle East region.”
The Irish troops will be deployed close to the Israeli border.
Mr Shatter said the security situation in the proposed Irish battalion area of operations was calm.
“The threat to Defence Forces personnel remains low,” he said. “The threat from armed elements operating in the proposed Irish battalion area of operations is assessed as medium.”
Socialist TD Clare Daly said deputies should have been discussing why the situation had continued over decades and what it was achieving. She said: “Keeping the peace, as it is called, is really about maintaining the status quo and retaining a sectarian balance which is not in the interests of ordinary people in Lebanon where, like many other regions across North Africa and the Middle East, citizens are experiencing devastation of living standards and corruption by ruling elites.”
She said the solution lay not with the UN or its main powers, but with the people of Israel. “I welcome the growing numbers of Israelis who are refusing to serve in or be conscripted into the country’s army.”
Fianna Fáil TD Robert Troy welcomed the Minister’s commitment earlier this week to the “triple-lock mechanism” of Government, Dáil and UN authorisation for such operations, following Fine Gael election calls for the UN component of the triple-lock system to be modified.
Mr Troy said the Labour Party had rightly said at the time that “such a measure would rip-up Ireland’s long-standing commitment to military neutrality”.
He was glad the two parties had “ironed out their differences”.
Sinn Féin defence spokesman Jonathan O’Brien supported the deployment, but warned of the “dangers posed to members of the Defence Forces while on peacekeeping duty”.
He said that “since 1958, the Defence Forces have provided in excess of 70,000 personnel for various tours of duty in more than 40 countries. Some 85 of their members have died overseas and many more have been injured.”
He said it was “undeniable that Israeli forces pose a threat to international peacekeepers in the region, where Israel is viewed by many as a rogue state, aggressor and occupier. UN personnel have also been among its many victims in the West Bank and Gaza.”
He condemned the recent violence by “extremists” in Gaza, specifically the killing of an Italian aid worker, which was “an appalling act with no possible justification”.
