OPINION:Irish UN troops are once again patrolling south Lebanon – but the region has changed radically since 2001, writes BOAZ MODAI
ISRAEL WELCOMES the overnight deployment of Irish soldiers as part of the Unifil (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) peacekeeping mission on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Irish troops have a proud record of involvement in UN peacekeeping operations for more than 50 years and have made heavy sacrifices in the course of that involvement.
I have no doubt they will carry out their new mandate with the dedication and professionalism that have been their hallmark on past missions.
The Irish soldiers arriving at the Israel-Lebanon border will find the situation very different from the last Irish deployment there. The last full-strength Irish Unifil contingent left Lebanon in 2001. The previous year, Israel had withdrawn its military forces in full from Lebanon, a fact certified by the UN. Since 2001, two events have radically altered the situation in Lebanon as a whole and on its southern border with Israel in particular.
The first brought hope; the second, disappointment. With the withdrawal by Syria of its army in 2005, Lebanese democrats hoped the elected Lebanese government could soon exert sovereignty over all its territory. Instead, Lebanon has seen the rise to power of Hizbullah, an Islamist terrorist organisation allied to Iran and Syria and financed by the former. Hizbullah, by far the best-armed non-state paramilitary force in the world, with firepower greater than that of the Lebanese state army, along with its own private communications system, has overawed the government and set itself up as a rival authority.
By 2006, Hizbullah had already built a state within a state in the south and possessed at least 14,000 rockets pointed at Israeli cities and towns. In July that year, it launched a military incursion across the border into Israel that dragged the peoples of Lebanon and Israel into a war which neither wanted.
The war with Hizbullah ended after three weeks when a ceasefire was agreed under UN Security Council Resolution 1701. This called for “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so . . . there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state”. It called for the government of Lebanon to extend its control over all Lebanese territory and to secure its borders.
The Unifil force was deployed along the border to assist the Lebanese government in enforcing the terms of Resolution 1701. Have they been successful in doing that? It gives me no pleasure to state they have not.
The Lebanese government has failed to disarm Hizbullah and failed to enforce its sovereignty over its territory. And the international community has been unable or unwilling to give Unifil the necessary means to support the government in achieving these goals.
Since 2006, Hizbullah has significantly increased its armoury, which now contains more than 40,000 rockets and other weaponry supplied by Iran and smuggled through the Syrian-Lebanese border. In an interview with the Financial Times, Hizbullah deputy secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassem “would not deny . . . that we have three or four times the arsenal we had in 2006”.
The weaponry includes surface-to-surface, surface-to-air and Scud-D ballistic missiles. In 2006, Hizbullah missiles could strike northern Israel only. Now, many have a range of 400km, giving them the capability to strike almost all parts of Israel.
According to Resolution 1701, there should be no armed paramilitary forces in the 20km demilitarised zone between the Litani River and the Israeli border. Yet Hizbullah has made this a dead letter by setting up military infrastructure in hundreds of Shia villages south of the Litani River, with Iranian engineers and technicians on the ground engaged in training. It stores weapons near homes, schools and hospitals, turning the residents into human shields.
On three occasions since July 2009, explosions have occurred in such storage facilities. At Al-Shahabiya in September 2010, Hizbullah operatives sealed off the area after an explosion and prevented the entry of Unifil and Lebanese army inspectors for five hours until they had removed evidence of a cache. Hizbullah is thus essentially an outpost of the Iranian armed forces on Israel’s northern border. Like its allies, it refuses to recognise the right of Israel to exist. According to its 1985 charter, “our struggle will end only when this entity [ie Israel] is obliterated”.
It is clear Hizbullah has – in its arsenal, alliances and ideology – both the means and intent to pose a strategic threat to Israel. Political pressures within Lebanon may motivate it to attack Israel again as a diversion.
The lessons in all this for Israel are that international resolutions remain a fiction if they are not backed by a real willingness to enforce them, and that Israel may once again have to rely on its own resources to defend its citizens.
We continue to hope the international community may find the will to give Unifil the authority it needs to complete its mission. If it can do this, the Irish military contingent will have the satisfaction of a job well done.
Boaz Modai is Israel’s ambassador to Ireland