Israel urges UN action over Hezbollah ‘attack tunnels’
METULA, Israel: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the UN Security Council to condemn Hezbollah for digging cross-border ‘attack tunnels’ and to demand Lebanon prevent such activity from its territory.
Netanyahu’s remarks came ahead of a Security Council meeting to discuss what Israel says is a network of tunnels dug by the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group, of which at least four have been uncovered.
“I call on all the members of the Security Council to condemn Hezbollah’s wanton acts of aggression, to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organisation, to press for heightened sanctions against Hezbollah,” Netanyahu told foreign media in the Israeli parliament.
Israel also wanted the Security Council “to demand that Lebanon stop allowing its territory to be allowed to be used as an act of aggression and its citizens to be used as pawns, to support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iranian inspired and Iranian conducted aggression,” he said.
The army o transported journalists in armoured vehicles to film one of the tunnels just dozens of metres from the Lebanese border near the Israeli town of Metula.
The media trip came two weeks after the army announced the launch of an operation dubbed ‘Northern Shield’ to destroy tunnels it said have been dug under the border by Hezbollah.
The tunnel shown to journalists appeared to extend around 40 metres inside Israeli territory.
An exit point was not seen, only an access hole that had been dug above it.
Bulldozers were at work in the mud nearby close to the concrete barrier which Israel has built along the border.
Concrete was being poured into several holes that had been excavated.
“We’ll stay here until we’ve finished. It took Hezbollah years to construct these tunnels. Our operation will set them back years,” a military official told journalists, asking not to be named.
The UN said that an investigation it conducted showed two tunnels allegedly dug by Hezbollah snaked under the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon, but it did not find any exit points.
It called the findings a ‘serious violation’ of a UN resolution that ended the brutal 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, which was triggered by a Hezbollah raid on the same border.
The 2006 war was halted by a UN-brokered truce.
Hezbollah is the only group in Lebanon not to have disarmed after the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Netanyahu called the tunnels ‘an act of war’ and accused the Lebanese government of not preventing their creation.
“The Lebanese government, which should be the first to challenge this and protest this, is doing nothing at best, and colluding at worst,” he said.
Netanyahu noted that UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, has confirmed the existence of four tunnels, stressing that it must be given swift and ‘unlimited access’ to observe and document them.
The Israeli leader said the Lebanese army did not appear to have had prior knowledge of the tunnels being dug.