Failure Force
UN won’t stop Hezbollah’s new march to war
‘PRECISION-guided missile factories” are being built in Lebanon and Syria, and unless the UN stops them, Israel will. That, more or less, was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem on Monday.
The new UN chief vowed to “do everything in my capacity to make sure that the [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] fully meets its mandate.” UNIFIL, established after Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah in south Lebanon, was charged with disarming Hezbollah. It didn’t.
The UN Security Council is set to renew UNIFIL’s mandate Wednesday. It automatically does so each year, even as Hezbollah, no longer a ragtag organization, now commands a formidable Lebanese-based army that dominates vast swaths in Syria, with tentacles in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. All while UN forces look on.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has amassed over 100,000 missiles and other arms, hidden in plain view at private homes, or under schools and infirmaries, ready to hit neighboring Israel. And as Bibi noted Monday, new factories in Lebanon and Syria would allow Hezbollah to manufacture missiles there, rather than risk losing them en route from Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.
“This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept,” the prime minister told Guterres.
Well, when Israeli leaders say they won’t “accept” something, they usually mean it — the country sets red lines and enforces them. But the UN? Could it actually help prevent a looming war?
Not with its current blasé attitude.
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley wants change. On Friday, she told reporters that UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Michael Beary of Ireland is the “only person in south Lebanon who is blind” to Hezbollah’s arming. In an unprecedented personal rebuke, Haley added, “That’s an embarrassing lack of understanding on what’s going on around him.”
Haley said she wouldn’t accept an automatic renewal of the force’s mandate, demanding “more robust” action on Hezbollah’s arms. Is that realistic? At the end of the devastating 2006 war, Israel welcomed the deployment of a strengthened “new” UNIFIL force to separate it from Hezbollah and declaw the terrorists, even though the old version time and again failed in its mission. Under the new plan, the Lebanese army was supposed to disarm Hezbollah, with the UN’s active assistance.
Since then, Hezbollah muscled and murdered its way to dominating all walks of life in Lebanon. It now controls or has influence over all government branches. A majority of the troops enlisted in the Lebanese army are Shiite — many with Hezbollah ties or sympathies, and many with relatives in the organization.
The army won’t disarm Hezbollah.
In addition, UN forces operate in southern Lebanon, aka Hezbollah-land, where the gun-toting terrorists control every aspect of life. The UN is dependent on Hezbollah to assure it can freely move in its area of operation.
The UN won’t disarm Hezbollah.
Italians, Irish and other Europeans, the backbone of the UN force, won’t risk life or limb confronting an organization their governments are wishy-washy about. EU policy bans Hezbollah’s “military wing” but not its “political wing,” a make-believe distinction the group’s leaders and founders have long rejected.
But wait, “The Lebanese-Israeli border has been mostly quiet for 11 years, which means UNIFIL is successful after all,” a top European diplomat told me last week. No, sorry. What it means is that Hezbollah is better prepared for the next war.
With the planned missile factories, a new war may very well be around the corner. Israel is ready to act “with very great force” to eliminate them, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Guterres Monday.
The devastation of such a war on both sides, and the likely widening of the region’s instability, should worry policymakers worldwide.
We must reassess our belief that a “legitimate” Lebanese government will disarm Hezbollah, and those who lulled themselves into believing the UN is on the case need to rethink. We need a new, global strategy to isolate and declaw Hezbollah via sanctions, weapons-interception and, when needed, military means. And fast.