SUCCESSIVE Israeli governments have been contemptuous of UNIFIL peacekeeping units and their monitoring role. Doubtless this was reinforced by anger at UN demands for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. It is thus no surprise that someone in the Israeli Army zeroed an artillery barrage and possibly also an aerial bombing attack onto a long-established UNIFIL position, killing four peacekeepers.
The Israeli government has expressed shock and regret and promised a full investigation. If similar past inquiries are anything to go by, it will be another whitewash, even though it ought to be simple to discover the truth. Israel has long been in possession of a highly detailed map of southern Lebanon. Its artillery would have been ranged on every conceivable target in the area. A UN position should never have been on such a list. Indeed its location should have been specifically excluded from any firing program.
That it was not suggests that that this was a deliberate attack ordered by officers of whatever rank who now operate on the basis that they can get away with any depravity. It is virtually certain now that the Israeli investigators will find that there was believed to be an Hezbollah position close to the UNIFIL post and that an unfortunate error led to shells being rained down on the wrong place. The point will, however, be made that had UNIFIL taken some positive action to move the Hezbollah men away from their base, they would have avoided the tragic attack.
Israel’s cavalier approach, not just to the lives of innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, but also to representatives of the international community should be giving pause for thought to NATO member countries. After all, it has been proposed that they should put a peacekeeping force of up to 30,000 troops into southern Lebanon. Representatives of the 15 countries who met yesterday in Rome, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, did a lot of hand wringing and demanded that the violence cease but could offer little in the way of a peace plan.
Some NATO countries may be wondering whose peace they will be expected to keep. If it is Israel’s peace, it could mean unleashing UN troops against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This would very quickly turn much of the Arab world against NATO and seriously degrade any chance of NATO’s success in its Afghanistan operations. Is it, however, remotely conceivable that NATO would go in order to keep Lebanon’s peace? That would surely mean shooting down Israeli aircraft entering Lebanese airspace or responding to a bombardment such as yesterday’s against UNIFIL with massive counter-battery fire.
That would require a large deployment of air and naval units as well as ground troops to ensure that Israel would cease its aggression. The UNIFIL attack yesterday was perhaps therefore planned at the highest level in Israel. It was meant to persuade NATO against becoming involved, even though the Israeli government is officially giving a “cautious” welcome to the idea.
