UNIFIL Hinders Israel’s Self-Defense
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As the U.N. force in Lebanon gets beefed up and settles in, its commanders increasingly confirm worst-case scenarios drawn back in August, when the government of Israel enthusiastically supported the deployment of mostly European troops in Lebanon.
Back then, pessimists said an international force would need to maintain close ties and avoid confrontation with Shiite supporters of Hezbollah if it were to succeed. Consequently, the beefed-up U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon would hinder Israel’s ability to carry pinpoint operations across the border. Hezbollah would gain an ally, while the Israeli army would face a new obstacle.
Sure enough, top Paris officials and UNIFIL commanders said last week that U.N. troops have encountered no illegal weapons in the area along Israel’s border, where UNIFIL shares control with Lebanon’s army and Hezbollah. The French-led force was also unaware of any flow of illegal arms into Lebanon from across the Syrian border.
However, the French defense minister and President Chirac contended that Israel’s flights over Lebanon blatantly violated Security Council resolutions. After implicitly threatening to go with blazing guns against Israel’s highly esteemed air force, Paris declared victory Friday, announcing Jerusalem’s agreement to suspend flights over Lebanon for 48 hours.
Well, not quite.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Cabinet in Jerusalem yesterday that “the accumulating intelligence in our hands points to a rising effort to transfer arms” to Hezbollah. Paris might choose to turn a blind eye, but for Israel, Mr. Peretz said, “the legitimacy for overflights increases.” Israel’s flights are “extremely dangerous,” the French defense minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, told Turtle Bay reporters Friday. A day earlier, when UNIFIL’s commander, Major General Allain Pelligrini of France, said his force might need to change the rules of engagement to allow the use of anti-aircraft missiles against Israeli jets, U.N. spokesmen hastened to announce that no such change in rules was imminent.
Nevertheless, Ms. Alliot-Marie warned against the possibility of a “very serious incident,” in which French-led forces “could be brought to retaliate” against Israeli jets “in cases of self-defense.”
In a report to the Security Council on Thursday, Secretary-General Annan wrote that the disarmament of Hezbollah and of Palestinian Arab militias should be “settled as early as possible.” Paris, however, has long believed that disarmament can only be part of a political process and that any “pretext” used by Hezbollah to remain armed must be removed first. Israel’s violations “might be used as a pretext for some people to ignore the resolution’s requirements,” Ms. Alliot-Marie said Friday. Israel must also give up control over Shaba farms and half of the village al-Ghajar before the hoped-for dialogue with Hezbollah could begin, French diplomats have insisted.
But in Jerusalem, Hezbollah is seen as a force that was created by Iran to achieve military parity with Israel. Removing this or that pretext might not suffice with a group that calls for the removal of the Jewish state altogether.
Despite all its rhetoric, it is doubtful that Paris intends to lead UNIFIL into a military confrontation with Israel. Its policy, however, is hardly reassuring for those in Jerusalem, Beirut, and Washington who wondered back in August whether a French-led force could be trusted to truly terminate Hezbollah’s ability to wage war with Israel.
The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which is currently led by a French official, Jean Marie Guehenno, was traumatized by an event two years ago, in which U.N. troops in the Ivory Coast were attacked by helicopter gunships. Turtle Bay has also contended that Israel has carelessly, or even deliberately, killed four of its observers in Lebanon during the last war.
As the United Nations is increasingly being asked to deploy troops in the world’s hot spots, I am told that Washington is lobbying the incoming secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to appoint an American to head the peacekeeping operation. The peacekeeping department, which often relies on poorly trained troops from Third World countries, could certainly use a reinvigoration at the top. A good American leader might be more capable of carrying out such a task than the French are.
Meanwhile, Israel needs to reconsider its expectation that the “international community” could be useful in promoting its security needs. The deployment of European troops in Palestinian Arab areas, which only recently has been promoted by those who hoped for successful cooperation with Turtle Bay in Lebanon, seems unlikely after last week’s war of words between Paris and Jerusalem.