BEIRUT: The head of Lebanon’s powerful Shiite armed group Hezbollah warned on Monday evening against renewing on the same terms the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country’s south.
The mandate of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which expires Thursday, was extended last year with a slight modification that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah criticized at the time as “a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”
He did so again on Monday.
“A foreign armed force that moves on Lebanese territory without authorization of the government and Lebanese army, without coordination with the Lebanese army, where is the sovereignty in all that?” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
Under the modified mandate the peacekeeping force “is allowed to conduct its operations independently,” the UN resolution said.
The Security Council on Wednesday is to meet on extending UNIFIL’s mandate.
UNIFIL was first deployed more than four decades ago. It has routinely coordinated patrols and movements in its area of operations in the south with the Lebanese army.
But Lebanon’s government has also objected to the absence, in the UN resolution, of a stipulation that such coordination takes place.
On Monday, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib met in New York with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to convey Lebanon’s position, the country’s official ANI news service said.
UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack.
It was beefed up in 2006 after Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war, and the force, with more than 10,000 troops and naval personnel, is tasked with monitoring a cease-fire between the two sides.
Israel and Lebanon are still technically at war.
In December an Irish soldier with UNIFIL was killed and three colleagues wounded when their convoy came under fire in south Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, near the Israeli border.
Days later Hezbollah handed over to Lebanese authorities a man suspected of being the main suspect, a security official said at the time. Hezbollah denied involvement in the killing of Private Sean Rooney, 23.
Considered a “terrorist” organization by many Western governments, Hezbollah is the only side not to have disarmed following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, and it is also a powerful player in Lebanese politics.
Hezbollah seeks restriction on UN’s Lebanon peacekeepers
https://arab.news/bsq6w
Hezbollah seeks restriction on UN’s Lebanon peacekeepers
- Under the modified mandate the peacekeeping force “is allowed to conduct its operations independently,” the UN resolution says
Israeli settler attack injures Palestinian baby, five arrested
- The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack
- Israeli police said five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair“
JERUSALEM: Israeli security forces announced on Thursday the arrest of five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an attack on a Palestinian home that injured a baby girl in the occupied West Bank.
The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
It blamed the attack on “a group of armed settlers,” accusing them of “throwing stones at homes and property” in the town of Sair, north of Hebron.
A statement from the Israeli police said that five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair.”
Israeli security forces had received reports of “stones being thrown by Israeli civilians toward a Palestinian home,” adding a Palestinian girl was injured.
“The preliminary investigation determined the involvement of several suspects who came from a nearby outpost,” the statement said, referring to Israeli settlements not officially recognized by Israeli authorities.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal by the international community.
Some are also illegal under Israeli law, though many of those are later given official recognition.
Almost none of the perpetrators of previous attacks by settlers have been held to account by the Israeli authorities.
A Telegram group linked to the “Hilltop Youth,” a movement of hard-line settlers who advocate direct action against Palestinians, posted a video showing property damage in Sair.
More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, as do around three million Palestinians.
Violence involving settlers has risen in recent years, according to the United Nations, and October was the worst month since it began recording such incidents in 2006, with 264 attacks that caused casualties or property damage.
The violence in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has surged since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, which triggered the Gaza war.
Since the start of the war, Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants as well as dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period.
