The message has the merit of being clear. On Sunday, October 13, two Israeli tanks broke down the door of a UNIFIL base in Lebanon at dawn and forcibly entered a United Nations compound in a context where Israeli fire has already wounded five blue helmets from the interposition force in the previous days. This new incident adds to the pressure exerted by Israel to obtain the withdrawal of United Nations forces from southern Lebanon. To reinforce the point, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered, on the same day, peacekeepers to evacuate the south of the country, where his army entered on day 1.Ahem October to fight Hezbollah there. Addressing this strong petition to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, declared persona non grata in Israel, on October 2, Netanyahu threatened: “Their refusal to evacuate UNIFIL soldiers turned them into Hezbollah hostages. This endangers their lives and those of our soldiers. »
Also on Sunday, the Israeli army attempted to downplay the morning event at the entrance to the UNIFIL base, alleging that one of its units had been taken under fire by Hezbollah, during an attack that left around twenty of its soldiers wounded. and that the intrusion of a tank into the United Nations force compound was part of an evacuation maneuver. In the evening, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Antonio Guterres, recalled that “Attacks against peacekeepers are a violation of international law, including international humanitarian law. “They may constitute a war crime.” Forty UNIFIL contributing countries called, in a joint statement, for the protection of peacekeepers in Lebanon.
This did not deviate in any way from the Israeli position, which is part of a broader accusation against the United Nations and international justice institutions. The Jewish State’s recurrent attacks target not only the legitimacy of the UN and its judicial body, the International Court of Justice, but also that of the International Criminal Court, two institutions that implicate Israeli leaders, the way in which includes the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Peter Lintl, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, recalls that the tension between the Israeli governments and the United Nations is long-standing, but is now taking a paroxysmal form, or “crystallization”product of the context of the current war and the radicalism of the current power. “It’s probably the government [israélien] with the most hostile attitude ever observed towards the United Nations”, summarizes the region’s specialist.
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