Benjamin Netanyahu did not give the Lebanese any room for action. On Tuesday, the Israeli Prime Minister put an entire people at a crossroads: either you put an end to Hezbollah, or our army will engage you all in “a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering, as we see in Gaza.” But Lebanon has not had time to assimilate the threat: over the past two days, the Israeli Defense Forces have already undertaken actions reminiscent of the war we have been witnessing for a year in the Palestinian enclave.
Thursday only, Israel opened fire on two UN bases in the morning, and bombed a neighborhood considered safe in Beirut in the afternoon. Around 7:30 p.m., two missiles hit the neighborhoods of Nueire and Ras el-Nabé, where Israel was seeking to “eliminate” more than one Hezbollah commander. The main target of these attacks was, according to three security sources, Wafiq Safadirector of Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for collaborating with Lebanese security agencies.
The attempted assassination of Safa represents a broadening of Israel’s objectives within Hezbollah, which until now have focused on the group’s military commanders and senior leaders. According to information published Thursday evening, Safa survived. But this is not the case for at least 22 people who were in the bombed area. Among them, a family of eight people displaced from southern Lebanon in the capital. The attacks also left at least 117 injured.
A few hours before the attack in these neighborhoods of Beirut, very close to the city center, Israel attacked a UNIFIL basethe UN mission in Lebanon. In Naqoura, on the Lebanese side of the border, an Israeli tank fired on a watchtower, injuring two Indonesian peacekeepers.
On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Forces had already “deliberately fired and disabled” the cameras monitoring the area, so that “It will be more difficult to monitor whether Israel respects international law”said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti.
Tenenti said Thursday that the Naqoura “incident” is one of “the most serious seen in the last 12 months.” He also clarified that the United Nations peacekeeping forces are determined to remain at their posts in southern Lebanon: “We are here because the Security Council [de la ONU] He asked us. We will therefore stay until the situation prevents us from operating. »
The 50 countries contributing to UNIFIL agreed on Thursday to maintain the deployment of more than 10,400 peacekeepers between the Litani River in the north and the UN-recognized border between Lebanon and Israel, known as the Blue Line, in the south. However, UNIFIL can barely fulfill its mission of keeping the south of the country free of weapons and armed personnel not belonging to the Lebanese state.
Desde las resoluciones que le dieron su forma actual en 2006, la región donde operan los cascos azules ha estado controlada de facto por Hezbolá. Además, en las últimas semanas, la fuerza de la ONU no ha podido evitar una lenta pero progresiva invasión terrestre israelí en el Líbano.
Fuentes de EL ESPAÑOL confirman que las tropas españolas en la región llevan semanas resguardadas en los búnkeres, sin poder realizar su misión ni atender a la poca población que ha decidido no huir de los pueblos del sur del Líbano más cercanos a la frontera con Israel. “No se puede salir más que a buscar provisiones, y solo cuando Israel da luz verde”, confirma una fuente, que apunta que la mayoría de los vecinos del batallón son libaneses cristianos.
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Un aviso a la ONU
En su intervención del jueves, Tenenti dijo también que algunas bases están acogiendo a libaneses desplazados de zonas atacadas por Israel. Y ahí se escuda el Ejército de Netanyahu: las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel acusaron después del ataque de esta semana a Hezbolá de “operar” cerca de los puestos de UNIFIL en el sur del Líbano.
La retórica recuerda a la que Tel Aviv ha empleado en los últimos doce meses contra la UNRWA, equivalente de UNIFIL en la franja de Gaza. Desde el comienzo de la guerra, Israel ha acusado a las fuerzas de mantenimiento de paz en el enclave palestino de albergar en sus instalaciones artillería de Hamás, así como de contar entre su personal con combatientes del grupo armado.
Las tensiones entre el gobierno de Netanyahu y la ONU llevaron a que, el pasado 2 de octubre, Israel declarara persona non grata a António Guterres, secretario general de la organización internacional.
El ministro israelí de Asuntos Exteriores, Israel Katz, acusó entonces a Guterres de no condenar “inequívocamente” el ataque con misiles de Irán contra Israel de principios de mes. “Este secretario general da respaldo a terroristas, violadores y asesinos de Hamás, Hezbolá, los hutíes [de Yemen] and now, Iran – the mothership of global terrorism – will be remembered as a stain on UN history,” Katz published in X.
While 226 UNRWA workers died in Gaza last year, the first aid worker has already died in Lebanon. On Thursday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix acknowledged to the Security Council that UNIFIL’s more than 10,400 peacekeepers were “increasingly in danger “.
