A recipe for disaster
By Ze’ev Schiff
August 2, 2006
Haaretz
Original Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745300.html


Because of the difficulties and political foot-dragging involved in setting up an international force that is supposed to operate in Lebanon after the fighting is over, the Americans and Europeans proposed that the monitoring mission be placed for now on UNIFIL, whose troops are already deployed in southern Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is considered a force that has failed in a majority of its tasks, that has never managed to prevent hostilities and whose reports have been mostly opposed to Israel. 

The proposal to give UNIFIL sensitive monitoring tasks attests to how uncertain it is that the international force will manage to prevent Hezbollah's activity as a militia, as stipulated by Security Council Resolution 1559 from 2004. Tasking UNIFIL with sensitive missions is a recipe for disaster and trouble. One striking example was when three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah from Israeli territory in October 2000. The abduction was organized not far from a UNIFIL outpost, and the UN troops watched as the three were transfered to a car with Lebanese plates that fled the scene. 

UNIFIL was established in 1978 after Operation Litani, without the UN bothering to coordinate in advance with Israel the decision and deployment of the force. UNIFIL got into serious conflicts with the South Lebanese Army, which was working in coordination with Israel. UNIFIL did not manage to prevent the Palestinian shelling of Israel, just as it did not manage to prevent such shelling by Hezbollah. It did not play any role in preventing the war in 1982 when the IDF invaded Lebanon. 

UNIFIL's most striking and long-lasting failure was its failure to prevent the infiltration of terrorist and guerrilla cells from Lebanon into Israel, which caused numerous murders. The organization also failed to protect Lebanese civilians. Units from various countries have participated in UNIFIL. Some of the, have displayed professionalism, such as the unit from Fiji. Sometimes good relations were forged between Israeli representatives and UNIFIL commanders. But for the most part these relations were laden with misunderstandings. Not infrequently, a negative phenomenon occured in which relations soured between Israel and countries that contributed troops to UNIFIL. 

The force's lack of success was not a result of its belonging to the UN. In contrast to UNIFIL's failure, there is an opposite example of another UN force that manages to fulfill its tasks. This is the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, which was established after the Yom Kippur War. The primary reason for this is that UNDOF was deployed following agreement between the two sides, Israel and Syria, on setting up the force and its mandate. 

No expectations should be pinned on UNIFIL's actions against Hezbollah and its rockets in South Lebanon. UNIFIL will make do at most with noting incidents in its control zone. There is no chance it will take action against a rocket network or against armed people operating in the zone under its control. That could serve as a negative precedent for the UN force that will come to the region after it.