The international community considers Israel’s attack on UNIFIL’s headquarters a violation of international law.
The Israeli military has fired on the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon twice in less than 48 hours, the UN says.
Israeli forces repeatedly fired at a guard tower at the headquarters of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Thursday, injuring two members of the force, and again fired at a watchtower, injuring two more peacekeepers, on Friday.
It is almost unheard of for a UN member state to take aim at a UN peacekeeping force, so how significant are these incidents in the unfolding war in Lebanon?
On Thursday morning, Israeli forces used a Merkava tank to fire at an observation tower belonging to UNIFIL in Naqoura, a small border-area town in southern Lebanon where UNIFIL has been headquartered since 1978.
Two Indonesian peacekeepers were directly hit, causing them to fall.
“The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital,” a UN statement issued on Thursday read.
The statement added that on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers had “deliberately fired at and disabled” the monitoring cameras at UNIFIL’s headquarters.
On Friday, UNIFIL released a second statement saying two more peacekeepers had been injured when two explosions occurred close to an observation tower. One was taken for treatment at a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tyre while the other was being treated in Naqoura.
In 1978, Israel deployed its troops along the border with Lebanon after Palestine Liberation Organization members entered Israel from Lebanon by sea.
UNIFIL was established to oversee the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and to restore peace and security in the area.
After a 34-day war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, in which 1,100 Lebanese people were killed, UNIFIL’s mandate was expanded to monitor the cessation of hostilities and support Lebanese armed forces deployed throughout southern Lebanon.
As of September 2, 10,058 UNIFIL soldiers are deployed in Lebanon. They come from 50 countries.
The largest number of UNIFIL peacekeepers – 1,231 – come from Indonesia. Italy, India, Nepal and China also contribute a large number of soldiers to the peacekeeping force.
What happened?
From 1948 to the end of August 2024, 4,398 UN peacekeepers on missions all over the world have been killed.
The highest number of peacekeeper fatalities in one year took place in 1993 when 252 peacekeepers died during missions in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia and other locations.
In 2010, the second highest number of fatalities took place when 173 peacekeepers were killed. They included three peacekeepers with the African Union-UN Mission in Darfur during confrontations with unknown attackers.
In the same year, 43 members of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) died on January 12 in an earthquake in Haiti. Ten other MINUSTAH personnel died in 2010 in “acts of violence”, the UN website reported.
In 2017, the UN said an attack on peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was suspected to have been carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces armed group. That attack killed 14 Tanzanian peacekeepers and injured 44.
The deliberate targeting of UN missions amounts to a war crime, observers said.
“Under the laws of war, UN personnel involved in peacekeeping operations, including armed members, are civilians, and deliberate attacks against them and peacekeeping facilities are unlawful and amount to war crimes,” a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) explained.
HRW cited Article 8(2)(b)(iii) of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It lists the intentional targeting of humanitarian and peacekeeping missions as war crimes.
The UN statement that reported Thursday’s attack said not only was the deliberate attack a violation of international law but also a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. After Israel’s attack on Friday on the UNIFIL headquarters, the UN said: “This is a serious development, and UNIFIL reiterates that the safety and security of UN personnel and property must be guaranteed and that the inviolability of UN premises must be respected at all times.
“Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and Security Council resolution 1701 (2006).”
Military analyst Elijah Magnier told media that the recent incident was not the first time UNIFIL had come under fire from Israel.
In 1987, an Israeli tank squad opened fire on a village where a UNIFIL command post was located, killing an Irish peacekeeper.
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