UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The United Nations Security Council is voting on a solution that would extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping project in southern Lebanon for one year, but its troop limit from 15,000 to 13,000 in reaction to U.S. pressure.
The French-drafted resolution also makes another concession to the Trump administration and its close ally Israel. It calls on the Lebanese government to facilitate “prompt and full access” to sites requested by U.N. peacekeepers for investigation, including tunnels crossing the U.N.-drawn Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel.
The draft urges UNIFIL to freedom of movement and unrestricted all parts of the Blue Line, and condemns “in the most powerful terms” all attempts to limit the movement of UN troops and attacks on project personnel.
The resolution, if adopted, would give the United States a symbolic victory, but it would also be almost in fact welcomed by many countries that UNIFIL is essential for peacekeeping in this volatile region and contributes firmly to its current, largely maintained mandate.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote to the Council on 29 July recommending a 12-month renewal of UNIFIL’s term of office, stressing the importance of maintaining a gigantic number of troops.
Adoption of the solution would reduce the troop limit from 15,000 to 13,000, but would not require any relief in the existing peacekeeping force. This is because UNIFIL is about 10,250 men, well below the ceiling.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all 15 board members voted for the solution via email. Voting began on Thursday afternoon and ends on Friday afternoon. Security Council President Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesia’s ambassador to the UN, said the effects will be announced Friday night.
UNIFIL was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after a 1978 invasion. The project expanded after a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah militants so that peacekeepers can deploy along the Lebanese-Israeli border to help Lebanese troops expand their authority in the south of their country for the first time in decades.
Israel has accused Hezbollah, which is subsidized through its greatest enemy, Iran, of preventing peacekeepers from fulfilling its mandate, an opinion that strongly supports the Trump administration.
In 2019, Israel destroyed a series of attack tunnels dug into the border through Hezbollah. The militant organization brought Israel to a standstill in a one-month war in 2006.
Israel’s former ambassador, Danny Danon, said in May that Israel would insist that peacekeepers have access to all sites, have freedom of movement, and that each and every time they are blocked, the Security Council should be informed without delay.
U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft at the time tweeted that UNIFIL had been “prevented from fulfilling its mandate” and that “Hezbollah was able to arm itself and expand its operations, putting other Lebanese people at risk.”
He stated that the Security Council “must make serious adjustments to empower UNIFIL or realign its workforce and resources to the responsibilities it can perform.”
The solution followed recognizes “that UNIFIL has effectively fulfilled its mandate since 2006 and has enabled the maintenance of peace and security since then”, and the Security Council would authorize cap relief from 15,000 to 13,000 troops.
The draft solution stipulates that the force force may be greater in the long term in the event of a “safety degradation”.
According to UNIFIL, it has recently had about 10,250 soldiers, adding more than 9,400 floor soldiers and more than 850 naval forces of workers assigned to its maritime working group. In addition, the project has approximately 900 civilian employees, both domestic and foreign.
The draft solution would affirm “the Security Council’s continued firm commitment to UNIFIL’s current mandate”. And this would reaffirm the need for the Lebanese armed forces to deploy to southern Lebanon and its territorial waters “at an accelerated rate” to implement a key mandate provision.
The draft calls on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide the first elements of a plan for UNIFIL’s “efficiency and effectiveness” within 60 days.
On the US and Israeli issue, the solution would reiterate the Council’s call for “rapid conclusion” of investigations into all attacks on UNIFIL in order to bring perpetrators to justice. And I would ask the Secretary-General to “report to the Council, within a moderate time, when such incidents occur.”