UNIFIL peacekeepers will keep their current positions in Lebanon despite calls from Israel to move as the war with Hezbollah intensifies, their leader Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Monday.
“It was decided that UNIFIL would keep all its positions despite calls by the Israeli army for it to liberate the positions which are near the Blue Line” between Lebanon and Israel, added the French diplomat.
While tensions between Israel and the UN mission are increasing and five peacekeepers were injured by the Israeli army, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday to put UNIFIL “shelter immediately”. On Monday, he called for a “temporary withdrawal” of these forces.
The UNIFIL peacekeepers are “destined to stay,” said French Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu on Monday, two days before a meeting of European contributors to the mission.
“The day the guns fall silent (between Israel and Hezbollah), there will still be this Blue Line (separating Lebanon from Israel), there will be Resolution 1701 or a new resolution, there will still be a zone the neutralization of which will have to be assumed,” he explained on the public channel France 5.
“This is why the mission is intended to remain. It is the United Nations which put in these forces, it is up to the United Nations to withdraw them, unless otherwise ordered by the various contributing nations,” he added.
The European countries contributing to UNIFIL (Italy, France, Spain and Ireland) are due to meet on Wednesday by videoconference to agree their positions on Israeli operations within the perimeter of the headquarters and posts of the international force.
The words of Sébastien Lecornu echo those of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, according to whom “there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL”.
UNIFIL includes around 10,000 peacekeepers. Its largest contingents come from Indonesia, India, Ghana, Italy and Nepal. Malaysia, Spain, Ireland and France also contribute men.
With AFP
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