If it feels as if Israel is at war with the world, it is…with the UN
It feels as if Israel is at war with the world. That isn’t true, of course. Hamas in Gaza is not the world. Hezbollah in Lebanon is not the world. The new bunch of Palestinian militants in the West Bank that is drawing Israeli fire is not the world. The Iranian-allied Houthis in Yemen are not the world. Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq are not the world. And the Iranian regime is not the world. Those are all the forces that Israel admits to be tackling in order to protect its right to exist.
But the United Nations (UN) is the world. Isn’t it?
With 193 sovereign states as its members, the UN is the world’s largest intergovernmental organisation. It’s supposed to be as near a representative of the world order as it’s possible to get.
So why does Israel seem to be going to war with the UN?
On October 12 came reports that Israeli gunfire hit and wounded a fifth UN peacekeeper in Naquora, southern Lebanon.
The nationality of the fifth wounded UN peacekeeper is not clear at the moment but we do know about the other four injured on October 10 and October 11. On October 11, Israel injured two Sri Lankan soldiers deployed to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), the 46-year-old mission composed of just over 10,000 peacekeepers from multiple nations.
The day before that it was two Indonesian Unifil soldiers who were injured when they fell from an observation tower after an Israeli tank fired towards it.
Firing at the UN appears to be a feature rather than a bug of Israel’s evolving strategy for its expanding war. Just days ago, Israel called on UN peacekeeping troops to withdraw from their posts along the Blue Line, the de facto border with Lebanon, as it pushed ahead with its ground invasion into southern Lebanon. Ireland, which has 347 troops stationed in southern Lebanon as part of a joint battalion with Polish soldiers, rejected those calls.
It’s almost never happened that a UN member state takes aim at a UN peacekeeping force. Al Jazeera quotes UN data as follows: From 1948 to the end of August 2024, 4,398 UN peacekeepers on missions all over the world have been killed. Of these fatalities, 1,629 were due to illness, 1,406 were caused by accidents, 1,130 by malicious acts and 233 were due to “other reasons”, according to data from the UN. According to Al Jazeera, we’d have to go back 30 years to find an example of a UN member state attacking UN forces. Quoting the NGO Human Rights Watch, it said: “In 1994, 10 Belgian soldiers in the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda were killed by soldiers from UN member Rwanda, HRW reported”.
Unsurprisingly, the world is alarmed by Israel’s actions. Indonesia, Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, the European Union and Canada have condemned Israel’s actions.
It’s a bit of a mystery why more countries aren’t speaking up and speaking out, but that may come. According to Al Jazeera, as of September 2, 10,058 Unifil soldiers are deployed in Lebanon and they come from 50 countries. While the largest number — 1,231 — come from Indonesia, Italy, India, Nepal and China also contribute a large number of soldiers to the peacekeeping force.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
