E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Commander Major General Chok Bahadur Dhaka, of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), review the Guard of Honor at their arrival at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, south Lebanon, Sept. 11, 2024. (Pasqual Gorriz/U.N.)
Israel is embroiled in conflicts on numerous fronts — against Hamas in Gaza, against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, against a new crop of Palestinian militants in the West Bank, against the Iranian-allied Houthis in Yemen, against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq and against the theocratic regime in Iran itself, which is in the crosshairs of a looming Israeli reprisal after a recent rocket barrage on the Jewish state.
Now, add the United Nations into the mix.
On Thursday, Israeli forces fired on three positions in Lebanon staffed by the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. At least two peacekeepers were injured and had to receive treatment, according to a UNIFIL statement, after an Israeli tank fired toward an observation tower at their main headquarters in the southwest city of Naqoura. The group — a legacy of international efforts to maintain the peace after Israeli invasions of Lebanon — has a force of some 10,000 peacekeepers of varying nationalities in bases scattered across the Israel-Lebanon border.
Their presence has been complicated by Israel’s ongoing operations against Hezbollah, which include both heavy bombardments and airstrikes across the country as well as ground maneuvers. More than 2,000 Lebanese people have been killed, many of whom are civilians. Satellite imagery obtained by my colleagues showed Israeli military vehicles encircling at least one U.N. base. Israel had issued vague orders for UNIFIL to evacuate at least some of its positions, but the peacekeepers’ countries of origin collectively agreed to maintain the mission.
A statement from the Israel Defense Forces noted that Hezbollah operates in areas near UNIFIL bases, and suggested the peacekeepers remain in “protected” areas. A UNIFIL statement Thursday, meanwhile, accused Israeli soldiers of deliberately targeting at least one U.N. base, where they fired at and disabled its perimeter-monitoring cameras.
The spat is only the latest flash point between Israel and the world’s most important international organization. A General Assembly resolution last month called on Israel to dismantle illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a withdrawal that would be unthinkable to Israel’s far-right government. Separate cases for genocide and war crimes against Israel and Israeli officials are running through the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s top court, and the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, in Israeli discourse, the United Nations is a frequent target of scorn, seen as a biased instrument of myriad member states angry at Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories. When he addressed the General Assembly in New York in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the international body a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
Earlier this month, the country’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, declared the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres “persona non grata,” barring him from entering Israel after the latter made a statement condemning the “broadening” nature of the conflict in the Middle East without specifically decrying Iran’s rocket barrage. Guterres later said his disapproval of Iran’s actions was “obvious” in the context of his remarks, while a host of Western powers chided Katz for his reaction.
The U.N.’s main agency for Palestinians, known by the abbreviation UNRWA, has long been reviled by Israel as an alleged accomplice to Palestinian extremists. UNRWA forms the bedrock of the entire aid and humanitarian system in the region for Palestinians, and is deeply embedded in Palestinian society. It’s a sprawling agency with tens of thousands of local employees — a tiny fraction of whom may have ties to groups like Hamas.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Israeli authorities have sought to scrap funding to UNRWA and undermine its international mandate. This week, the country’s parliamentarians pushed legislation that would evict UNRWA from its holdings and strip the agency of its privileges and protections. On Thursday, it appeared Israel was set to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in Jerusalem and use the land upon which it sits for new settlements.
U.N. and Western officials fumed over the latest moves. If UNRWA was impeded from doing its “essential” work, Guterres said, citing its crucial role in the delivery of aid to stricken Gaza, “it would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said at a Wednesday session of the Security Council that the proposed Israeli legislation was a violation of international law. He warned that it would collapse the entire humanitarian system in Gaza and wipe out the prospect of schooling for Palestinian kids. “More than 650,000 children would lose any hope of resuming their education and an entire generation would be sacrificed,” he said.
Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. envoy, said the extremist “infiltration” in UNRWA “is so ingrained, so institutional, that the organization is simply beyond repair,” declaring that terrorists were “running classrooms” in UNRWA schools. U.N. officials have dismissed these Israeli allegations as hyperbole.
In the same session, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared to side with UNRWA, saying that only “a small percentage” of UNRWA staff were alleged to have ties with Hamas and called on Israel to furnish more evidence substantiating some of its claims. “We know that U.N. personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work,” she said, gesturing to the perilous security situation in Gaza.
Lazzarini laid out the larger stakes behind the feud. “They target not just UNRWA, but any individual or entity calling for compliance with international law and peaceful political solution,” he said, taking aim at the Israeli handling of the war, which has flattened Gaza, displaced virtually the entirety of its population and led to ten of thousands of civilian deaths. He said Israel’s attempts to ostracize a U.N. agency, if successful and unchallenged, “would mean the post-World War II rules-based international order is at an end.”
Israeli officials would likely scoff at such rhetoric. They instead cast their actions as necessary to restore their country’s security against myriad rocket-firing enemies. Netanyahu has issued statements essentially calling for regime change in both Lebanon and Iran, while Israel’s boosters in the United States see in its expanding wars an opportunity to “remake” the political map of the Middle East.
Others are more wary. “There is a scenario in which Israel’s military exploits change the region for the better,” Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, wrote. “Unfortunately, far from being the standard-bearer for some enlightened political vision, Israel’s current government is committed to fighting a war on all fronts, with no view toward any political future that Israel’s neighbors could possibly accept.”
