UN peacekeepers brace for conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah: NPR

Alma al-Chaab, Lebanon – UN vehicles rumble down an empty road in south Lebanon while villages are destroyed, homes destroyed and the ground burned and blackened Gone are the remnants of day-to-day attacks on the border with Israel that now threaten to escalate into all-out conflict.

Over the past nine months since the war in Gaza began, Israel and Lebanon have mostly confined border attacks to military objectives within an area a few miles from all sides of the historic ceasefire chain. However, recently, increased attacks by both sides, reaching far into both Lebanon and Israel, have raised concerns about intensified fighting.

In fact during this disagreement there is the United International Locations Intervention Time Drive in Lebanon, which was created in 1978 when Israel invaded the neighboring country. Despite the name’s indication that it may be temporary, UNIFIL has become one of the longest-serving peacekeeping missions in the world.

UNIFIL takes NPR on an updated patrol with the Blue Series – the cease-fire series painstakingly depicted the conflict in 2000 when Israel withdrew after the invasion in 1982. Occasional thunder signaled daily artillery and rocket attacks since Iran-backed Hezbollah. Began attacking Israel to assist Hamas in the conflict in Gaza.

“The situation is really quite volatile these days,” said Captain Alessandro Crepi, an infantry corporate commander of UNIFIL’s Italian contingent, one of the project’s greatest leaders.

View of UNIFIL’s armored automobile productions scattered from the war in Lebanon.

Diego Ibarra Sanchez for NPR

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Diego Ibarra Sanchez for NPR

UN infantrymen regularly patrol the de facto border, keeping an eye on each left and the Lebanese Army’s now habitual violations of a 2006 UN ceasefire promise. That agreement, drawn up after a 34-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, established a demilitarized zone along the Blue Series. Violations are reported to the United Nations Security Council.

Attacks on Israel are carried out by Hezbollah and its allies rather than the Lebanese army. However under the UN plan – which envisioned Lebanese government forces securing Lebanon’s border rather than Iran-backed Hezbollah – UNIFIL provides only the Lebanese government forces.

The arrangement meant that before the war began in October, when peacekeepers were still hosting indirect talks between Israeli and Lebanese military officials at UNIFIL grounds, the Lebanese army would relay Israeli messages to Hezbollah and vice versa. Lebanon and Israel have no diplomatic relations and officials do not discuss any options.

Those trilateral meetings around the U-shaped table – talking only with UNIFIL officers sitting at the end – were impulsively blocked with the beginning of the war. Lebanon has been going through a terrible political, security and financial disaster for quite some time. According to military analysts, Hezbollah, created to fight Israeli forces after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, is far more powerful and better equipped than the Lebanese army.

Regarding Lebanon and Israel, UNIFIL contingent member Lt. Col. Bruno Vio said, “We maintain relations with both sides.” “We have to try to de-escalate the situation to avoid any escalation and give diplomats the opportunity to reach a ceasefire.”

A UNIFIL member of the Italian contingent observes an Israeli position from a watchtower within the lower part of the blue chain between Lebanon and Israel.

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Diego Ibarra Sanchez for NPR

UNIFIL also conducts humanitarian missions as well as providing aid to hospitals. However, these talks were largely cut short due to border fighting. Even though mandatory evacuations did not take place in Lebanon and some civilians remained in their homes, more than 90,000 people were displaced by the fighting and left the border crossings to live in temporary shelters or with relatives. Thousands of civilians were displaced into Israeli territory after the government evacuated towns along the border.

Both sides say they want to stay away from conflict. Although Israeli forces are planning an offensive into Lebanon, Hezbollah’s chief has warned that if conflict erupts, the ulterior motives will go beyond limits.

“We do not want to go to full-scale war because our fight is a fight of support,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a June 20 speech, referring to the group’s aim of helping Hamas in Gaza by distracting Israeli forces. But everyone knows things can move forward,” he said in an address through an Iranian television interpreter.

The war between the two countries has long been a matter of concern for UNIFIL.

“The possibility of an error or mistake could lead to widespread conflict and that is the main concern for all of us,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said earlier this hour. “There are a lot of things that can lead to a miscalculation.”

A Ghanaian battalion maintains UNIFIL cars down below.

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Diego Ibarra Sanchez for NPR

UNIFIL has approximately 10,000 peacekeepers, with 47 countries participating. The United States is not part of this undertaking.

“The situation has been fairly stable since 2006,” Tennenty said. “Seventeen years of stability was pretty unprecedented. We were hoping to work toward a more lasting peace in the south of Lebanon.

UNIFIL now immediately concentrated on the fighting. But since October this project has become worse. More shelling means peacekeepers constantly blow up defenses at bases or even in concrete bunkers. On the Unifil floor closest to the blue chain, only a few hundred feet from Israel, holes in the sun panels are punctuated by shrapnel hitting the missiles that blasted through Israeli defenses in the air. The enterprise’s rules of engagement allow it to determine the value of pressure only in self-defense or to accomplish its tasks.

Just outside the perimeter below, like a tower where a UN soldier commands with binoculars at the border, trees are burned and blackened by incendiary attacks aimed at destroying opponents’ defenses. goes. From the tower, the Israeli coastal city of Nahariya can also be clearly seen.

A view shows an area destroyed by an Israeli attack in Alma al-Chaab, southern Lebanon.

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In Yarin, perhaps Lebanon’s most rejected village, coolers of broken glass are still filled with beer outside a café. A clinical dispensary signal has been hit by shrapnel. An area collapsed in on itself and then there was a confrontation due to air strikes.

“It’s like a rollercoaster,” said Major Alfred Alhassan Issaka, head of UNIFIL’s Ghana contingent, one of the greatest members of the staff team on the project. “Living here for a very long time makes you get used to the situation. Now we have to change the way we work.”