UNIFIL can only look on as Israel-Hezbollah tensions mount
There is something misleading about referring to UNIFIL, the UN interim force on the border between Israel and Lebanon, as a peacekeeping mission. There is no peace to keep between the two, as they are still officially at war, while Hezbollah has become an arch enemy perceived by Israel as no more than a branch of Tehran on its northern border.
After years during which Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, seemed to understand that provoking Israel is bound to result in pre-emptive action or heavy retaliation, there has been an escalation in both rhetoric and aggressive acts by the Shiite organization that has hijacked and distorted Lebanese politics.
Since the 2006 war, both Israel and Hezbollah have been left licking their wounds in their own different ways. The latter has come to realize that Israel will exercise almost zero tolerance of its aggressive actions, and the longer the militant group continues to be armed by Iran and improve its capacity to strike against Israel’s main civilian centers, the less margin of error Israel will allow itself before it strikes. For Israel, the war exposed its vulnerability to missile and rocket attacks, as well as its inability to achieve its objectives through a ground invasion.
Although Nasrallah has been in hiding since 2006, his organization has been constantly challenging and probing Lebanon’s southern neighbor, while searching for new and different ways to remain relevant in Lebanese politics, much of this on the back of the confrontation with Israel. As is so often the case in the Middle East, opportunities for friction present themselves and escalate quickly. In the case of Israel and Lebanon, there is a growing danger that their maritime border dispute, exacerbated by the discovery of natural gas reserves of considerable commercial value, will lead to a deterioration in relations and will be exploited by Hezbollah in order to demonstrate its credentials as the force standing up to Israel.
Hence, when UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka recently briefed the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which was passed not only to set the terms of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah to end the 2006 war, but also to establish the parameters for long-term quiet on this troubled border, it was surprising that her main focus was on Lebanese domestic politics and not developments on the border, as was the case when the UN secretary-general reported to the Security Council on the implementation of the resolution over the first half of this year.
Neither report makes for hopeful reading, and this indicates a huge gap between the possibility of an outbreak of hostilities, and the role UNIFIL and the UN more generally could play in averting such an occurrence — one that is expected to be worse than anything witnessed before.
The situation has become more volatile as a result of Hezbollah and its allies both losing their parliamentary majority and increasingly becoming embroiled in foreign politics, as has been the case for more than a decade, much of its involvement being at Iran’s behest. It has lost crucial support as a social movement that set out to overcome the discrimination against Lebanon’s Shiite population and its under-representation in society and politics, but whose main purpose after four decades has become that of resistance to Israel’s attempts to impose its will on Lebanon.
The maritime dispute between the two countries is providing Hezbollah with the opportunity to assert itself as the champion of Lebanon’s sovereignty, regardless, or perhaps because of, the fact that negotiations between the two countries, mediated by Washington, are making good progress and the Karish gas field is expected to remain under Israeli control.
Still, early last month, Israel’s navy intercepted three surveillance drones launched by Hezbollah near the drilling platform, not long after Nasrallah had made a provocative speech claiming that he could prevent the gas field from becoming operational, fashioning himself as the “defender of Lebanon” and by that justifying Hezbollah’s indefensible existence as an independent military force that is not answerable to the elected bodies of the country.
Nevertheless, despite the Israeli intelligence community’s assessment that the likelihood of a full-blown confrontation with Hezbollah is relatively low, this possibility has not been dismissed, and the combination of Hezbollah’s increasing capabilities, its continued presence close to the border and Lebanon’s protracted political crisis, is creating a permanent sense of volatility. Hezbollah is reported to have recently erected within a short space of time as many as 16 observation points in the guise of serving the environmental group Green Without Borders. It would be a welcome development were Hezbollah to concentrate more on battling climate change and global warming, but this action fools no one, and instead has made Israel more apprehensive about the intentions of its enemy across the border.
Moreover, in a recent analysis for the Washington Institute, Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and currently a fellow at the institute, pointed out that for Israel to ensure the defense of its border with Lebanon, it is paramount for it to possess an accurate intelligence picture of its neighbor. But in recent years Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon’s skies, which is an obvious violation of the country’s sovereignty, is shrinking due to Hezbollah obtaining advanced air defense systems. While encroaching on another country’s sovereignty is problematic to say the least, Orion points to the increasing likelihood of confrontation and Israel’s view that gathering intelligence over the border is a keystone of its containment of any future threat; but in return this might lead to unintentional and miscalculated incidents in the Lebanese skies.
It remains to be seen if UNIFIL will be able to step up its game, with the support of the international community, to fulfil the only part of its mandate that it can, of remaining alert to developments that put at risk the long lull along this troubled border. Israeli–Lebanese relations have never been straightforward, and domestic Lebanese factors, the situation in Syria, and above all the Iranian factor, dominate the security discourse between the two countries. Under these conditions even the low likelihood of conflict could quickly escalate, and lead to a possibly unintended and explosive misadventure.
Source: Arab News
