Israel continues to isolate itself diplomatically after the IDF throws its weight around with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, writes Mick Hall.
Irish peacekeepers serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, on patrol along the Blue Line in the vicinity of UN Post 6-52 in southern Lebanon in July 2011. (UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz)
By Mick Hall
Special to Consortium News
An Irish-Israeli diplomatic crisis has been defused after Israel withdrew its invasion force from firing positions metres from a U.N. post in south Lebanon staffed by Irish peacekeepers.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins had called Israeli demands for U.N. peacekeepers to abandon their posts as its invading army crossed deeper into Lebanese sovereign territory “an outrageous threat.”
The incident underlined how Israel is increasingly alienating itself on the international stage while continuing to undermine institutions and instruments of international humanitarian law.
Israel’s coercion of Irish UN Peacekeepers to vacate their position at Marun ar Ras in southern Lebanon has failed
Facing down the aggressive Israeli provocation has ensured the invading forces could not establish a strategic base, and have now fallen back
Free Lebanon ?????? pic.twitter.com/b4yRRtCq4T
— Chris Hazzard MP (@ChrisHazzardSF) October 8, 2024
Satellite images published by Irish state broadcaster RTE showed two dozen Israeli Defense Force (IDF) military vehicles, including tanks, located just 60 metres from the boundary of U.N. outpost 6-52 last Saturday as it exchanged fire with Shia resistance group Hezbollah.
[The Washington Post reported Friday that Israel has wounded U.N. peacekeepers after Al Jazeera reported Thursday that “United Nations peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix tells UN Security Council that safety and security of peacekeepers in Lebanon is ‘increasingly in jeopardy’ as Israeli forces open fire on UNIFIL posts in country’s south, injuring two.”]
Since Monday 30 Irish soldiers stationed at UNP6-52, approximately 1km from the Lebanese town of Maroun El-Ras, had been bunkered down and isolated from their 300-odd comrades at Camp Shamrock, which lies West of Bint Jbeil and 7km from the border with Israel.
IDF dug in right beside a UN outpost in Lebanon. Pic taken by an Irish soldier and published in Irish Mirror this morning.
Clear and deliberate use of human shielding by IDF pic.twitter.com/tfpEF1CdeO
— killian forde (@KillianFor30537) October 7, 2024
Israel’s actions prompted accusations from Hezbollah, Lebanese media, and Irish Defence Minister Micheál Martin who said the IDF was using the Irish troops as cover, or human shields, as it extended its invasion. When asked by a journalist if Irish peacekeepers were being used as such, Martin said, “they’re certainly availing of the cover that that presents.”
The U.N. had been communicating with the Israeli permanent mission to the U.N. in New York over the ongoing situation. On Tuesday U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced the Israeli forces had moved away from the Irish position after high-level talks.
A force of over 347 Irish soldiers is stationed in Lebanon, 332 of whom are attached to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and stationed at Camp Shamrock (UNP 2-45), where RTE reported constant Israel drone activity above the camp last week.
They help make up a force of 10,000 UNIFIL international peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, which patrol the so-called Blue Line, a demarcation negotiated before Israel was forced from the country in 2006 following its invasion in 1982. More than 30,000 Irish troops have served in UNIFIL since its establishment in 1978.
UNIFIL forces deployment map in South Lebanon on 2018. (United Nations Interm Force In Lebanon, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
UNIFIL this week instructed all battalions to limit movements as Israel continues to encroach farther into Lebanon, attacking Hezbollah targets and killing thousands of Lebanese civilians as they go. UNP6-52 is in the most precarious position of the 29 U.N. posts, all within 5km of the Blue Line, it said.
The IDF had requested UNIFIL battalions to retreat from some positions at the weekend where it was moving into, which UNIFIL rejected.
On Saturday, Higgins, who as Irish president is also supreme commander of the Defence Forces, said Irish soldiers were risking their lives on behalf of defenceless civilians in southern Lebanese villages and that Israel’s demand was an insult to those carrying out their mission. He said:
“It is outrageous that the Israeli Defence Forces have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending. Indeed, Israel is demanding that the entire UNIFIL operating under U.N. mandates walk away.
“This is not only an insult to the most important global institution to which 193 members are committed, but it is also an insult to the soldiers and their families who have taken risks so we might all live in peace and protect the most vulnerable.”
Higgins speaking at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland, 2015. (UN Geneva, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The rejection of Israel’s request for U.N. forces to withdraw was much to the chagrin of its government and supporters.
On Monday, Washington-based think tank analyst and former director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center, Matthew R.J. Brodsky, even called for the area controlled by the Irish contingent to be carpet bombed and “napalmed.”
The Irish Defence Force on Monday had said troops’ movements had been limited, with supplies estimated to run out within weeks and the current environment not conducive to the movement of large convoys.
In a statement it said Israel had breached the Blue Line in multiple areas, raising “significant concerns, particularly regarding the breaches near our Irish Battalion posts.”
“These incursions have been accompanied by the establishment of a new military zone on the Israeli side, suggesting an intent to expand operations further,” it said.
Israel has been carrying out airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. It has also cut off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, a key route for people fleeing Israeli bombardment that has so far killed more than 2000 civilians, according to Lebanese authorities.
The office for Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said Harris had reiterated to Guterres on Monday that it was “unacceptable that U.N. resolutions and the blue line in southern Lebanon have been breached and violated with IDF military activity.”
Earlier UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Irish media there had been intense shelling between Hezbollah and the IDF at the weekend and warned UNIFIL may order withdrawals from the area if fighting intensified.
Pressuring UNIFIL forces and putting its peacekeepers in danger is a new escalation by Israel in its disdain for the activities of U.N. agencies since Oct. 7, 2003.
Israeli military during ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 31, 2023. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
It has widely targeted the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) after invading Gaza, targeting its schools and health centres, as well as its employees, while accusing the organisation of being infiltrated by Hamas. Up to this week, it had killed 226 U.N. employees in Gaza over the past year.
However, targeting U.N. peacekeepers would further isolate Israel on the global stage and cause serious fallouts with the countries of origin of any soldiers killed or injured while patrolling the Blue Line.
The Israeli embassy in Dublin said Higgins’ interpretation of IDF requests to evacuate as “threats” were “unfounded and inflammatory,” as the requests for some troops to move were “for their own protection and safety.”
Tensions between Higgins and the Israeli embassy have been building for several months. Last month, Higgins accused the embassy of spying on him, intercepting and leaking a congratulatory letter sent to the newly-elected president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian.
Israel’s diplomatic relationship with Ireland has been strained for some time. As a former colony of England, support for Palestine among the general population has been high, with its politicians among the most vocal in criticising Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
However, much of the current government’s support for Palestinians has been tokenistic, with Harris’ right-wing coalition refusing to bring into law the Occupied Territories Bill (2018), which would ban trade with and economic support for illegal settlements in Israeli-occupied territories.
Harris meeting with his U.K. counterpart, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at Chequers, in July. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, CC BY 2.0)
It was passed by majorities in both the Irish Seanad (upper house) and the Dáil (lower house), which prompted U.S. lawmakers to warn of serious repercussions to the Irish economy if implemented.
The U.N. has historically found it useful to involve Irish troops in peacekeeping missions to sensitive areas like Lebanon and the Congo, partly due to their country’s historic policy of neutrality and history of colonialism, offering a fig leaf to populations they embed with.
[See A Blueprint for Counter-Insurgency in the West – Pt 1]
“He says that to understand Palestine, you have to understand British colonialism more broadly… He is hoping to show how the Irish experience was exported to India, Egypt and Palestine, and then returned to Ireland again during the Troubles…”
100% this. https://t.co/VgKhgB5L7k
— Joe Dwyer (@JoeEDwyer) October 9, 2024
Forty-eight Irish soldiers were killed in Lebanon after their initial deployment in 1978 up to 2000, when Ireland completed its first deployment to UNIFIL. It sent its soldiers back as peacekeepers in 2006.
Several Irish peacekeepers were killed in Baraachit in separate incidents between 1986 and 1991, the same southern Lebanese town where an Israeli airstrike struck a municipal building on Monday, killing 10 firefighters in an attack reminiscent of the targeting of essential workers in Gaza over the past 12 months.
In 1986, an Irish soldier was shot dead after being fired on by IDF and Israeli militia forces positioned outside Baraachit. A year later an Irish soldier was killed when an IDF tank in the village fired shells into his U.N. post. In 1989 three Irish soldiers were killed by a land mine and shelling.
Ireland sent its soldiers back as peacekeepers after 2006, when Hezbollah forced Israel out of most of the country in a historic defeat for the Zionist state.
Mick Hall is an independent journalist based in New Zealand. He is a former digital journalist at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and former Australian Associated Press (AAP) staffer, having also written investigative stories for various newspapers, including the New Zealand Herald.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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The IDF and its leaders and predecessors are clucking insane. Did you see the new documentary where IDF soldiers posted on social media their atrocities and their gloating over them? Israelis desperately tried to remove the posts, but haha, already noted and recorded for the whole world to see. And world I hope is watching. Reminds me of the dancing Israelis after the attack of 9/11. HELLO! Do you see how a country can take over the minds and thoughts of its youth? And a nation? The youth of Israel has such a warped view that they can take a Palestinian boy to prison and create the conditions that that young boy raped by a dog. Deep throat? No, much worse. Israel is a nation of horrible monsters that has created, through its teachings in their schools and other measures, a nation of blood thirsty monsters, hard to blame for their youthful brainwashing. Our nation is the same or not far behind.
“The Israeli embassy in Dublin said Higgins’ interpretation of IDF requests to evacuate as “threats” were “unfounded and inflammatory,” as the requests for some troops to move were “for their own protection and safety.”
Tensions between Higgins and the Israeli embassy have been building for several months. Last month, Higgins accused the embassy of spying on him, intercepting and leaking a congratulatory letter sent to the newly-elected president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian. ”
OMG.
Israel is like the worst mother-in-law on Planet Earth.
Can we award the first Worst Mother-in-Law on Planet Earth Prize at a special meeting of the UNGA?
President Higgins fully understands the value of diplomacy. He also understands the importance of holding fast under threats from an aggressor state. He is to be thanked for his refusal to give way to Israeli demands.
Trade with the occupied territories!! disgusting.
IF Israel kills Irish soldiers, many more in Ireland will take notice. Big time…
And, the Irish in the USA will be getting really mad.
There is Nothing like an angry Irishman.
Even (maybe) the bought off Irish/American politicians,
“Even (maybe) the bought off Irish / American politicians” There are a shameful amount.
Following woeful deficiencies of integrity, bravery, conscience, and other moral qualities, AIPAC money may be the next most significant factor. There may be other reasons
But these are politicians. They depend on money, as much as their constituents depend on air to breathe.
What then to make of the silence of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States?
Aside from the aforementioned moral deficiencies, there must be some reason other than money, to account for their collective silence.
Guilt over some supposed historic transgression against people of the Jewish faith? Blackmail?
The US continues to provide FULL support to the Zionist pariah state of Israel. I would urge the Irish government to ignore threats from the Imperial US state. The only way to stop Israel is through the pocketbook and cut off all funding to the genocide state.
That’s not really the only way but more drastic ways are arguably suitable given the continuing immediacy of the activities which require whatever it takes to stop them in their tracks (I’m hoping for quick success by Iran and partners but don’t feel it’s appropriate to leave that just up to them).
Those Irish UN troops better be extremely careful. They’re dealing with Talmudic genocidal psychopaths who would slit their Irish throats in a second and then go have a bagel and a drink afterwards reminiscing about their murderous act.
The Irish UNIFIL contingent gave their promise to carry out their duty faithfully in South Lebanon, and they’re being careful now to keep that promise.
to warn of serious repercussions to the Irish economy if implemented.
Ah yes. Crude imperial threats…even more evidence of how the colonial atrocity state and its genocide are a joint venture.
But of course the U.S. would never try to interfere with Ireland’s sovereignty but is just alerting it to possible financial consequences (perhaps by sanctions or other responses from U.S. vassal countries especially in the EU which mostly qualify as U.S. vassals at least to some degree and as an EU member Ireland might be easily affected by such disapproval) if it enforces its existing legislation against financing Israel’s illegal settlements.
Now Ireland has been pretty cozy with NATO for decades and from the few glances I’ve had its mainstream media appear to have swallowed the Western narrative pretty much hook, line, and sinker, but Ireland still maintains its insistence on nominal military neutrality because its population favors that (but then again some of NATO’s newest members may not have had solid support from their own populations given the prevalence of the propaganda they’ve been exposed to).
The daughter of friends of mine lives and works in Ireland with her Irish husband but I would not presume to ask their opinion of this situation considering its political delicateness but if the opportunity arises may ask my friends if they felt free to offer their impression of what that might be (hoping that we’re still close enough for them to forgive me if they consider that subject to be too delicate as well).