PM Netanyahu: “It is time for you [Guterres] to remove UNIFIL from Hezbollah's strongholds and from the fighting areas.”
The peacekeeper force won’t evacuate southern Lebanon, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutters said Sunday night as he rejected Israel’s call that they leave the area for their own safety.
“Peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly” along Lebanon’s border with Israel, Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, “The Secretary-General reiterates that the safety and security of UN personnel and property must be guaranteed and that the inviolability of UN premises must be respected at all times,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a public appeal for the evacuation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) from the area that was now an IDF-Hezbollah battle zone.
“The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields,” Netanyahu said in a video statement in Hebrew.
The perch of the 10,000-member force has become particularly precarious after the IDF entered southern Lebanon at the start of October to oust the Iranian proxy group from that area.
IDF troops operate in southern Lebanon. October 13, 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
“It is time for you [Guterres] to remove UNIFIL from Hezbollah’s strongholds and from the fighting areas,” Netanyahu stated.
He rephrased in English: “Mr. Secretary-General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately."
“We regret the harm to UNIFIL soldiers, and we are doing our utmost to prevent such harm. But the simplest and most obvious way to ensure this is simply to withdraw them from the danger zone,” Netanyahu stressed.
He spoke after a number of incidents in which IDF fire hit UNIFIL bases on the Lebanese side of the north border, injuring some of the peacekeepers.
International community responds
The hits have angered the international community, which has already been upset with Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah, even though most global leaders believe that the non-state actor must vacate Lebanon.Italian President Giorgia Meloni was the latest leader to express outrage. In a phone call with Netanyahu, she called the attacks “unacceptable” and stressed that the peacekeepers must be protected at all times, according to her office.
The United States and a number of other European countries – chief among them France and Spain – have criticized Israel over the attacks.
“Unfortunately, several European leaders are applying pressure in the wrong place,” Netanyahu stated. “Instead of criticizing Israel, they need to direct their criticism at Hezbollah, which is using UNIFIL as a human shield.
