AP / October 13, 2024
TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon of serving as “human shields” for Hezbollah after Israeli strikes wounded five of them in recent days.
The Israeli military has warned UNIFIL to evacuate southern Lebanon as it carries out air and ground operations against Hezbollah militants, but the peacekeepers have so far refused.
Netanyahu said Sunday that their refusal to clear out “has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields,” saying they had become “hostages of Hezbollah.”
“We regret the injury to the UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injury. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone,” he said in a video addressed to the U.N. secretary-general, who has been banned from entering Israel.
The military has ordered the peacekeepers to move five kilometers (three miles) north, which would effectively keep them from doing their mission. They have already halted patrols because of air and ground attacks.
Israel has long accused the U.N. of being biased against it and relations have plunged further since the start of the war in Gaza. It has accused the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees of having been infiltrated by Hamas, allegations the agency denies.
Italian premier says UN peacekeeper security must be guaranteed
ROME — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the security of U.N. forces in southern Lebanon must be “guaranteed at all times.”
In a phone conversation Sunday with Netanyahu, Meloni also stressed that UNIFIL “acts under a mandate from the Security Council to contribute to regional stability.” She reiterated “the absolute necessity that the security of UNIFIL personnel be guaranteed at all times.”
Netanyahu says Hezbollah uses U.N. peacekeepers as “human shields” after Israeli strikes wounded five of them in recent days.
The Italian premier also said she is convinced that, through the full implementation of U .N. Security Council Resolution 1701, “we can contribute to the stabilization of the Israeli-Lebanese border and ensure the return home of all displaced persons.”
Both Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in southern Lebanon to enforce the resolution that ended a bloody monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
