The UN challenges Israel’s call to withdraw peacekeepers from southern Lebanon

The United Nations has refused to withdraw its peacekeepers from southern Lebanon despite repeated demands from Israel, which has accused the UN of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah.

The UN insists its forces, operating under a Security Council mandate, will remain in place even as Israeli military operations in the region intensify.

Tensions between Israel and the UN peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), have escalated in recent days with claims that Israeli tanks stormed the UN base.

A UN peacekeeper was also wounded in southern Lebanon on Saturday after being hit by gunfire, the fifth member of the multinational force to be wounded in recent days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered UNIFIL to move, claiming its bases were providing cover for Hezbollah fighters, but the UN has insisted its presence is crucial to the international supervision and stability.

It comes as the UN Refugee Agency reported that 25% of Lebanon was now under Israeli evacuation orders.

On Tuesday, the UN human rights office said 22 people, including 12 women and two children, had been killed in an attack on a building in northern Lebanon.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the peacekeepers will remain in all their positions, even though Israel has urged them to move three miles north during his land invasion of Lebanon.

He also confirmed that five UNIFIL peacekeepers had been injured in recent days and that the UN has protested to Israel. Israel has indicated that “investigations will be carried out into some of these incidents … and we will see what comes out of it,” he said. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Israel has tried to maintain constant contact. with UNIFIL and that any instance of UN forces will be investigated “at the highest level”.

Netanyahu has called on UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah. “We regret the injury to the UNIFIL soldiers and are doing everything in our power to prevent such injury. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to remove them from the danger zone,” he said sunday

On Monday night, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement expressing their “deep concern” over recent “Israeli attacks on UNIFIL bases.”