If the mission of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is to prevent hostilities between Israel and armed militants operating out of southern Lebanon, then it has utterly failed. That is by now no secret. Even so, many persist in the notion that this failure wasn’t UNIFIL’s fault, or even that the organization has fulfilled its duties.

A former UN peacekeeper previously deployed to southern Lebanon put the lie to that in an interview this week with Danish media.

“We were totally subject to Hezbollah,” the peacekeeper, identified only as “Michael” told the online Danish news outlet B.T. regarding his time in southern Lebanon about a decade ago.

About one year ago, an Israel Today reader insisted that it was not UNIFIL’s job to enforce UN resolutions or use force to prevent hostilities between Hezbollah and Lebanon.

While that might technically be true, it’s really a case of splitting hairs, because according to its mandate, it is UNIFIL’s job to make sure Hezbollah no longer exists as an armed force in southern Lebanon.

In its expanded mandate, UNIFIL is given the following duties:

• Monitor the cessation of hostilities.
• Assist the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in establishing between the Blue Line and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL deployed in this area.
• Take all necessary action…to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind…
• Resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council.

Even if one can argue that UNIFIL troops aren’t supposed to engage in combat to fulfill their mission (though the above points kind of suggest they are), they have just as utterly failed as observers.

Unbelievable: an underground Hezbollah position only 100 meters from the UNIFIL base pic.twitter.com/JgV4B5Vjhv

— איתי בלומנטל 🇮🇱 Itay Blumental (@ItayBlumental) October 13, 2024

Michael the “whistleblower” said it wasn’t simply a case of sticking their heads in the sand. Hezbollah owned them.

“We clearly had limited freedom of movement. For example, we never operated after dark for fear of Hezbollah. So they had free time in the evening and night hours,” he recounted, noting that when Hezbollah didn’t want UNIFIL to see something, “they’d simply block the road.” And the UN troops would move on as instructed.

When the UN forces did report violations, especially of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, “nothing ever happened. We did not hear back from [our superiors], and nothing was initiated. It was wildly frustrating, and it only confirmed to me what I had experienced in other countries I was posted to: The UN is incompetent.”

Michael stressed that this was 10 years ago, and he can only imagine how much more Hezbollah is now entrenched and in control thanks to UNIFIL’s failures.