Israellycool

The Jerusalem Post reports on recently retired UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s “sadness.”

Outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed great sadness on Friday that he couldn’t help resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict during his term of office.

“It is with great personal sadness that I leave office with the (Israeli) occupation now in its 40th year,” he said in a message to a UN-backed conference on Palestine on Friday.

So-called occupation: sadness-inducing.
Innocent Israelis being killed by terrorists: ………

Goodbye to bad rubbish.

The French are getting testy.

French soldiers in Lebanon who feel threatened by aggressive Israeli overflights are permitted to shoot at IAF fighter jets, a high-ranking French military officer told The Jerusalem Post.

 

Wednesday, several days after meeting with an IDF general in Paris to discuss what he said was a “blatant violation of the cease-fire.”

 

Last weekend, Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, head of the IDF Planning Directorate, traveled to Paris and met with military officials to explain why the IAF flies over Lebanon despite the UN-brokered cease-fire.

 

Nehushtan, new to his post and previously deputy commander of the air force, told his French counterparts that Israel was conducting the flights to collect intelligence on Hizbullah positions in southern Lebanon.

 

According to the French officer, Nehushtan apologized for an incident on October 31 when an IAF fighter carried out a mock bombing run over a French UNIFIL position in southern Lebanon, almost prompting troops to fire anti-aircraft missiles.

 

“There was a reality on the ground and it was important for us to reaffirm what we had seen and explain clearly what are the orders of the French soldiers to protect themselves,” the French officer said.

 

The French told Nehushtan they would view further aggressive flyovers as a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

 

“No assurances were made to us that they [the IAF] would stop [the flights],” the French officer said. “The orders that the [French] soldiers have is that their weapons are for self-defense and if a commander will feel threatened, as it was about to happen on the 31st of October, he would have the right to use force.”

 

Milos Strugar, spokesman for UNIFIL, supported the French position, saying that according to the UN resolution, UNIFIL had the right to use force in self-defense, even against Israeli aircraft.

 

“UNIFIL has the right to take all necessary action to protect UN personnel in self-defense,” he said.

Contrary to Israeli hopes that the new multinational force in Lebanon will engage and disarm Hizbullah, the beefed up UNIFIL will not immediately open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they are on their way to an attack or even in the midst of an attack on Israel, the commander of the UN peacekeeping force, Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini, told The Jerusalem Post Thursday in an exclusive interview.

 

While the new rules of engagement set by the UN allowed the new UNIFIL force to open fire in order to implement resolution 1701, Pellegrini said he would not automatically order his troops to open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they were spotted on their way to the Blue Line to attack Israel. The job of the new multinational force, he said, was to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm or engage Hizbullah or even to prevent its attacks.

Newsflash: The UNIFIL force in Lebanon is doing diddley squat (hat tip: Shy Guy).

Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.UNIFIL commanders were interviewed by the paper, saying their function is to “observe changes in the behavior of the local population,”

Thanks for clearing that up, because I could have sworn their function was to:

..take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilised for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;

But maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Back to the report:

..with Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitting that no patrols are carried out at night “because of the danger involved.”

Why does this not surprise me? It’s as if they think they are on holiday.

One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion only left their camp once. “It’s absurd,” he said. “We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we’ve only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we’re seen.”The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with tradition Indian artwork.

Meanwhile, while UNIFIL troops spend quality time together in their sauna while smoking peace pipe, Hizbullah are rearming.

The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.

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The UN Security Council noted with regret Tuesday that ‚Äúnon-Lebanese militias in the country had not been disbanded or disarmed, an allusion to the Iranian and Syrian backed Hizbullah. The statement was termed a “presidential statement” which is the weakest of all available Security Council actions.

Following the meeting, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials “have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.”

Roed-Larsen added that Syria does not deny the flow of weapons either, claiming only that they are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. “The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, ‘Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,’” Roed-Larsen told reporters.

Roed-Larsen ducked UN responsibility for the smuggling, saying UN troops had not been asked by the Lebanese army to monitor the border.

At least not during daylight hours.

UN peacekeeping chief French Major General Alain Pelligrini on how UNIFIL may deal with Hizbullah terrorists on the way to attack, or even in the midst of attacking, Israel:

Contrary to Israeli hopes that the new multinational force in Lebanon will engage and disarm Hizbullah, the beefed up UNIFIL will not immediately open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they are on their way to an attack or even in the midst of an attack on Israel, the commander of the UN peacekeeping force, Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini, told The Jerusalem Post Thursday in an exclusive interview.

While the new rules of engagement set by the UN allowed the new UNIFIL force to open fire in order to implement resolution 1701, Pellegrini said he would not automatically order his troops to open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they were spotted on their way to the Blue Line to attack Israel. The job of the new multinational force, he said, was to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm or engage Hizbullah or even to prevent its attacks.

According to UN Security Council resolution 1701, UNIFIL was in Lebanon to “assist the Lebanese army,” Pellegrini said, and “to inform them and advise them how they can do their job.”

“We first will observe and then inform the Lebanese army,” he said. “If we see something dangerous we will inform the Lebanese army and it will decide whether it will act independently or consider having a joint reaction together with us.”

UN peacekeeping chief French Major General Alain Pelligrini on how UNIFIL may deal with IAF flights over Lebanon:

UN peacekeeping chief in Lebanon French Major General Alain Pelligrini said on Thursday that should diplomatic efforts fail to stop Israeli flights over Lebanon, force might be considered in the future.

His comments came as the son of slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri urged French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday to help stop the Israel Air Force’s overflights.

Pellegrini calledd the overflights “violations [of UN resolution 1701] because you have a foreign jet crossing first the Blue Line and entering the national Lebanese airspace.”

“If the diplomatic means should not be enough, maybe it could be considered other ways, we never know,” he added.

When asked if that meant in the future UN troops might consider preventing the overflights by force, Pellegrini replied, “it could be. It could be.”

“l think that it could be considered, and it will depend on new rules of engagement drafted and decided [at UN headquarters],” he said.

Let’s make it simple:

Update: Damage control.

For those UN “peacekeepers” in Lebanon, the fun and games have ended. There’s serious work to be done. Like ensuring that Hizbullah disarms engaging in a confrontation with the IDF.

UN and Israeli tanks have been involved in a brief face-off on a road in southern Lebanon where the Israeli army has been setting up checkpoints.

Four French Leclerc tanks with UN peacekeepers moved up the hill to stand 500 meters (yards) from the entrance to the border village of Marwaheen, as two Israeli Merkava tanks operated nearby on Lebanese soil.

Standing some 50 meters from each other, the tanks were locked in a 20-minute face-off, the first between the Israeli army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has been boosted to oversee the current truce.

Needless to say, this confrontation ended the same way that all confrontations involving the French end.

The French tanks then withdrew from the area, as observers of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation deployed in the area.

Update: Here’s an AP picture from the confrontation.

A French U.N. peacekeeper, left, gestures as he talks to an Israeli

soldier after French peacekeepers with Leclerc tanks blocked an Israeli

tracked armoured vehicle and jeeps from penetrating deeper into

Lebanese territory near the southern village of Marwaheen, Lebanon,

Thursday Sept. 28, 2006. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

I can’t work out whether the French “peacekeeper” is crying, or doing a mime.

Let’s check up on our UN peacekeeping friends and see what they are up to..

A Spanish U.N. peacekeeper shakes the hand of a Lebanese Hezbollah supporter wearing a yellow T-shirt and carrying a Hezbollah flag as he marches in the southern village of Kfar Kila, Lebanon, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006, on his way to attend the massive victory rally that will take place in Beirut Friday afternoon. Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters from across southern Lebanon began marching on foot toward Beirut for a major rally planned Friday to showcase the group’s insistence it won’t disarm. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

I think this photo speaks for itself.

Update: Come to think of it, it puts this photo into a whole new perspective:

Question: What do heavy/thrash metal group Megadeth and I have in common?

Answer: We have similar opinions on the UN.

The next Megadeth album has a title - United Abominations - but that’s about it for the time being.

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This being Megadeth, there will be some political underpinnings to the songs on ;United Abominations’. The title, in fact, comes from Mustaine’s feelings about the United Nations’ “failure to perform,” particularly in crisis situations. “I was watching TV and saw the trucks that said ‘UN’ on them and said, ‘Man, you are so uncool, ineffective, anything,” he explains. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got to run with this. I got it — United Abominations, ’cause it’s an abomination what they’re doing!”