Israellycool

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel is willing to withdraw from the Shaba Farms.

Israel has expressed to the US government its willingness to withdraw from the Shaba Farms and the northern half of the town of Rajar, on the border with Lebanon, after receiving guarantees from Beirut that the areas would be under UNIFIL control, according to a Lebanese source quoted by the London-based Arab daily Asharq Alawsat, Tuesday.

The source reportedly said that General Claudio Graziano, the commander of the UN force in southern Lebanon, had succeeded in convincing Israel to withdraw from the disputed territories in a series of meeting with Israeli officials.

UNIFIL spokesperson Yasmina Bouzianne confirmed the report, adding that she hoped that a final agreement would be reached soon.

An Israeli diplomatic official was quoted by the paper as saying that the agreement was reached in a telephone conversation between Graziano and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in mid-August.

“An Israeli withdrawal from the Shaba Farms will leave Hizbullah with no more excuses to fight Israel,” the official was quoted as saying. “If Israel hands over those territories it will become clear to the Lebanese people that Hizbullah’s continued use of violence is nothing more than an excuse to continue its involvement in international terror.”

If this is the sole reason why Israel has agreed to hand over the Shaba farms, then I think it is a mistake. Hizbullah will not stop their violence against Israel, and will claim they are fighting the Zionists who have occupied the land of the palestinians for whom they care deeply. They will vow to fight Israel until every inch of “Palestine” has been liberated. And I suspect the Lebanese people will be fine with this, especially considering the existence of palestinian “refugees” in Lebanon.

The Commander of UNIFIL continues to show how utterly useless both he and his troops are.

Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Thursday accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

During a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Graziano cited the IAF forays over Lebanon and the village of Ghajar, which he called “a permanent violation of 1701″ and “a permanent area under occupation.”

A further violation, according to Graziano, was Israel’s failure to provide maps of all the locations where it dropped cluster bombs during the 2006 war.

In contrast, he said that the UN enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hizbullah and with the local Lebanese people.

Ain’t that the truth.

Problem is, it’s not funny.

The commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Claudio Graziano has distributed among his troops a contingency plan in case an Israel Air Force aircraft is shot down over Lebanon, the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported Tuesday.

The report came amid fears that Israeli aircraft would be targeted.

According to the Lebanese newspaper, in the event that an Israeli plane is shot down, UNIFIL troops must aim to reach the pilot first, and if the pilot is captured by armed militants, they must rescue him. The plan stipulates, however, that if the pilot is captured by the Lebanese army, nothing is to be done.

A few more stipulations:

• If the “armed militants” threaten the UNIFIL troops, the troops must run away. As fast as they can.
• UNIFIL troops should try to refrain from saluting the “armed militants”
• UNIFIL troops should only attempt a rescue during daylight hours, when the boogeyman is clearly out of play.

Israel has called for the removal of the two UNIFIL soldiers who were photographed saluting the coffins of Hizbullah terrorists during Wednesday’s prisoner exchange.

But instead of doing the responsible thing and removing the soldiers, the UN has defended their actions!

Israel is calling for removal of two United Nations soldiers from Lebanon after photographs surfaced of the soldiers saluting the coffins of Hezbollah terrorists during a prisoner exchange Wednesday.

Associated Press photographer Mohammed Zaatari captured an image of the troops paying homage to fallen Hezbollah fighters as trucks bearing their coffins drove through the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.

The blue-helmet U.N. troops, who operate under the auspices of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), are meant disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and be an impartial buffer along the country’s border with Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said he was “shocked and horrified” by the photograph and that it was time for the saluting soldiers to go.

“I think they should be recalled and be sent back to whichever country they came from,” said Gillerman. “I think they’ve definitely compromised their impartiality and have in a very big way,

in a very serious way, compromised the integrity of the United Nations.”

But a UNIFIL spokeswoman said the salute was nothing out of the ordinary.

“It is customary in most armies for military personnel in uniform to salute whenever a coffin passes in a procession,” UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane said. “They were merely following this customary military tradition and saluted coffins draped in Lebanese national flags at their own initiative.”

The identity of the troops wasn’t certain, but Getty Images reports they were from Italy.

The incident occurred as Israel released five living Hezbollah prisoners and the bodies of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian militants killed in recent conflicts. In exchange, Hezbollah returned the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped during a cross-border raid in 2006.

The truck bearing the coffins also featured a large image of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah mastermind who was killed in February in Damascus.

Israeli officials said UNIFIL troops were saluting the symbol of the violence they are meant to oppose and defuse.

“I think this is a very tragic and sad day for the United Nations when its soldiers who were sent there because of Hezbollah terrorist activities salute the terrorists and the killers,” Gillerman said.

“They are there as peacekeepers with a very clear mandate to disarm Hezbollah — they’re not there to honor terrorists,” he said.

The United Nations rejected the suggestion that its troops favored Hezbollah and told FOXNews.com that UNIFIL troops were doing their job and remained an unbiased force.

“They are impartial with regards to the forces on the ground,” Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman, said. “(UNIFIL) is an impartial source — it doesn’t show a bias for either side.”

Such assurances have done little to assuage Israel’s representatives, who said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should be “appalled” by the action and called for disciplinary action.
“I think [Secretary Ban] should remove them from wearing those helmets and from serving the United Nations,” Gillerman said.

Nothing to see here..move along.

Notice the UNIFIL spokeswoman’s mention of the “coffins draped in Lebanese national flags”, meant to imply the soldiers thought they were saluting dead of the Lebanese army and not of Hizbullah. Tellingly, she does not mention the huge picture of Hizbullah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh.

I also very much doubt it is “customary in most armies for military personnel in uniform” to stop everything and salute a procession of coffins of the very people the armies are supposed to be fighting. But I’ll leave it to someone in the know to confirm whether or not this is the case.

In any event, we once again see why Israel should never have accepted UN Resolution 1701.

From tomb raider to coffin saluter:

U.N. soldiers salute as a tractor-trailer loaded with coffins of nearly 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters and bearing the picture of slain Hezbollah top leader Imad Mughniyeh, right, arrives in the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Thursday, July 17, 2008. Eight tractor-trailers loaded with coffins are driving from south Lebanon to Beirut a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon.

It is one thing to be utterly incompetent. It is another to be siding with evil.

Either way, agreeing to UN Resolution 1701 was clearly yet another of Israel’s huge mistakes.