FILE PHOTO: A UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) vehicle is seen next to piled up debris at Beirut’s port, Lebanon October 23, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

The United Nations certainly has a funny definition of the word “interim.”

Forty-seven years after its creation, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is still around, despite clearly failing to fulfill its mission to restore peace to Lebanon’s border with Israel. The United States should veto the Force’s mandate renewal this month, and end the UNIFIL disaster.

UNIFIL has proven, over the course of decades, its failure to achieve any semblance of its stated purpose. UNIFIL was created in 1978, during the chaotic Lebanese Civil War, to try to stabilize Lebanon and prevent broader spillover.

However, even in peacetime, the force has suffered from the worst of the shortcomings associated with other UN peacekeeping forces around the world: inefficiency and unaccountability; serial inaction; and susceptibility to corruption. Though UNIFIL’s political superiors deny it, a former UNIFIL commander admitted these realities.

Even though UNIFIL saw its mandate strengthened by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in the wake of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, its track record only got worse after the fact. Despite being granted permission by the UN to take “all necessary action” to disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL did nothing of the sort.

When Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon in late 2024, they found Hezbollah weapons in roughly 1 in every 3 houses, and according to a former Israeli official, Israeli troops uncovered more anti-tank missiles in an average Lebanese village than in all of Gaza.

Despite claiming to regularly patrol and act across southern Lebanon, UNIFIL passively allowed Hezbollah to evolve from a major threat to Israel, to a borderline existential one. With Iranian help, the terror group grew its arsenal from roughly 15,000 rockets and missiles in 2006, to approximately 150,000 in 2023.

Hezbollah increased its rocket arsenal tenfold, put many of these capabilities intentionally underneath civilian buildings, and built dozens of military bases along the Lebanon-Israel border — much of it in full view of UNIFIL facilities. UNIFIL, by its own account, was routinely stymied in its patrols by Hezbollah.

UNIFIL cannot plead ignorance to its failure to counteract Hezbollah activity. According to Israeli officials, UNIFIL perpetually ignored Israel’s specific requests — based on detailed intelligence on Hezbollah activity — to act.

This inaction explicitly contravened UNIFIL’s mandate to maintain security and disarm non-state actors in southern Lebanon.

Then, following Hezbollah joining Hamas in waging war on Israel in October 2023, UNIFIL’s serial refusal to carry out its mission played right into Hezbollah’s hands.

Using its classic human shield strategy, Hezbollah launched dozens of projectiles at Israel from within several hundred feet of UNIFIL facilities. By doing so, Hezbollah was able to directly complicate Israel’s operations — given Israeli reluctance to risk hitting UN facilities — and coax the all-too-willing UN into rebuking Israel when it did operate against Hezbollah near UN posts.

Furthermore, even the charitable view that UNIFIL’s inaction was due to risk-aversion is increasingly in doubt.

Last November, Hezbollah admitted that they bribed UNIFIL peacekeepers to gain access to UN facilities and equipment. This should perhaps come as little surprise given the force’s composition — by even the narrowest definitions, as JINSA has noted, roughly one-third of its current contingent are peacekeepers from countries that routinely criticize or actively boycott Israel.

Why would anyone expect a peacekeeper from, say, Malaysia, to risk their life against Hezbollah?

UNIFIL’s perennial inaction causes another subtle, but significant, problem by preventing Lebanon from assuming full responsibility for its own security. With its current political leadership openly expressing a willingness — and its military increasingly demonstrating an ability — to crack down on Hezbollah, Lebanon should finally carry the counterterrorism baton in its own country. UNIFIL should simply get out of the way, and end the pretense that it’s helping.

In UNIFIL’s stead, the United States should work with partners and allies to strengthen the entity that can, and should, take primary responsibility for Lebanon’s security: Lebanon. While working to rid the Lebanese military of any remnants of Hezbollah influence and infiltration, US and partner countries should work to build up the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

The LAF, newly emboldened from Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah and Lebanon’s new and improved political leadership, is making strides towards uprooting Hezbollah’s terror activity nationwide. This progress, while still requiring close US oversight, carrots — and, if necessary, sticks — is encouraging.

Like so many international agencies, UNIFIL is a weak entity with strong self-preservation instincts. That is why the United States should step in and do the job itself when UNIFIL comes up for its annual mandate renewal vote at the United Nations Security Council this month.

Yoni Tobin is a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

The signing of the Oslo Accords in Washington, DC, Sept. 13, 1993. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In 1973, Israel’s longtime foreign minister, Abba Eban, famously quipped that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Less famously, perhaps, the media never misses a chance to cover for the long history of Palestinian leaders rejecting statehood if it meant living in peace next to a Jewish nation. 

Eban’s comment came after the failure of the Geneva Peace Conference, one of numerous international initiatives aimed at resolving what is commonly referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For nearly a century such efforts have resulted in failure. And the reason is simple: rejectionism, first by Arab states and later by Palestinian leaders themselves. Yet, with growing frequency many in the press, while lamenting the lack of a Palestinian state, omit this relevant history.

Take, for example, The Washington Post. The newspaper has run dozens of articles in recent years claiming, if implicitly, that the lack of a Palestinian state is what drove Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies to perpetrate the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. Hopelessness, they assert, was behind the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

Nor is the Post alone. Other publications, including those geared towards policymaking audiences, have made the same claim. Foreign Policy is among the worst offenders. On August 4, the magazine published a piece hailing the recent decision by several European nations to recognize a Palestinian state. France and the United Kingdom vowed to recognize a Palestinian state — provided that Hamas sets down its arms. Paris and London didn’t both offering specifics as to how the latter would be accomplished. Nor did they articulate the borders of this state, who would rule it, its currency, etc. But thankfully the days of European powers drawing up borders for failed states in the Middle East is over.  

Yet, curiously, Foreign Policy, which has a long history of decrying Western interference and colonialism in the Middle East, found much to like in the idea, with an August 4 report celebrating the move as “an international tipping point on Gaza.” The magazine noted that other countries, such as Canada, Finland, Malta, and Portugal, “have also announced their plans to recognize Palestine this fall.”

The absence of a Palestinian state is something that Foreign Policy has expended considerable column space fixating on. In August 2024, the publication hosted a webinar called “A Future for Palestinian Statehood.” A few weeks prior, in May, Foreign Policy published an op-ed entitled “Why the U.S. Should Recognize Palestinian Statehood.” And in February of that year, the magazine published an op-ed, “A Trial Palestinian State Must Begin in Gaza.” Recent events, Foreign Policy asserted in an Aug. 8, 2025 op-ed, symbolize “The West’s Turn Against Israel.”

Of course, there already been a “trial Palestinian state” and it was in Gaza. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. In the first and only elections since, Gazans voted in Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood derivative, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews. If one is to treat Gazans like people with independent agency — as one should — it can be surmised that they were well aware of Hamas’ charter. After all: Hamas doesn’t exactly hide its aims. 

Unsurprisingly, rockets were subsequently launched from Gaza into Israel, necessitating a blockade by both Israel and neighboring Egypt. Electing a genocidal US-designated terror group is hardly conducive to good governance, and multiple wars have followed.

Hamas, the duly elected government of Palestinians in Gaza, is every bit as cruel and kleptocratic as other Islamist movements. The heads of the terror group live in luxury abroad, many in Qatar and Turkey, launching wars for which Israelis and average, everyday Gazans pay the consequence. Gaza has received copious international aid — including long before October 7 — but Hamas has diverted it, building an extensive underground tunnel system to store fighters, munitions, and hide hostages, while those above ground are used as human shields.

The test case — offering up land for the construction of a Palestinian state — has been tried and found wanting. Gaza is a crystal-clear example.

And the reason is simple: Palestinian leaders, be it Hamas in Gaza, or its rival, Fatah, the movement that rules Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, believe that Israel is “Palestine.” According to their doctrine, any land once ruled by Muslims is waqf and is forever theirs. Notions of political, social, and religious equality are anathema.

Hamas’ own charter spells this out quite clearly. The official media and educational curriculum of the Palestinian Authority, the US-backed entity that controls most of the West Bank, also presents Israel as “Palestine.” This, of course, is a violation of the Oslo Accords, which created the Authority in the first place. These beliefs are the reason for the lack of an independent Palestinian state.

After all, Palestinian leaders have been offered statehood on numerous occasions — most recently in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba, and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. Yasser Arafat, the now deceased head of the Fatah movement and ruler of the PA, rejected the 2000 and 2001 proposals. The 2008 offer, presented to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, included 93% of the West Bank with land swaps for remaining areas and a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Tellingly, Abbas turned it down and failed to even make a counteroffer. The 2008 proposal served as the basis for additional US-attempts to begin negotiations in 2014 and 2016. These attempts were similarly rejected by PA leadership.

 As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented, Palestinian leaders have been rejecting opportunities for statehood for nearly a century. Indeed, in 1947, the UN put forward a resolution to partition British-ruled Mandate Palestine into two states, one Arab and the other Jewish. The leaders of the Zionist movement voted to support the plan. By contrast, Arab states and leaders of the Palestinian Arab movement like Amin al-Husseini, categorically rejected the opportunity to create something that hasn’t ever existed: a Palestinian Arab state. Instead, less than three years after the Holocaust, they chose to wage war on the fledgling Jewish State, vowing to cast its inhabitants into the sea. They lost and they’ve kept on losing ever since. 

Curiously, however, the media continually omits these failed opportunities for Palestinian statehood, choosing instead to cast Palestinians as helpless and without independent agency. This is little more than an updated version of the colonialism that many members of the Western intelligentsia pretend to abhor. But readers of newspapers and once venerable policy periodicals deserve to know relevant history and they deserve to see Palestinians as people with independent agency, not merely as victims. 

The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis

Parcels of humanitarian aid await transfer into Gaza, at the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the Gaza Strip, July 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Ancient cities have fallen throughout history because of sieges. Generals surrender during sieges because they don’t have a death wish. In Gaza, what is so clearly evident is that Hamas always intended for the deaths of the innocent.

Hamas won’t surrender because civilians suffering is a key part of their twisted plan.

The war provoked by Hamas is propaganda driven, aimed to result in the delegitimization of the Jewish State worldwide. Hideous deaths of Gaza’s children through bombs, through goods shortages with potentially clear evidence of Israel being at-fault, have been crucial to their aims. Even though Hamas started this war and put civilians in harm’s way, Israel still needs to perceive how it is being viewed in the court of public opinion.

Hamas’ aim is to demonize, delegitimize, and destroy Israel in the eyes of the world — and when right-wing ministers call on Gaza to starve or make other outlandish statements, they are playing right into Hamas’ strategy.

This Western information war was planned, just as October 7th had been planned. Prime Minister Netanyahu rushed into Hamas’ carefully laid trap for worldwide condemnation of Israel.

Hamas’ plan was obvious immediately after the horrors of October 7, 2023, as calls of genocide echoed on October 8 across America, before ground troops had even entered Gaza.

This is clear evidence of a deliberate media strategy. Not a single bomb shelter was ever built for the innocent non-combatants in Gaza, and this was deliberately done to ensure maximum casualties.

Hamas fighters hid in tunnels, deliberately placing their military headquarters under schools and hospitals to maximize casualties, in a battle they spent 18 years preparing for with billions in aid money.

The media doesn’t report on any of that — just the deaths of civilians (which are often reported using questionable Hamas data and claims). Skilled manipulation of video designed to quickly go viral deliberately escalates this cycle. The media occasionally prints a retraction later in tiny print — but the damage is already done — and often can’t be taken back.

Obviously, bombing campaigns with legitimate casualties and tragedies are contributing to this. However, because Israel has been at war for nearly two years, with no clear plan the entire time, Hamas and the media capitalize on this, and say Israel’s only aim is to kill civilians, when it is really trying to root out Hamas.

The Hamas media strategy is to convince the world Israel has done something unthinkable and unethical; such as bombing schools, hospitals and refugees. It does not matter if Israel does or does not. A disputed, controversial Instagram hashtag devoted to people in Gaza acting for the camera called #pallywood further compounds the lies obfuscating truth.

It’s true there are legitimate tragedies occurring, but we must also point out a deliberate Hamas media effort to overdramatize and intentionally mislead the world.

Hamas fighters in civilian clothing deliberately take shelter at schools becoming military targets; then maximum casualties ensue and a bleeding stain on the modern government of Israel grows. Rinse, repeat, spin.

Hamas’s literal plan was to entice war, by committing horrific crimes on October 7. Cynically their plan worked. They provoked the response of the Israeli government; although it was a unity government to begin with, it’s become partisan again, and far-right ministers are not helping with comments that Netanyahu condemns in words, but takes no meaningful action to stop or prevent.

The siege must be stopped. Israel must take the high road and continue flooding Gaza with food (and doing everything possible to keep it out of Hamas’s hands) and stop giving ammunition for hatred. One grain of truth becomes an entire story. Yes, the world is biased against Israel. But we also must accept that reality, and develop our strategies accordingly. We must continue to exist in this world even when Israel is treated unfairly. We should keep speaking the truth, but also adapt our strategies for the world we are currently facing.

Alix Kahn is a writer of essays,  stories, poetry & more.