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After 47 Years of Failure, It’s Time to End UNIFIL

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).

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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