-Analysis-
PARIS — Relations between Israel and the United Nations have become atrocious. A breaking point was reached Sunday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that UN peacekeepers leave the combat zones in southern Lebanon.
On Saturday night, two Israeli tanks entered a base belonging to UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which includes 600 French soldiers. Such an intrusion is a flagrant violation of international law. Over the previous few days, the UN had accused the Israeli army of firing on peacekeepers’ positions on several occasions, causing multiple injuries.
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This sudden rise in tension is not an accident, nor is it the only subject of tension. A few days earlier, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz had declared UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres persona non grata in the Jewish state. The minister accused the UN leader, a former Portuguese prime minister, of being “anti-Israeli” and of supporting “terrorists, rapists and murderers.” This over-the-top outburst prompted a letter signed by 104 governments around the world in support of Guterres.
It’s worth noting the paradox of this crisis with the UN from a state whose birth in 1948 was one of the first acts of the world organization. But the Jewish state has long had a problem with the UN, which it regards as hostile to its interests.
Shuttering UNRWA in Jerusalem
It has all gotten much worse since October 7, first with a banal comment by Guterres in the wake of the tragedy that it: “did not happen in a vacuum,” an allusion to the occupation of the Palestinian territories since 1967, which UN Security Council Resolution 242 has been calling in vain for an end to for over half a century.
The UN has very few direct powers: its authority principally rests in the power of its member states.
For the past year, Israel has regularly attacked UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, and several of its employees were identified among the Hamas attackers on October 7. The UNRWA offices in Jerusalem have been closed and Israel is putting obstacles in the way of this agency, on which the schools and hospitals of millions of Palestinians depend.
The UN has very few direct powers: its authority principally rests in the power of its member states. It is they who have their backs to the wall, even more than the organization.
Credibility test
One of the problems is that Israel has gotten accustomed to the United States protecting it with its UN veto for so long that Benjamin Netanyahu sees no limits to his contempt for the organization. Especially as Israel has been ignoring existing resolutions for decades without the slightest consequence.
This is a real test for the global organization, after the one it was subjected to by Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, with its invasion of Ukraine. If the UN were to give in to Israeli demands in Lebanon, one might well wonder what credibility it has left.
For Netanyahu, delegitimizing the UN would mean both eliminating an embarrassing witness in the all-out war he has now launched in Lebanon, and making people forget past resolutions on the Palestinians. Two birds with one stone.
