The Subcommittee for Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy, chaired by MK Moshe Turpaz (Yesh Atid), held a debate on Thursday regarding the extension of UNIFIL’s mandate. The UN Security Council is scheduled to examine the extension of the mandate this summer.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Amir Weissbrod said “UNIFIL has been with us since 1978. The first phase [concluded in] 2000. Over the years, we tried to change UNIFIL’s role to make it more effective. We tried to change two things – what it does on the ground, and the reporting aspect, because its reports reflected a distorted reality due to the need to protect their forces.
“After the Second Lebanon War, UNIFIL tried to be more active, but Hezbollah showed it the boundaries. We have tried all these years to bring about an improvement, without great success. This war created a different balance of opportunities, and UNIFIL is part of this equation. UNIFIL’s original mandate was to help the Lebanese government implement its sovereignty – so the time has come to do just that,” he said.
Adv. Avraham Shalev of the Kohelet Forum said, “UNIFIL is a failure. Not only did it not prevent Hezbollah from arming itself, it also served as a human shield for Hezbollah.”
A representative of the Alma Research and Education Center said, “Not a single UNIFIL position was evacuated during the war. The organization causes more harm than good to the operational forces in the Northern Command.”
Subcommittee Chair MK Turpaz said, “The State of Israel is better at turning from evil than doing good; better at saying what not to do than what to do. I want to hear not only what the problems are, but also what the solutions are; what will happen on the ground. The alternatives are not ready.”
In the second part of the debate, which was classified, the subcommittee heard briefings from representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Security Council, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the IDF.
