‘Hell is breaking loose in Lebanon,’ the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Security Council this week. But this conflagration did not erupt from nowhere. A new war between Israel and Hizbollah has been on the horizon for years. And UN officials, as well as many of the organisation’s leading nations, have watched the inferno descending while doing little to prevent it.

The United Nations has had an interim force on the border between Israel and Lebanon since 1978. That year, in an attempt to derail the peace talks between Israel and Egypt which ultimately led to the Camp David accords, Palestinian militants crossed from Lebanon into Israel by sea and massacred 38 civilians, including 13 children. Within weeks of Israel launching an invasion to force the Palestinian terror groups out of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was established and deployed to the region. Patched together quickly, this force of only a few thousand was dispatched with limited enforcement powers to keep the peace. It was unable to forestall further Palestinian cross-border attacks that sparked Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Nor could it stop a further wave of attacks in the 1990s from Hizbollah, which emerged out of the Lebanese Civil War as the key proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in its struggle against Israel.

In 2006, six years after Israel’s complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the UNIFIL forces, by now reduced to a mere 2,000, were impotent to prevent thousands of Hizbollah rocket attacks into Israel. After the bloody 34-day war that Hizbollah’s rockets precipitated, the UN passed Resolution 1701, calling for the dismantlement of Hizbollah’s terror arsenal and demanding that no arms other than those of the Lebanese army were allowed between the River Litani and the Blue Line that separates Lebanon from Israel. To help enforce this, UNIFIL was beefed up to a 10,000-troop contingent, the largest deployment of UN peacekeepers in the world. Yet today Hizbollah has an estimated 150,000 rockets, almost ten times what it had at the end of the 2006 war. It has thousands of arms depots and dominates the terrain south of the Litani.

This all happened right under UNIFIL’s nose. The force is hamstrung by restrictions on its ability to patrol in the border region imposed by the Lebanese army (LAF), which is rife with Hizbollah sympathisers and whose leaders have only strengthened their political ties with the terror group in recent years. Weapons confiscated from Hizbollah are regularly returned to them by the LAF. Yet UNIFIL troops are also turning a blind eye. Hizbollah consistently launches rockets into Israel within metres of UN compounds.

The real problem for UNIFIL is that its mandate is under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which prevents it from deploying force except in self-defence. This has not only left it powerless to stop Hizbollah’s vast military build-up, but also left its troops vulnerable to assaults from the terror group and its supporters. UNIFIL soldiers have frequently come under fire and an Irish peacekeeper was murdered by members of the terror group in 2022.

Attempts by Israel and the US to give the force enhanced powers to confront violations of 1701 have been blocked at the UN, notably by China, Russia, and also France, which has ambitions to extend its economic ties with Iran and resists further encroachment on Lebanese sovereignty. Essentially, the current UNIFIL arrangement has acted as a shield for Hizbollah over the past 18 years, allowing it to build up its network of tunnels and its arsenal of Iranian-supplied rockets and arms on Israel’s border.

While Hizbollah established itself as the most lethal terror group in the world, burrowing its munitions under the surface, it maintained relative calm on the border with Israel. That calm shattered on 8 October, the day after Hamas’ murderous slaughter of civilians and capture of hostages in Southern Israel, when Hizbollah launched its own onslaught in solidarity with its fellow Iranian proxy. More than 8,300 rocket attacks, 1,500 anti-tank missiles and hundreds of drones have rained down on northern, and now increasingly central, Israel. The north of the country has been virtually depopulated and 70,000 people forced from their homes. All of this occurred without condemnation from the UN Security Council, with US attempts to have Hizbollah censured for its actions blocked by other members. After months of restraint as it focused on its front with Hamas, Israel stepped up its response its recent weeks, first with its detonation of Hizbollah’s pagers and radios, then with its bombing of Hizbollah targets across Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Guterres and a succession of global leaders have fallen over themselves at the UN this week to warn against ‘escalation’ and called for a ceasefire. Yet an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If a robust and effective UNIFIL had been empowered to disarm Hizbollah and uphold Resolution 1701 then this latest round of violence could have been avoided.

The tragedy in Lebanon has ramifications for Gaza, too. In diplomatic circles there has been talk of an ‘interim’ international force that would help govern Gaza and police a ceasefire deal. Yet the example of UNIFIL is not an encouraging one to say the least. Following the UNIFIL model in Gaza would simply act as a front for Hamas – like Hizbollah – to strengthen its underground terror tunnels while, above ground, the international force and NGOs act as their screens. No wonder the Israelis have little confidence in an international solution to either crisis.

Rather than simply recycling diplomatic platitudes at the UN, international leaders and UN officials could make a genuine contribution to regional order by fulfilling their own responsibilities to uphold UN resolutions. If not, then there is little chance that the flames engulfing the Middle East will stop raging any time soon.