UN Report Admits Failure In Lebanon

In mid-October Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was hopeful about Security Council Resolution 1701--at least when it comes to humanitarian concerns:

Welcoming the exchange of humanitarian gestures by Israel and Hizbollah mediated by his facilitator, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today voiced hope that this will create momentum to push both sides to comply with the key humanitarian demands of Security Council resolution 1701, which ended last year’s war in Lebanon.

The reality is that 'demands' of Resolution 1701 have gone nowhere--which Noah Pollak notes in the UN's own report that has now come out:

Detailed in Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, the report says that, in addition to the establishment of surface-to-air missile capacity and the tripling of Hizballah’s arsenal of land-to-sea missiles,

Hizballah’s long-range missile teams are deployed north of the [Litani] river, and . . . most of the new missiles include [the Iranian-made] Zelzal and Fajr missiles that have a range of over 250 kilometers and are capable of hitting areas south of Tel Aviv.

And Hizballah has been busy with more than just weapons. It is also expanding on the strategy that was so effective in creating international condemnation of Israel's defense against Hizballah rockets:

Since the arrival of UNIFIL, Hizballah has focused its reconstruction and re-armament on the area of Lebanon north of the Litani, where UNIFIL does not enforce its paltry and symbolic suppression of Hizballah. Hizballah’s activity in this region, which also involves buying up land for Shia settlement, is actually quite strategically valuable—it allows the creation of physical contiguity between Hizballah’s two strongholds in Lebanon, the Bekaa valley/Syrian border area in the east and the Shia south. Creating this contiguity, and planting Shia civilians throughout this territory, are vital to Hizballah’s ability to deter encirclement by Israel in another round of war, and to wage war from among, and with the help of, Shia civilians. [emphasis added]

The UN has been no more effective under Ban Ki-moon that it was under Kofi Annan, and Israel is paying the price.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Ban Ki-moon and Hizballah.