Human Shields

There is presently one Briton in UNIFIL, so even the United Kingdom was among the 34 contributing countries that yesterday condemned recent incidents, and called for respect of UNIFIL's mission, including the safety and security of its personnel. Since then, having demolished the entrance to their camp in order to force entry, the IDF has used a chemical weapon against those personnel. Why is any of those countries, including this one, still supplying arms to Israel?

Bearing the brunt are, as ever, the Irish; as of late, the NATO Italians; and after the Commonwealth Sri Lankans, the Commonwealth Ghanaians, a community not without a significant presence here in the old Imperial Motherland. As for the new Imperial Motherland, the Irish and the Italians are both under attack, yet there is still barely a squeak out of the United States, and certainly no action. There has never been any American presence in UNIFIL, because the USS Liberty was one thing, but there would have been no way of covering up either the fact of those American fallen or the cause of their fall.

Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered UNIFIL to withdraw from positions up to five kilometres from the Blue Line, making it impossible for it to do its job, but usefully asserting for future reference Israel's claim to territory three miles inside Lebanon. It will not stop there. The mouth of the Litani is about 18 miles north of the Israeli border, and its source is more than 60. Lebanon as a whole is only about 150 miles long.

Such an order has to mean "or else", and telling third countries' citizens where they might or might not go in Lebanon is bad enough on Netanyahu's part. But Hezbollah, whatever else they may be, are Lebanese citizens. Their organisation is a party to the governing coalition, and for all the Iranian backing from a very early stage, it arose organically in reaction against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and in reaction to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that had resulted from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978.

It is not for Netanyahu to order Lebanese beyond the Litani, or anywhere else in their own country. Maritime borders are borders, and the United Kingdom has eight. Leaving aside the status of Northern Ireland, imagine that a body of British citizens, even the very worst of us, were ordered where in Great Britain they might presume to set foot by any one or more of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the Faroe Islands.

In any case, anything, anywhere or anyone in Lebanon that Israel cared to attack is apparently Hezbollah, be it a Christian village, a Sunni district of Beirut, the Roman ruins at Baalbek, or a UNIFIL base staffed by Italians. 7 October, you say? There has been another one since. Without bringing home most of the hostages, this has been going on for over a year. And wherever the hostages are, they are not in Lebanon.