Colin Sheridan: Netanyahu's 'war' has killed tens of thousands. He'll hardly balk at a few peacekeepers

World leaders have not made Benjamin Netanyahu take even one step back in his quest for an ethnically-cleansed Palestine

Even as world leaders condemned an Israeli tank's breach of a United Nations peacekeeping post, an emboldened Netanyahu's forces bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in Northern Gaza, burning people alive. Picture: Pamela Smith/AP

Benjamin Netanyahu's message to the United Nations — and to Unifil in particular — is entirely consistent with his strategy for bold, inflammatory statements designed to distract, while pre-empting actual slaughter. His address on Sunday implored UN peacekeepers to withdraw for their own safety, deploying evocative language such as “hostage of Hezbollah,” and “human shields". 

It followed news earlier in the day that an IDF unit breached a UN post with a Merkava tank, causing respiratory injuries to several peacekeepers. Driven to distraction by Netanyahu’s latest demands, the international community fell over themselves expressing grave concern over the tone and absurdity of his rhetoric. 

As their statements of condemnation poured in, an emboldened Netanyahu bombed Jabalia refugee camp in Northern Gaza, burning people alive. The images from that attack are amongst the most sickening of a genocide that should haunt all of our consciences forever.

Unifil must heed Netanyahu’s warning 

To be clear, Netanyahu’s aim is not just to distract. His warnings to Unifil should be taken very seriously because at no point in the last twelve months has the Israeli military de-escalated anything. Targeting Hamas commanders, deconstructing their tunnel network and retrieving the hostages has morphed into the annihilation of a people in Gaza.  

‘Containing’ the West Bank, a territory it illegally occupies, has escalated to the worst military and settler violence in decades. The striking of mythical Hezbollah strongholds in Al-Dahiyeh quickly became almost all of Beirut, the Bekka valley, and — as of Monday afternoon — Aito in northern Lebanon as well. 

That’s why we should prepare ourselves for the next inevitable escalation: that continuing Israeli assaults on UN posts will soon, in all likelihood, involve dead peacekeepers.

Precedents for Israeli attacks

There is precedent.  During the 2006 war, UN observation post OP Khiyam was bombed by Israel, and four unarmed international observers were killed. The investigation into that incident revealed the observers contacted their Israeli liaison at least 14 times during the bombardment, pleading with them to stop the shelling. 

Israel later stated they mistook the post as a Hezbollah position, despite the coordinates of all UN posts — which are so clearly marked you could almost see them from space — being shared with Israel. 

If 2006 is too long ago for you, we need not look any further than Gaza for damning evidence of Israel's contempt for the United Nations, as the IDF has repeatedly struck UNRWA installations, schools, hospitals and shelters.

It has killed at least 220 UN workers there, despite the targeting of aid workers being a war crime. 

Israel has continuously discredited the relief works agency, and, during the tenuous 18-year ‘peace’ between itself and Lebanon, Netanyahu and his predecessors have routinely undermined Unifil, UNTSO, Unicef, and WHO.

This manifests itself in the most mundane of ways, from denying access to areas they have every right to be and operate in, to simply not showing up for meetings. Such transgressions seem minimal in the face of the egregious acts of terror they now routinely commit, but are indicative of a regime drunk on power, and high on the fumes of burning bodies.

Israel unlikely to balk at killing peacekeepers   

Lest any of us think the shedding of peacekeepers' blood will somehow deter Netanyahu, consider this: Unifil is a force 10,000 strong. They are professionally trained, armed soldiers from 50 troop-contributing countries equipped with armoured vehicles, small arms, and anti-tank weaponry, and have, inherent in their mandate, a right to use force in self-defence. 

Israel could kill every single one of them — all 10,000 of them — and it still wouldn’t come close to the number of defenceless children it has murdered in Gaza in just 12 months.

In that context, what’s a few dead peacekeepers? 

Especially since the subsequent investigation will reveal it was a ‘mistake,’ that Hezbollah was holding Unifil hostage, and what does Israel do to hostages?

The only thing UN peacekeepers are hostage to is the deviancy of the Israeli military and the unwillingness of the international community to stop them. 

The diplomatic outrage world leaders recently expressed in response to UN posts being hit was jarring in its quantity and quality compared to the silence that routinely greets the slaughter in Rafah, Beirut, Nabatiyeh, Jabalia, and the occupied West Bank.

I say this having been one myself: One peacekeeper's life is worth more than a hundred dead Palestinian babies.

This is not said to outrage, or unnecessarily worry the families of Irish peacekeepers whose days are already filled with it — but is a rather rudimentary assessment of the very obvious strategy of escalation Israel has employed throughout this short and brutal campaign. 

Netanyahu has not been forced to take one backward step in his messianic quest for an ethnically-cleansed Palestine. Lebanon is next.

Why anybody thinks a few dead peacekeepers will stop him is beyond me.