Supporters push for UN Resolution 1701 to help end Israel-Hezbollah war

Critics, however, believe that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 does not require further negotiations and that the failure of its initial implementation in 2006 led to Israel being forced to take matters into his own hands.

“With Hezbollah and Lebanon, we are working intensively to reach agreements on the effective implementation of 1701, the UN Security Council resolution, which many years ago should have avoided what we are seeing now, but did not because it was never implemented. ,” This was stated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken Wednesday.

The Secretary of State continued: “It is absolutely essential that the parties, and Hezbollah in particular, are kept away from the border. That the Lebanese Armed Forces are capable of carrying out their duties and that we can create an environment in which people on both sides of the border can return to their homes in peace and safety.”

The UN is the same seeking peace in the region by “immediate cessation of hostilities, transition to full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

What is UN 1701?

According to UN 1701, the government of Lebanon is obliged to disarm all non-governmental organizations operating within its borders. All weapons and military capabilities will be placed under the control of the Lebanese state, and no foreign forces or arms sales will be allowed in Lebanon without the express consent of the government.

At the same time, Israel and Lebanon are forced to respect the “blue line” that runs through southern Lebanon as a demilitarized zone.

The Blue Line is a nearly 75-mile demarcation line that creates a “line of withdrawal” between Israel and Lebanon. The armed forces of both countries are prohibited from operating near the “blue line” without prior notice.

It is supported UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL), the UN peacekeeping force that was deployed when UN 1701 was first implemented in 2006.

Under UN 1701, the area between the Blue Line and the Litani River in the north is to serve as a “buffer zone” off-limits to any Israeli or Hezbollah presence.

What is Hezbollah and how is it related to the nation of Lebanon?

Hezbollah is an extremist organization founded Islamic leaders in 1982 during the First Lebanon War. It is not affiliated with the Lebanese government and is mostly funded by the Iranian regime as a proxy army in the region.

The group, whose name means “Party of God”, operates in Lebanese society through military, political, cultural and financial initiatives.

Since its early years, Hezbollah has issued manifestos and open letters declaring Israel the vanguard of American imperialism and calling for the total destruction of the Jewish state. Because of this, the group has clearly stated its intention to ignore all treaties and negotiations concluded with Israel or USA.

Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanese society has only strengthened since 2006. Their political wing, known as the Resistance Loyalty Bloc, holds 13 of the 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament. They are backed by a coalition of allied parties that only recently lost their majority. The Hezbollah party also has two seats in the cabinet.

Hezbollah was led by an Islamic cleric Hassan Nasrallah from 1992 until this September, when he was killed in an Israeli Air Force strike on the terrorist group’s headquarters in Beirut. Since then, Israel has claimed to have removed Nasrallah’s cousin, Hashem Safiddin, who was expected to become the organization’s top leader.

The ongoing assassinations of senior Hezbollah officials have led to confusion over the group’s future leadership, uncertainty that the US, UN and others see as an opportunity to bring UN 1701 back to the table.

Why did UN 1701 fail?

A former senior official familiar with the UN 1701 negotiations in 2006 said Washington Examiner that even on paper the resolution “wasn’t what we hoped it would be.”

The Lebanese government, whether through incompetence, negligence or malice, never disarmed Hezbollah within its borders after the resolution was approved.

A UNFIL unit was successfully established in the border area between Israel and Lebanon, but the peacekeepers were never authorized to use force against Hezbollah terrorists, a problem caused by the adoption of UN 1701 under Title VI of the Convention. UN Charter instead of Chapter VII.

“Title VII says that UN peacekeepers can use force if necessary to prevent threats to the peace, while Title VI prevents them from doing so,” said a former senior official. Washington Examiner. “And so we wanted to get a Title VII mandate so we could have the strongest UNIFIL possible, but we couldn’t get it. The Russians and the French blocked us.”

In the absence of oversight by the Lebanese government and no basis for the UN to enter the country to dismantle Hezbollah’s growing weapons cache, little has been done over the past 18 years to deter offensive operations launched from Lebanon against Israel.

For example, in 2019, the group’s military wing fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli army base near the Lebanese border. UNFIL responded by “calling for maximum restraint and asking for the cessation of any actions that jeopardize the cessation of hostilities.”

These acts of aggression, combined with various minor skirmishes, kept the Israeli-Lebanese border in a constant state of alarm.

What is the current conflict in Lebanon?

After the terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at northern Israel as an act of “solidarity” with Hamas terrorists who entered the country and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis.

Hezbollah’s attacks after October 7 destroyed any hopes for a peaceful solution to the problem prompted Israel’s leadership to “settle scores” with the terrorist group based in Lebanon once and for all.

Since then, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health has reported more than 1,000 people killed in Israeli attacks and more than 6,300 wounded since the start of the Hezbollah offensive. The ministry does not specify the ratio of Hezbollah fighters to the civilian population of Lebanon.

“I want to emphasize that we are not at war with the people of Lebanon. We are at war with Hezbollah,” IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video message this week, describing Israel’s military operations in Lebanon. “We will continue to act against Hezbollah so that the people of northern Israel can return to their homes in safety.”

“The lesson I take from a lot of this episode is that a ceasefire is great when it happens because the two sides are tired of fighting,” said a former senior official. Washington Examiner. “But the ceasefire is not implemented on its own. The authorities that put them in place should follow through, and we just haven’t.”

What is the future of UN 1701 – and is Israel interested in implementing it?

Lebanon faces growing destabilization as Israel continues its crusade against all aspects of the Hezbollah organization operating in Beirut and beyond.

Lebanon’s interim prime minister, Najib Mikati, appealed to Israel and Hezbollah to join the tenants of UN 1701. He pledged to send thousands of Lebanese troops to the area between the Blue Line and the Litani River to play their part in the resolution.

“We must avoid bloodshed and destruction, and we must implement Resolution 1701,” Mikati told US special envoy Amos Hochstein about it October 21

“Lebanese authorities should deploy (all over) the territory of Lebanon, and only the state and the Lebanese army should have weapons,” the interim prime minister said this week at the Paris Conference on Aid to Lebanon.

Despite his enthusiasm for a role for the Lebanese state in the resolution, Miktai is virtually silent when it comes to how Hezbollah will be disbanded.

David Dowd, a scholar of international law and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, believes that calls for the Lebanese to join UN Resolution 1701 will not ultimately lead to the necessary disarmament of Hezbollah.

“When we hear (the Lebanese government mentions) Resolution 1701, we hear Resolution 1701 as it was intended. Lebanon means it as they mean it,” Dowd said. “And by the time they reach a ceasefire, the question of Hezbollah’s weapons will be lost in the Byzantine labyrinths of Lebanese politics.”

He continued: “The West has so many other things to deal with besides Hezbollah and Lebanon. If a year from now they’re still discussing this national defense dialogue, this consensus they’re talking about on Hezbollah’s weapons, we’ll forget and move on, and Hezbollah can be reborn.”

The first deputy official of the US State Department, Vedant Patel, also emphasized the need for UN 1701 at a press conference on Tuesday, ignoring the issue of disarmament.

“I know there’s been a lot of interest in 1701 over the last couple of days and maybe there’s been a little bit of a misunderstanding in how — or a misinterpretation in how it’s being discussed,” Patel told reporters. “So let me be absolutely clear. We want to see effective implementation of 1701.”

The problem in Israel’s eyes is that these talks are too late.

Israel does not consider UN Resolution 1701 as a document that needs to be amended or re-implemented. Instead, Israel sees the resolution and its lack of implementation as a black-and-white justification for its military campaign.

If Hezbollah continues to operate in Lebanon and UN peacekeepers do not take action, the IDF believes it is their prerogative to remove them.

Blinken and Mikati appeared to acknowledge this when they met on Friday to discuss “a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon that fully implements UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

“(Blinken) stressed that Iran and Hezbollah must not stand in the way of Lebanon’s security and stability.” The State Department said meetings

Israel has been waiting for nearly two decades to eliminate an Iranian-backed terrorist cell in Lebanon, a job it clearly did not want to undertake.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Political discussions are unlikely to convince Israel to end its military campaign in Lebanon.

If UN Resolution 1701 is to be implemented this year, the only way to trigger the process seems to be to destroy Hezbollah.

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