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nepali UNIFIL force in the land of lebanon
From several days i was trying to meet nepalese troups arrived here in middle east for un peace project.My brother when arrived in lebanon, immidiately father phoned me & asked if i can meet with him or not?The people of the rest of the world dont know how strict is in the border of these enmy countries to get through?He only knew israel is the power of asia so i could go, i still remember he had said me ISRAEL KALO ARINGALKO DESH ho. Whenever i get a call from my family they dont forget me to suggest ‘not to be around the carparking areas’.I ve to convince them i am not in the boarder areas, nothing can cause harm in center of israel -tel aviv.As few years ago Israel has experienced the explosions of countless car bombs by the sucide attackers.But the history has been changed due to rocket technology.
Not only in the iseraeli point of view the presence of UNITED NATIONS INTERIM FORCE IN LEBANON (UNIFIL) is being questioned , but the debate over it has been raised from all concerning peoples and countries. The countries Canada, Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Nepal, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Senegal and Sweden have provided troops to this Mission.UNIFIL has fallen out of favor with both Israel and many in Lebanon. Israel has criticized the force for, among other things, maintaining a dialogue with Hezbollah, which it views as a terrorist organization, for treating Israeli and Hezbollah ceasefire breaches equally, and of complicity in the capture of three Israeli soldiers in 2000.
The imaginative and truly gifted temptress, Zionist Organization of America has accused UNIFIL, in a September 2006 Weekly Standard (!) article, of providing Hezbollah with ‘real time intelligence’ concerning Israeli troop movements via its website during the July 2006 War.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: “We didn’t like very much UNIFIL which was very useless and very helpless. Look what happened. Did you hear of any particular efforts of the United Nations UNIFIL force in the south of Lebanon to prevent the attacks against Israel in the first place? So they were not useful and that is why we were unhappy with them.”
Former Israeli ambassador Itamar Rabinovich on the 20 July 2006:”UNIFIL, I’m afraid, is a joke. They’ve been there for 29 years and since then, there have been so many skirmishes [along the border].”Former UNIFIL spokesman, Timur Goksel disagrees:
“UNIFIL came here in 1978. We were, because at that time there was no Hezbollah here, accused of being sympathetic to Palestinians. A peacekeeping force does not come here with pre-set enemies. There is no enemy in a peacekeeping force and UNIFIL is a peacekeeping force. It’s not an Israeli combat force or an anti-terror force, as they would like it to be. As long as we don’t serve their direct interests, they are going to denigrate it as much as they can.” (Sept 26 2006)
One example of UNIFIL’s image problem can be found in Sibqin, a small remote village overlooking Tyre and the Mediterranean, a few miles from the Lebanon border.During the July 2006 War, which destroyed 60% of Sibqin’s homes, the local hospital and its grounds were not just targeted but saturated with US-made cluster bombs. This carpet bombing was done in the last 72 hours of the conflict after the long delayed UN sponsored cessation of hostiles agreement was finally allowed to be signed by the Bush administration. UNIFIL reckons that nearly one million unexploded US bomblets still constitute a deadly infestation of the surrounding countryside of South Lebanon.
Recently a young Shia mother from Sibqin brought her son who had a serious cut on his hand for emergency treatment to the gate of the newly arrived Italian regiment, called the ‘Savoia Cavalleria’ which is part of a six month rotation with responsibility for this village.According to villagers, the boy and his mother were coldly turned away without treatment, further endangering the lad: “We learned during the long Israeli occupation to expect such inhumanity from the Zionists, but it hurt our community for the Europeans to behave in this way towards us. We did not invite them to become the new occupiers. And anyhow is it not true that Bush and Rice sent UNIFIL to protect the thieves of Palestine, not to protect us Lebanese”.
Soon, other complaints against UNIFIL surfaced. “We liked the Nepalese but they left in 2000″, one woman said. Another added, “Italian UNIFIL doesn’t even talk to us anyone, they just stare at us from behind their dark glasses inside their armored vehicles. My children are afraid of them.”
Sensitive to their image, the Italians apologized for not helping the boy and have set up a Friday morning free clinic for Sibqin, and as has been their annual custom, are currently busy arranging for Santa Claus to deliver Christmas gifts to the precious, and war-traumatized children in their area. The Italians also plan to do foot patrols with an interpreter and ‘try to connect more with the people’.
But doubts persist on both sides in Zibqin as in the more than 200 villages of South Lebanon. The other 28 country contingents around the South have had similar experiences to the Italians.But increasingly UNIFIL respects the Lebanese villagers they are assigned to protect.A Spanish soldier explained recently near Fatima Gate, while studying a new Israeli bunker across the blue line cyclone fence and with Israeli binoculars focused on him reflecting the bright sunlight from the hills in the distance:
“When I am on patrol in a village and I see an old woman walking along the road I become emotional sometimes. I don’t see a Muslim woman, a supporter of Hezbollah, a ‘terrorist’. I see my deceased sainted mother or my aunt who lives in a village near Barcelona. These Arab people are exactly the same as us. Why can’t people understand that?”Near the village of Al-Sultaneh, a French paratrooper volunteered:
“Sometimes I arrive to a young man on his motorcycle. I assume for sure he is Hezbollah. We are friendly and correct in our conversation. Do I want to arrest him or question him? Non, Pas de tout! I have no right to do that. C’est interdit. Truly I would like to play football with him because all UNIFIL troops know that Hezbollah are also very good on the sporting battlefield. But if we invited them for a match Israel would maybe react completely fou [crazy] and cause an international crisis. So our commander tells us to keep our distance. Malheursement also from the Shia mademoiselles qui bien sur sont plus belle et chamrment que lesquelles nous avons en toute de France!
“Don’t tell my girlfriend in Lyon that I said that!” he adds to shrieks of laughter from his friends.The June 24, 2007 attack on UNIFIL which killed six peacekeepers from the Spanish contingent near Khiam shook UNIFIL resulting in even less direct contact with the local population as UNIFIL hunkered behind protective barriers and in armored vehicles.
Some Hezbollah supporters, but not the organization itself, has accused UNIFIL of siding with Israel, especially since the passage of Resolution 1701 which they view as one-sided.On October 16, 2006 the much respected senior Shia cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah declared that “the UN force has come to protect Israel, not Lebanon.” Many agree with the Sayyed, whose social service projects are second only to those of Hezbollah in areas where the Government of Lebanon has never functioned for average citizens and which today does less for Lebanese in need than the Bush administration has done for post Katrina New Orleans’s lower ninth ward and St.Bernard Parish.
The anti-Hezbollah salafist organization, Al Qaeda in Lebanon, has declared UNIFIL its target and is widely believed to be behind the June attack. Hezbollah is watching UNIFIL’s back and has foiled more than half a dozen operations against it.
Slowly and discretely, a growing bond is forming among the Lebanese Resistance (led by Hezbollah), the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL. This quasi-entente cordial does not please the Welch Club whose first question to each of Lebanon’s Presidential aspirants over the past months is reported to be “how are you going to disarm Hezbollah?
