UNIFIL discusses 1701 violations with Lebanon, Israel
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) held a tripartite meeting with Lebanese and Israeli Army representatives on Wednesday – the first since a spate of security incidents sparked mutual accusations of breaking international law.
The meeting, held in Naqoura, south Lebanon, was chaired by UNIFIL chief Major General Claudio Graziano and discussed the recent alleged violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that prompted allegations from both Lebanese and Israeli sides of the Blue Line.
UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told The Daily Star that the meeting between senior military representatives was routine and had been scheduled before the explosion at Tayr Felsay and the reported discovery of Israeli espionage equipment in south Lebanon over the weekend.
Tenenti said the meeting “discussed the issue of the implementation of [Resolution] 1701, especially concerning the recent incidents, with a view to preventing the reoccurrence of such events.”
“[Representatives] also discussed the Blue Line and Ghajar,” added Tenenti, in reference to the controversy over the village straddling the boundary of Israeli military withdrawal from Lebanon.
“The fact that UNIFIL can have this meeting with the two parties and that they were given the chance to talk to each other is positive,” he said.
The war of rhetoric heightened following the two October incidents which point to breaches of Resolution 1701 – drafted to end Israel’s 2006 summer war against Lebanon.
Israel has accused Hizbullah of stockpiling weapons in UNIFIL’s area of operations and many Lebanese – including President Michel Sleiman on Tuesday – have accused Israel of spying on Lebanon since the end of the war.
“There is a difference between spying carried out by people who have been detected and detained and detectors and spying equipment which have been found during last week,” said Sleiman while on an official visit to Spain.
Lebanon’s permanent representative at the UN, Nawwaf Salam, in a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council on Wednesday, said that that since the last report by Ban, “Israel has continuously violated Lebanon’s sovereignty and Resolution 1701.”
The letter lists Israeli breaches between May and September 2009, including 388 air violations, 48 violations by sea and 77 land violations.
Salam said that such a large figure “confirms that Israel insists on violating the Blue Line, Lebanon’s sovereignty and Resolution 1701.”
He addressed the letter in anticipation of Ban’s upcoming report on the state of the Security Council resolution and used it to call for international pressure to be put on Israel to end violations and protect against “any unilateral Israeli action targeting Lebanon under any pretext.”
Also on Wednesday, remarks published by the Lebanese daily An-Nahar from an unidentified senior military source said that the recent explosion at Tayr Felsay was not caused by an arms cache.
“What we saw in Khirbet Silim was actually a warehouse for storing projectiles collected from different areas,” said the source, in reference to the July blast in south Lebanon which drew international condemnation and appeared to confirm the stockpiling of weapons by nonstate groups south of the Litani River – an obvious violation of Resolution 1701.
“But with regards to Tayr Felsay, we arrived together with UNIFIL about an hour and a half after the blast and what we saw was a charred garage,” the official added. “We don’t know what exploded inside. But there is no trace of gunpowder at all.”
The results of the joint UNIFIL-LAF investigation into the cause of the explosion are not yet known but the incident led Israeli President Shimon Peres to accuse Hizbullah of turning Lebanon into a “powder keg.”
An investigation into the explosion of suspected spy devices in south Lebanon over the weekend is still ongoing.