Bombing the peacekeepers

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As Al Jazeera has reported this morning:

Israeli forces fired at UNIFIL headquarters in southern Lebanon, injuring two Indonesian peacekeepers.

UNIFIL – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon – said on Thursday that two peacekeepers were injured when an Israeli tank fired at a watchtower at the force's headquarters in the border area town of Naqoura, causing them to fall.

Any attack on peacekeepers is a “grave violation of international humanitarian law”, UNIFIL said in a statement.

The peacekeeping organisation, which consists of about 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries and was established in 1978, said Israeli forces had “deliberately” fired at its positions along the border.

I trust they will forgive me for sharing so much of the report: I thought it important to do so.

As we already know, Israel had already told the UN to take its peacekeeping forces out of this area. The Irish government, which understands more than most what genocide by a foreign power means for a country, was robust in its response and said that its 300 strong contributions to this force were staying in place.

Now, Israel has delivered its response. It is bombing the peacekeepers.

As Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's very experienced Middle East correspondent, has just said on Radio 4, this cannot be by chance: everyone knows where these peacekeepers are based. Israel most certainly does. This must be a deliberate act in that case.

The war crimes continue in that case, as do the aggression and the illegal acts of warfare.

Let's not pretend Israel is acting in self-defence or even has a defence for its actions now. Nothing about 7 October last year can justify this. Israel is now undertaking overt acts of military aggression against its neighbours. Anyone apologising for that is defending its war crimes.


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