Ceasefire unraveling?
The UN brokered ceasefire is becoming increasingly irrelevant, or perhaps it always was a joke. There is now to be NO understanding that the UN will disarm Hezbollah in Lebanon (or anywhere else).
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted in an American newspaper Thursday as saying that the UN force expected to deploy in south Lebanon will not be tasked with forcibly disarming Hezbollah.
“I don’t think there is an expectation that this [UN] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah,” Rice told USA Today. “I think it’s a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily.
“ If Hezbollah resists international demands to disarm, Rice said, “one would have to assume that there will be others who are willing to call Hezbollah what we are willing to call it, which is a terrorist organization.”
Of course, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. And it is unrealistic to expect any terrorist organization to “lay down their arms voluntarily”. For terrorists, that is akin to saying that they no longer have any reason to exist. Hezbollah is not a state, and does not represent or defend civilians. They exist only to destroy the Israeli state, and to kill all Jews.
The ceasefire is even further encumbered by the news that our friends the French will contribute only token troops to the effort.
France is considering providing only a symbolic force for the United Nations contingent in Lebanon, and not the thousands of troops UN officials had hoped, Le Monde
newspaper said on Thursday.If true, such a move could seriously delay the UN mission, seen as vital to securing peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, or even scupper the whole operation.
Quoting UN and diplomatic sources, Le Monde said France might send just a dozen officers and around 200 personnel from an engineering division for the beefed-up UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
“scupper the whole operation”…. indeed… that’s exactly what’s happening. The question is: is that what France and the UN intended from the beginning?