Adding to Israel’s ongoing hostility to the UN peacekeeping operation in southern Lebanon, the UNIFIL reported Sunday’s operations near the Blue Line were disrupted when the IDF began dropping an unidentified chemical on the area near the peacekeepers.
The UNIFIL said that the actions violated UN Security Council resolution 1701, and while Israel maintained that the chemicals were “non-toxic” they also advised UNIFIL personnel in the area to “clear the area and take cover.”
With the warning, UNIFIL personnel withdrew from the Blue Line area and weren’t able to return for some nine hours. While no one appears to have been injured, there is still no clarification of what those chemicals actually are, nor the consequences to the land, which is largely farmland in the area where it was dropped.
UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) vehicles ride along a street in Marjaayoun, Southern Lebanon January 20, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A statement from Lebanon’s Environmental Ministry presented the Israel operation as “environmental annihilation aimed at undermining the resilience of southern Lebanon residents,” and while again it’s not clear what these chemicals even were, that is as close to an explanation as we’ve gotten from anybody.
Israel has a tendency to harass UNIFIL personnel on a fairly regular basis. Israeli forces open fire on UNIFIL patrols, even though those patrols are clearly marked, and mostly shrugs off incidents where UN peacekeepers are actually wounded, claiming the UNIFIL is secretly in league with Hezbollah.
Israel has agitated for the UN to revoke the UNIFIL mandate, and while they failed in the 2025 vote, they got a non-binding promise there would be no more mandate renewals beyond 2026, so this theoretically is the last year of Israel having to occasionally drop grenades on UN peacekeepers or fire guns at them, at least in Lebanon.