Following his appeal for UNIFIL forces to leave fighting zones in south Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused by Tánaiste Micheál Martin of undermining the UN and the international rules-based system, reports RTE.
The growing Middle East crisis and Russia’s war against Ukraine will be the main topics of discussion at the EU foreign ministers’ conference in Luxembourg, which Mr. Martin is attending.
When Mr. Martin arrived at the meeting, he stated: “Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to take a back seat because he is basically now undermining the United Nations, the UN peacekeeping operation, and the whole rules-based international order.
“The international community needs to be very clear, and my colleagues at the European Council need to be very clear about the primacy of the international rules-based order. The United Nations is at the heart of that, and United Nations peacekeepers are at the heart of that,” reports RTE.
“We regret the harm to Unifil soldiers and we are doing our utmost to prevent such harm,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video message last evening in response to worldwide criticism on attacks on UNIFIL personnel and bases, reports RTE.
However, removing them from the risk zone is the easiest and most obvious approach to do this.
Israeli attacks on UNIFIL outposts were criticised by the Tánaiste as an attempt to “drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein”, reports RTE.
He stated that Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces were engaged in combat in south Lebanon and that Ireland had also urged the militant organisation, which the EU considers a terrorist organisation, to cease launching missiles.
“We cannot have an undermining and a chipping away of the status or the credibility or structures of the United Nations and particularly its peacekeeping forces,” he told reporters, reports RTE.
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