“The situation is really quite volatile,” Capt. Alessandro Crepy, with the Italian contingent of the peacekeeping group UNIFIL, says of the fighting between forces in Israel and Lebanon.
Members of the Lebanese army and the Italian contingent of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force inspect a house destroyed by an Israeli attack during a patrol in Yarine on June 10, 2024.
Literally in the middle of this confrontation is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, created in 1978 after Israel invaded the neighboring country. Despite the name’s indication that it would be temporary, UNIFIL has become one the longest-serving peacekeeping missions in the world.UNIFIL took NPR on a recent patrol along the blue line — the cease-fire line painstakingly delineated in 2000 after Israel withdrew following an invasion in 1982.
The attacks on Israel are conducted by Hezbollah and its allies, rather than the Lebanese army. But under the U.N. plan — which envisioned Lebanese government forces securing Lebanon's border rather than Iran-backed Hezbollah — UNIFIL deals only with Lebanese government forces. UNIFIL also conducts humanitarian missions, including supporting hospitals. But those interactions have been largely curtailed by the fighting at the border. Although Lebanon did not have mandatory evacuations and some civilians remain in their homes, more than 90,000 have been displaced by fighting and have left the border area to stay in makeshift shelters or with relatives.
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