A spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Saturday said that Israel had requested it leave its positions in south Lebanon where Israel is clashing with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but they had refused.
They asked us to withdraw “from the positions along the blue line … or up to five kilometers (three miles) from the blue line,” UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse (AFP), using the term for the demarcation line between both countries. “But there was a unanimous decision to stay,” he said.
Bigger question. Given that it’s the case that Israel’s issuing evacuation orders for places that it’s going to hit, why are people on the ground making the call to go or stay? Like, why hasn’t this policy call been made at a higher level?
The Italian defense minister explained it pretty well: https://youtu.be/Ox0AzK7iVe4?si=1D4m8M7B-DIYcBci
There is a UNSC resolution, if Israel has a problem with that, they have to take it up with the UNSC.
Because it’s their own life at stake and they should always have the choice.
In a military operation, there are going to be directives as to how to act. You have RoEs, and usually normally countries are going to make calls as to what they want to do from a policy standpoint with their militaries.
The UN isn’t a military organization. It is a peacekeeping org and as such is not bound by the same operational rules as an army would be.
The soldiers are sent from the militaries of member countries.
That does not mean they work under military rules. They are under UN control, and the UN is a peacekeeping force. It is not a nation state military force.
The UN isn’t, but the soldiers themselves are, and are acting for their respective member state military:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_peacekeeping
That says the UN controls the troops.
They are not an army, they are a peacekeeping force.
They are also under UN rules, not their own nation’s.
If the UN decides they can choose to stay or leave, that’s what happens.
They are members of their own state militaries acting in an operation headed by the UN.
They have ROEs and similar orders handed to them.
kagis
Here’s a sample UN peacekeeping RoE for a recent exercise simulating an actual operation.
https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/siteassets/english/swedint/engelska/swedint/courses/unsoc/d-29-roe-incl-annex-a-d.pdf
It’ll lay out the conditions under which one attacks and to what degree peacekeepers should hold maintain a position given the possibility that it is attacked, who they are authorized to engage, and such.
In this situation, you’ve got an active conflict underway between Hezbollah and Israel. Like, this isn’t going to be a “there’s nobody shooting at each other” situation. My point is that normally, countries are pretty particular about the lines for international conflict, and I’d expect an RoE to have specified whether they are expected to maintain positions during an evacuation order or not.