How a US-backed UN resolution failed to stop Hezbollah terror takeover: ‘Bipartisan failure’

JERUSALEM — As Israel’s air force continues to pound the Hezbollah terrorist movement in some of the most intense clashes since the 2006 war, United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 1701 is facing new criticism for failing to disarm the Lebanon-based terrorist organization. 

The U.S. and other world powers passed Resolution 1701 at the United Nations Security Council in 2006 in an attempt to prevent a third war between Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah. Israel fought Hezbollah in 1982 and in the summer of 2006.

Two key elements of Resolution 1701 have proved to be largely ineffective, according to experts on Lebanon and the U.N.

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The first part involved the 10,000 peacekeeping (with added personnel) U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that was expanded in 2006 to aid the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in assuming military control over the region, replacing Hezbollah, between the Litani River and the southern border in Lebanon. 

UNIFIL was tasked to work with the LAF to ensure the area was “free of any armed personnel, assets, and weapons.” However, Hezbollah’s growing absorption of the Lebanese state has turned it the de facto ruler over the country, according to many experts, or a heavily armed “state within a state.” 

The second crucial element of 1701 was to disarm Hezbollah. Yet, the Lebanese terrorist entity has dramatically re-armed itself to the point where it now has at least 150,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel.

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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Argentinian Ambassador Cesar Mayoral raise their hands to vote at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Aug. 11, 2006. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1701 to halt fighting in Lebanon and deploy 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers to southern Lebanon. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

Walid Phares, who has advised U.S. presidential candidates, said 1701 is a “limited resolution and cannot work by itself.” He added, “Everybody is hiding behind 1701 and cannot resolve the issue.” He said even within the presence of UNIFIL, Hezbollah would come back.

Phares, who has extensively written on Hezbollah, proposed enforcement of the 2004 UNSC Resolution 1559 to compliment 1701 because it “expressly asked for a disarming and dismantling of Hezbollah as a militia. That is basically the comprehensive resolution that can serve the purpose of a cease-fire or of actually getting to peace.”

United Nations peacekeeping forces travel along the main road leading to Lebanon’s southern town of Naqura near the border with Israel on Oct. 27, 2022. (Mahmoud Zayyat/ AFP/Getty Images)

“The Lebanese opposition should be calling on the execution of 1559. What does that mean? The Lebanese government will help to disarm Hezbollah from the center, but that Lebanese government is controlled by Hezbollah, so that government cannot execute 1559. Who can do it? The Lebanese people themselves,” he said.

Phares noted that some Lebanese Christians, Druze and Sunnis have been doing it themselves over the last few days by “refusing access to Hezbollah” in a number of their areas. “But they need someone to represent them.”

Rich Goldberg, a former member of then-President Trump’s National Security Council, told Fox News Digital, “This is a bipartisan American failure as much as it is a U.N. failure. The Bush administration signed off on 1701 with an obvious poison pill: that UNIFIL could only take action at the request of the Lebanese Armed Forces. No request ever came, no enforcement ever occurred, all while the U.S. pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into both UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces. We held all the cards and used none for 18 years, and Iran took full advantage.”

“The lesson for today is that whatever comes after Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, it cannot rely on UNIFIL or the Lebanese Armed Forces for verification or enforcement,” said Goldberg, a senior adviser for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The only party capable and willing to disarm Hezbollah is the Israel Defense Forces.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., echoed Goldberg’s comments on Monday in the Senate chamber, “The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon allowed Hezbollah to build up massive stockpiles on Israel’s border in clear, clear preparation for war.”

Smoke rises above the southern suburbs of Beirut after an Israeli strike on Sept. 20, 2024. (Getty Images)

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“Why has the U.N. looked the other way as Hezbollah has expanded its corrosive influence over the institutions of Lebanon’s government?” he continued. “But setting aside the failures of the so-called international community, this past weekend once again cast a spotlight on America’s own naivete toward the glaring facts of Iran-backed war on our friend, Israel.”

Hezbollah launched rocket attacks at Israel on Oct. 8, a day after its ally, Hamas, invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip and slaughtered nearly 1,200 people, including more than 30 Americans, and took about 250 hostages.

Middle East analyst and expert Tom Gross told Fox News Digital, “In many senses, Israel would be forgiven for never trusting the U.N. again. Its utter bias during this conflict, its eagerness to believe whatever fabrications Hamas and Hezbollah feed it, including wildly unreliable civilian death stats and false reports of mass starvation in Gaza, as well as its abysmal failure to enforce previous resolutions (including 1701) designed to stop rocket fire into Israel, mean that almost no one in Israel trusts the U.N.”

The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted Hezbollah infrastructure sites in Lebanon on Thursday. (Israel Defense Forces)

On Monday, France requested an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to address the Lebanon and Israel conflict.

“I have requested that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be held on Lebanon this week,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced. He urged all parties to “avoid a regional conflagration that would be devastating for everyone.” 

France had a colonial ruler presence in Lebanon from 1920 to 1946. Paris has vehemently opposed classifying all of Hezbollah’s movement as a terrorist entity, in sharp contrast to Germany, Canada, Austria, the United Kingdom and many additional European and Latin American countries that have condemned Hezbollah’s entire organization as a terrorist group.

A UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) patrol drives past the wreckage of a car that was targeted in Israeli strike early on March 2, 2024, near the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura. Three Hezbollah members were killed on March 2 in an Israeli strike that targeted a car in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source told AFP. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

When approached for comment about the alleged failure of 1701, the U.S. State Department referred Fox News Digital to remarks by U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood in late August at the Security Council to extend the UNIFIL mandate. He said at the time that “Hezbollah made the escalatory decision to bombard communities in northern Israel. And for the past 11 months, it has done so on nearly a daily basis.  It is wrong that this council has yet to condemn Hezbollah for these repeated destabilizing actions, and we regret that a small minority of the council members blocked the council from doing so in this mandate renewal.” 

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Wood added, “There is no dispute that Iran, in clear violation of the arms embargo in Resolution 1701, provides Hezbollah with the majority of the rockets, missiles and drones that are fired at Israel.” He called for the “need to push for Resolution 1701’s full implementation, including by establishing an area south of the Litani River that is free of any armed personnel, assets or weapons other than those of the Lebanese government and UNIFIL.”

A statement released by UNIFIL on Monday noted, “It is essential to fully recommit to the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which is now more critical than ever to address the underlying causes of the conflict and ensure lasting stability.”