A Hezbollah lawmaker warned on Monday that ending the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon will leave Israel more free to act there.
"The cancellation of UNIFIL gives the enemy greater freedom to do what he wants," said Hassan Ezzeddine, a member of Hezbollah's Loyalty to the Resistance bloc in the Lebanese parliament, according to Lebanese outlet MTV. He said the force "at least constituted an international witness to some extent."
Ezzeddine spoke in the southern town of Kfar Sir at a memorial ceremony for slain Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine and two other members of the group.
UNIFIL's mandate ends on December 31, after the UN Security Council voted last year to wind the mission down. The United States opposed renewing it, and the State Department has said the force "did not prevent Hezbollah from militarizing southern Lebanon" or deliver the enforcement that Security Council Resolution 1701 called for. Israel has long made the same argument.
The force has also been left out of the new security arrangements in the south. Under a framework agreement reached on June 26 between Israel, Lebanon and the United States, the Lebanese army is taking exclusive control of three pilot zones, Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, Froun and Srifa, where any Hezbollah presence is banned. Israeli and Lebanese teams worked out the details in talks in Rome. UNIFIL has no role in the zones.
Ezzeddine attacked that agreement as well, saying it "gives the Israeli enemy what it wants in exchange for nothing." He accused the Lebanese government of "conspiring" against the country's sovereignty by negotiating directly with Israel, and charged that Washington wants to become "the sole international reference" over the Lebanese state.
