And once again the UN has failed ‘we the people’

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice elaborated further saying a ceasefire would enable terrorists to cause further Israeli and Arab civilian casualties.

The G8 Summit ended while Israel was five days into its war with Lebanon. By then Israel bombed the Beirut Airport, several major roads throughout Lebanon, telecommunication towers and indiscriminately attacked civilian areas.

A few days later, Mr Annan went so far as to demand an immediate end to Israel using “indiscriminate and disproportionate violence” in its attack of civilian targets in Lebanon.

Eight days of bombing in Lebanon and an opportunity to meet with four Security Council members during the G8 summit prepared the UN to only issue such a statement.

It became clear on that day that the Security Council failed to reach common ground on securing Lebanon’s peace.

And so these UNIFIL peacekeepers who continue operating through the 1978 Resolutions 425 and 426 to prevent and resolve conflict in Lebanon, keep doing so as a stagnant 28-year-old interim force contained within a 19 kilometre security zone along the south Lebanese border.

Their powers, restricted to observing acts of aggression more than keeping the peace, indicates the impotency of the UN to effectively uphold its Charter in maintaining peace and security in the world.

Unsurprisingly on July 21, as part of the long-term agenda for general United Nations reform, UN members reached a broad consensus on the need for genuine change to the Security Council structure and powers.

UNIFIL continues to watch the disaster unfold around them from their base in Tyre, in the Mediterranean towns of Ras Naqoura and Alma Al Shaab, all along the southern Mediterranean Lebanese coast, and in the southeast town of Marwahin.

On the other side of Lebanon, in Beirut, Abdeh, Hermel and the eastern city of Baalbeck, there is no power within their 1978 mandate for the UN peacekeepers to even witness, let alone curb, the destruction caused by Israeli bombing.

The recent attack by the Israeli Defence Force on a UN peacekeeper post near the Lebanese town of Khiyam was yet another unfortunate and shocking reminder that the UN is no longer a neutral regulator of peace in the region.

Israel currently hovers in Southern Lebanon, playing dare with Syria by stating its intention to move northeast up the Litani River, further threatening Syria’s capital, Damascus.