UN peacekeeping troops failing Israel as Hezbollah creates terror tunnels right under their noses

"The world’s eyes are once again focused on the south of Lebanon, as the Israel Defense Forces continues its war against Hezbollah.

The IDF took me into Lebanon Saturday to see firsthand some of what it has already found.

The timing was important because the Israelis this week got caught in a battle of more than words with the United Nations ‘peacekeeping force’ in the area.

Five UN force members have been wounded in recent days. The IDF has taken responsibility for several of these accidental cases, although two days ago, it was Hezbollah that hit a UN peacekeeper.

Still, the fact is that ever since the 2006 war here ended, the UN’s peacekeeping force has been not just useless but worse than useless.

It was meant to be here to ensure that peace was kept on this tinderbox of a border. But for the past year, it has sat useless as Hezbollah has fired tens of thousands of rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel.

And as I reported in The Post last year, I have seen footage of these ‘peacekeepers’ coming out of their bases, Hezbollah firing rockets over their heads into Israel only for the UN peacekeepers to do a U-turn and simply return to base.

Worse is that the UN resolution that ended the 2006 war — Resolution 1701 — was meant to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its stockpile of weapons aimed at Israel.

That resolution was never implemented. Since 2006, Iran is believed to have gathered some 160,000 long- and short-range rockets in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has been firing them since Oct. 8 last year, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis out of their homes in the north of the country.

Underground operation

On Sunday, I saw with my own eyes how this had happened. A short way inside Lebanon, the IDF showed me two Hezbollah tunnels — right near the Israeli border.

These had been built in the hope of carrying out a Hamas-style Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And also to store and fire rockets into northern Israel.

The ground in Lebanon is rocky — not sandy like Gaza — and these are serious, deep tunnels.

But the tunnel shafts opened not much more than 100 meters away from a giant UN peacekeeping base and observation point.

How is it possible that the kind of heavy digging needed to create these tunnels could have happened literally right under the noses of the UN? Were they not looking? Did they even care?

The answer seems to be a very obvious ‘No.’ They decided not to look. The international peacekeeping force has been a joke for years..."