"Israel announced this week the discovery of several tunnels dug by Hezbollah and reaching from Lebanon into Israel. Their existence has been confirmed, and has been condemned not only by Israel but as well by the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
The head of UNIFIL, the UN force along the Israel-Lebanon border, was taken to see one of the tunnels... Haaretz noted that 'UNIFIL's Head of Mission Stefano Del Col confirmed that he visited along with a technical team the spot where the IDF discovered the second tunnel close to the Blue Line.'
These tunnels are quite obviously a violation of Israeli sovereignty, and a violation of the governing UN Security Council resolutions, 1559 and 1701. Those resolutions demand that the Lebanese government exercise sovereignty in all of Lebanon... Resolution 2373, adopted in August 2017, extended the UNIFIL mandate. It added that the Security Council 'recalls its authorization to UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind...'
The existence of these tunnels, dug from precisely the area of southern Lebanon that UNIFIL is meant to patrol, means that this area is indeed 'utilized for hostile activities.' What then is the meaning of the UNIFIL response stating that 'will communicate its preliminary findings to the appropriate authorities in Lebanon'? The meaning is that UNIFIL will likely do nothing. ...
The tunnels are hardly the only brazen Hezbollah violation of the Security Council resolutions undertaken right under UNIFIL's nose. Consider this: Hezbollah is blocking roads in southern Lebanon to smooth the path of missile it is moving into the area, according to a report in the newspaper Israel Hayom. Then there is the village of Gila, just north of the Israeli border, where there is a Hezbollah headquarters and according to the Israelis about 20 warehouses with weapons, combat positions, lookout positions, dozens of underground positions. All this was built in an area supposedly patrolled by UNIFIL... If it cannot hinder Hezbollah's war preparations in any way and is even ignorant of them, UNIFIL is a waste of time and money."