UNIFIL and IDF clash 13th July 1990 round 1 Lebanon

This vid shows a confrontation i Southern Lebanon, between on one side the following elements of UNIFIL, APC platoon/Coy A/NORBATT XXV & UNIFIL Force Mobile Reserve (FMR), & on the other elements of the Israeli defence forces (IDF), that took place on the 13th of July 1990. The item of dispute was a new road to the IDF position PV-68 (UNIFIL designation), near the South Lebanese village of Kaukaba, that the IDF wanted to build a bit further away from the Litani river than the allready existing access road to PV-68.
On the part of IDF, I guess they hoped the new road would make the approach to PV-68 less exposed to ambushes with what nowdays are termed IEDs, but back then were just called "roadside bombs".
With regards to UNIFIL/NORBATT the new road would put the position 4-24 CP in an untenable position, in that it would be able to watch infiltration attempts by local "armed elements" (in short AE, a general UNIFIL term for insurgency organisations/formations resisting the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon) against the new road, but outside the mandated NORBATT/UNIFIL area of operations (AO).
Thus putting UNIFIL as a neutral intermediate in an impossible positon, open to accusations of either not stopping terrorist or of meddling with the affairs of the Armed elements outside of the UNIFIL AO.
4-24 CP also risked standing directly in line of IDF retaliatory fire from PV-68 against AE infil attempts on the new road.

See round 2 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zBspZdEb5Q

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• UNIFIL
• NorBATT
• IDF
• Lebanon
• Israel
• Army
• Norway