STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A long-running United Nations peacekeeping mission is ending this year in Lebanon. The U.S. and Israel pressured the U.N. to shut it down. The Lebanese government is warning about a security vacuum as those peacekeepers leave, and the peacekeepers say nobody will be left to witness the destruction in south Lebanon. NPR's Jane Arraf reports.
UNIDENTIFIED PEACEKEEPER: (Speaking Finnish).
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: These Finnish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon are among soldiers from 46 countries monitoring ceasefire violations between Lebanon and Israel. The mission, known as UNIFIL, was created to monitor Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 1978. Last year, nearly five decades later, U.S. envoy to the U.N., Dorothy Shea, announced the U.S. was withdrawing support for the mission.
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DOROTHY SHEA: The United States welcomes today's historic vote, which brings an end to the UNIFIL's mandate. The time has come for UNIFIL's mission to end.
ARRAF: France has led a diplomatic effort on behalf of Lebanon to extend UNIFIL's mandate. But the country, which ruled Lebanon after World War I, doesn't have the leeway it once did.
HERVE LECOQ: Frankly, the U.S. has pushed France out of its role, its prominent role in Lebanon in terms of contributing to security and contributing to stability in the south.
ARRAF: That's the deputy head of UNIFIL, Herve Lecoq, in Beirut. The U.S. has brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon and a ceasefire this year, which UNIFIL points out Hezbollah has largely adhered to, while Israel has continuously broken it.
LECOQ: Indeed, the fire is one-sided - airstrikes, artillery fire, mortars, tanks, the use of drones to drop grenades or bombs.
ARRAF: Israel maintains that the peacekeepers have failed to rein in Hezbollah. But that was never their mandate, which focuses on monitoring the ceasefire and helping strengthen the Lebanese army.
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PRIME MINISTER JOSEPH AOUN: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: At the U.N. General Assembly in September, Lebanon's prime minister, Joseph Aoun, appealed for a new international force to prevent a security vacuum. Andrea Tenenti, who was UNIFIL's spokesman for 19 years, says he, too, fears a vacuum.
ANDREA TENENTI: I find it would be a very, very dangerous moment for the people in south Lebanon, for the country, because there will be no one able to monitor the situation.
ARRAF: Lecoq says, without monitors, no one will be able to verify Hezbollah threats in the south of Lebanon against Israel - the reason Israel has given for leveling large stretches of Lebanese border villages.
LECOQ: Because if there is nothing, no U.N. presence in the south, this role that I think very important of witness is going to disappear. So whatever happens there will not be known.
ARRAF: It also means that journalists will likely not be able to bear witness.
We've passed the last Lebanese checkpoint. And even though this is still Lebanon, Lebanese forces don't come up here.
UNIFIL has been able to occasionally take journalists, including NPR, behind Israeli occupation lines in south Lebanon to report on the devastation. The peacekeeping mission now says Israel rejects those requests.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Beirut.
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