Over the past five years we have occasionally documented the absence of any BBC coverage of the activities of a Lebanese organisation called ‘Green Without Borders’ which is linked to Hizballah:
ANOTHER UN SC RESOLUTION VIOLATION GOES UNREPORTED BY THE BBC
BBC CONTINUES TO IGNORE HIZBALLAH VIOLATIONS IN SOUTH LEBANON
BBC NEWS IGNORES HIZBALLAH CROSS BORDER SHOOTING – IN ENGLISH
‘Green Without Borders’ has been described by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as “a Hezbollah front, providing the militant group cover for operational activities prohibited under UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701—from conducting preoperational surveillance to firing rockets at Israel”.
On June 8th the Times of Israel reported another chapter in that long-running story.
“The Israeli military on Wednesday accused the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group of conducting clandestine activities along the border with Israel under the guise of an environmental group known as “Green Without Borders.”
The Israel Defense Forces has made similar claims in recent years, identifying several observation posts owned by the non-governmental organization, which the army said were actually being used to carry out intelligence and reconnaissance work for the Iran-backed terror group.
“Unveiled: A new frontier reconnaissance site for Hezbollah terrorists to collect intelligence on the Lebanese border under the guise of the Green Without Borders association,” Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, said on Twitter.
In a series of tweets, Adraee attached photos of the alleged Hezbollah members taking pictures and observing Israel from a small structure on the border.
According to the IDF, the alleged Hezbollah position represents a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 second Lebanon war.
The resolution calls for armed groups besides the official Lebanese military and peacekeeping United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to remain north of the country’s Litani River.”
The IDF spokesman’s Tweets can be viewed here.
The body charged with monitoring UNSC resolution 1701 is of course UNIFIL. WINEP’s 2020 study documents numerous cases in which UNIFIL has been denied entry to ‘Green Without Borders’ facilities by ‘locals’:
“Even after Hezbollah publicly took credit for using GWB sites as launchpads for rocket attacks against Israel, in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions […], UNIFIL patrols were still denied access to GWB facilities. As recently as December 2019, three people in civilian clothes stopped an Observer Group Lebanon patrol on a road bordering the GWB site in Ramiyah and stated that the patrol required an LAF escort.”
Nothing has changed since then: on June 12th UNIFIL again put out a statement concerning threats to members of the peacekeeping force.
“The United Nation’s mission in Lebanon called Sunday for the country’s military to guarantee the security of its peacekeepers, alleging personnel were “threatened” by armed men the day before. […]
A routine UNIFIL patrol was confronted on Saturday by “a group of men in civilian clothes” near the Arab al-Louaize district in southern Lebanon, force spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said in a statement.
The men “threatened the soldiers and tried to take their weapons,” he said.”
Unsurprisingly, neither of those stories has been given any coverage by the BBC. As has been noted here on numerous occasions in the past, despite having a bureau in Beirut, the BBC not only routinely ignores the topic of Hizballah’s continuous violations of UN SC resolution 1701, but has even whitewashed them.
The BBC News website’s ‘Lebanon’ page shows that since the beginning of the year just eleven items with that tag have been published, three of which concerned national elections.
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REVIEWING BBC REPORTING OF HIZBALLAH’S VIOLATIONS OF UNSC RESOLUTION 1701
We all know that the BBC Middle East “service” is in Iran’s pocket – and this latest BBC omission simply proves that.