What is the point of Spain exposing its troops to a pointless mission in Lebanon?

A new serious attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon calls into question, once again, a highly controversial mission.

Is Sánchez putting the lives of Spanish soldiers at risk to cover up socialist corruption?
Pedro Sánchez supports Hezbollah ally who allowed attacks against Israel from Lebanon

A mortar attack against the Spanish base in Lebanon

Last night, a few hours after Hezbollah terrorists—backed by Iran—violated the ceasefire by launching new missile and drone attacks against civilian targets in Israel, the Spanish Miguel de Cervantes base of the UN Peacekeeping Forces in Marjayoun was attacked with mortars. As a result of that attack, one Serbian soldier was killed and two Spanish soldiers sustained minor injuries.

Sánchez's government is hiding who carried out the attack

This morning, at 10:07 CET, the Spanish Ministry of Defense reported on the attack via its official Twitter account, without stating who was responsible and without mentioning that two Spanish soldiers were injured, which has prompted complaints in the replies. This afternoon, a relative of a Spanish soldier responded to the Ministry with this message: "You are shameless for maintaining the deployment there. Our relatives deployed there have been incommunicado since yesterday, we know NOTHING about them, communications have been cut off, and you haven't even issued a statement to inform us if they are alright and how the wounded soldier is doing."

Like the Ministry of Defense, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, commented on this attack without indicating its origin, which clearly shows that it was Hezbollah. If they had the slightest suspicion that it was an Israeli attack, they would have indicated it, as they have done on other occasions.

The attack was launched by Hezbollah terrorists from Al-Qatrani

In case there were any remaining doubts, this afternoon the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated that the attack was a work of Hezbollah, and even indicated the site from which the terrorists fired those mortars: Al-Qatrani, 6 km north of the Spanish base of the UN Peacekeeping Forces. This is a predominantly Christian population with a strategic position and where Hezbollah terrorists have been deployed for years, in an attempt to change the demographics of the area and achieve a Muslim majority.

Specifically, Israel notes that Hezbollah's attack was launched against the village of Dibbine, near Marjayoun. At the end of May, the Israel Defense Forces took that town, from where Hezbollah had been operating for some time. Today the Lebanese Army took control of that village after the Israeli forces withdrew from the area.

A UN mission launched in 2006 that was supposed to disarm Hezbollah

Hace ya tiempo que quedó claro que la misión de las Fuerzas de Paz de la ONU en el Líbano es completamente inútil. La razón de ser de la misión es la resolución 1701 del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, aprobada en 2006 y que exigía "el desarme de todos los grupos armados del Líbano para que, de conformidad con la decisión del Gobierno del Líbano de fecha 27 de julio de 2006, no haya más armas ni autoridad en el Líbano que las del Estado libanés".

It has long been clear that the UN Peacekeeping Forces mission in Lebanon is completely useless. The mission's raison d'être is UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, which demanded "the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon so that, in accordance with the decision of the Government of Lebanon dated July 27, 2006, there would be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state."

In order to support this mission, and within the framework of Operation "Libre Hidalgo," launched during the term of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain deployed its first military contingent to Lebanon in September 2006. Almost 20 years later, Spain is the third largest contributor of troops to this mission: 684 soldiers from the Spanish Army. Indonesia (which does not even have diplomatic relations with Israel) is the country that contributes the most troops, with 748, with Italy in second place with 746, followed by India (642), Ghana (624), France (600), Nepal (552) and China (471), among others.

20 years later, UN forces still haven't disarmed those terrorists

Since October 8, 2023, the day after the terrorist attack by Hamas (a criminal group also supported by Iran) against Israel, Hezbollah has been launching thousands of projectiles at Israel from southern Lebanon without the UN peacekeeping forces doing anything to stop it. In October 2024, Israel denounced the presence of Hezbollah arsenals a few meters from a UN forces post in Lebanon, which highlights the futility of that mission, which 20 years later still has not seized Hezbollah's arsenals and currently only serves to allow the peacekeepers to be used as human shields by that terrorist group in its attacks against Israel.

A military mission used by Sánchez to cover up his scandals

So far, Sánchez's government has rejected all requests to bring back those troops and put an end to this useless mission, on which Spain has already spent an enormous amount of resources. For Sánchez this mission is of great political interest as a distraction from socialist corruption cases, since it allows him to fuel tensions between Spain and Israel, some tensions that the Spanish president uses as a smokescreen to keep people from talking about his internal scandals. Spanish soldiers are there to serve noble purposes, not to be used in low-level political operations.

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Photo: Estado Mayor de la Defensa.