By Daily Star Editorial

Friday’s targeting of UNIFIL personnel in southern Lebanon is the latest depressing reminder that for all the talk of new beginnings, and change in the region, some things continue to function according to the same old calculations.
Southern Lebanon, or any other part of the country, should not be used to send political messages. The public has seen this tactic used time and time again; In the case of UNIFIL, the peacekeepers have been targeted several times this year. And each time, the same stream of condemnations is issued.

Each time, there are pleas for punishment to be handed down on the perpetrators; officials from all sides talk about the need for investigations, and leak news about the latest progress in said investigations.
All that’s missing is some arrests, and trials. In this type of incident, there is either no claim of responsibility, or a claim whose credibility is questionable.

The shadowland of Lebanese politics extends to the arena of UNIFIL: A superficial interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 means that while there is a state presence south of the Litani, it isn’t robust enough to control the arms held by nonstate actors.
National Dialogue was supposed to resolve the issue of weapons held by Palestinians outside camps, and inside camps, but this process, like many others, is a case of all talk and little action.

In the case of UNIFIL, what makes things worse is that the targets are foreign nationals, who have been asked by Lebanese authorities to carry out a certain mission. They are guests in the country, and to use them as a convenient “mail box” whenever a certain party has a message to get across, is insulting and detrimental to Lebanon’s efforts to build a sovereign state.

These guests are busy patrolling the volatile region they are responsible for, and beyond the call of traditional military duty, UNIFIL personnel have been tireless in helping their fellow residents of southern Lebanon in a wide range of development areas.

UNIFIL personnel should be made to feel safe, and they, like the Lebanese, should feel that their state can provide protection and security for them; government and judicial officials should be able to figure out just who targets these peacekeepers and act accordingly.

There are ways to get a message across, such as diplomacy, which has seen increased tension in the region of late. Verbal jousting is one thing; the cold-blooded violence that targets international peacekeepers, who are guests in Lebanon, is completely another.

The party behind the UNIFIL bombings presumably has many other ways to make its views known, and should look elsewhere if it needs a convenient mailbox. But when the state authorities fail to react to such incidents, the public can expect that once again UNIFIL will be in the news for all the wrong reasons.