❊ That Damned Confusing Blue Line

[caption id=”attachment_2500" align=”alignnone” width=”300" caption=”Incriminating Evidence?”]

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The picture above is being shown in every news outlet in Lebanon as evidence that the Israelis were on the Lebanese side of the blue line when the problems began.

And yet, the United Nations, the body that invented the Blue Line, declared that the Israelis were in fact on the Israeli side of the Line.

So how can you explain such an obvious discrepancy?

If you’re the kind who loves a conspiracy, this is just another proof that Israel is manipulating the international body. If you prefer a more nuanced view on the other hand, you’ll know that in fact the UN Blue Line is not the same as that fence that the Israeli soldiers crossed.

Robert Fisk explains in today’s column:

In 2000, the UN drew a “Blue Line” along what was [..] the frontier between the French mandate of Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. Behind it, from the Lebanese point of view, stands the Israeli “technical fence”, a mass of barbed wire, electrified wires and sandy roads (to look for footprints). So when the Lebanese army saw the Israelis manoeuvre a crane up to the fence yesterday morning, they began to shout at the Israelis to move back.

“Misunderstanding” was a key word in yesterday’s events. So here’s a proposal to avoid one next time: Why doesn’t the UNIFIL draw an actual Blue line on the ground where the thing lies?

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Note: Posts with titles starting with an ❊ (asterisk) are my opinion posts. I used this system to separate long posts from quick links and comments.