IDF troops returned fire to the source and the shootout continued for some time. In the course of the battle, a UNIFIL soldier from Spain was shot and killed as well; it turned out that the bullet that reached him was Israeli.
Did Israel start the attack? No. Was there reason to believe that returning fire could prevent a cross-border abduction attack plan similar to the 2006 raid that launched the Second Lebanon War? Absolutely. Who did Spain – and the United Nations – blame anyway? Israel.
Within a week, the United Nations voted to launch an investigation into Israel’s involvement in the death of the Spanish soldier. There was no mention of investigating Hezbollah, or the Lebanese Army.
Thus far, we have yet to hear any suggestion that the United Nations might investigate the culpability of Syria – or Iran — in the cross-border mortar and missile fire that regularly “spills over” these days into Israeli territory.
Now barely three months later, two UN peacekeepers – one of them a woman – have been wounded, and yet not a peep is being heard from the international community. Information about their nationality has yet to be released, let alone whether the UN intends to probe the incident.
Where is all the outrage, all the screaming and righteous opining heard by journalists from world leaders when a UNIFIL soldier was hit by gunfire in a “spillover” incident in Lebanon?
Silence… could it have something to do with the delicate U.S.-led P5+1 talks over Iran’s nuclear technology program?