US Stands Alone at UN as Council Demands Israel Leave Lebanon

The United States stood alone at the UN Security Council on Monday, the only member to refuse calls for Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon, as nearly every other speaker demanded a pullback and the Council heard that more than 3,400 people have been killed in three months of war.

The emergency session, the Council's 10163rd meeting, was convened by France after Israeli forces pushed deeper into Lebanon than at any time since their withdrawal in 2000, seizing the historic Beaufort Castle and ordering civilians out of the entire south.

"The path is clear"

The US representative used his time not to press Israel but to put the onus on Hezbollah and Iran. "Colleagues, the path is clear. Hezbollah stops attacking Israel. The Lebanese armed forces and the legitimate government of Lebanon assert control over Lebanese territory. And Iran stops using Lebanon as a forward operating base," he said, describing a Lebanon rebuilt for its people, "not Hezbollah, not its thug leadership, and certainly not to Tehran." Iran, he added, "lights the fire, hides behind civilians, and then pretends to be the fire department." At no point did he call on Israel to leave.

A near-unanimous call to withdraw

Almost everyone else did. France, which called the meeting, said "no security consideration can justify a permanent infringement upon the sovereignty of a state" and rejected any Israeli buffer zone on Lebanese soil. Russia demanded "the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory," likening the campaign to the razing of Gaza. Somalia warned against "a dangerous move towards unilateral territorial expansion." Lebanon's representative said there could be no stability without Israel's "full withdrawal."

3,412 dead and a castle recaptured

Briefing the Council, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, a UN assistant secretary-general, said that since fighting reignited on 2 March, at least 3,412 people had been killed and more than 10,000 wounded in Lebanon, according to the country's health ministry, with hundreds of civilians, among them women, children, journalists and medics. Twenty-six Israeli soldiers, four Israeli civilians and twenty-one Lebanese troops have also died, she said, along with six UN peacekeepers, four of them Indonesian and two French. Israel, which said Hezbollah had fired some 10,000 rockets since March, insisted it had no wish to stay: "We left Lebanon in 2000 because we did not want to stay there, and today we do not want to stay there."

What it means for the Gulf

Only one Gulf state, Bahrain, took the floor, backing Lebanon's sovereignty and the full implementation of Resolution 1701, the 2006 measure that requires Israeli forces to pull back south of the Litani river. For a region already living through the wider war between the United States, Israel and Iran, the session laid bare how far Washington has drifted from even its closest partners on the conflict's newest front. For mediators like Qatar, the gap between the US position and the rest of the Council narrows the room to broker any pause.