Italian PM plans Lebanon visit but no date set

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced Tuesday that she will join an Italian battalion in a visit to Lebanon as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

“I will visit Lebanon,” she told the Italian Senate.

She added that Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tejani will visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority next week.

Five UNIFIL soldiers have been wounded in southern Lebanon in recent days as part of the Israeli ground operation against Hezbollah.

The UNIFIL force, which has about 9,500 troops of various nationalities, has accused Israeli forces of “deliberately” firing on its positions.

Meloni, the second-largest contributor to UNIFIL, has condemned the attack on several occasions.

She spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and stressed to him that “it is unacceptable for the Israeli army to attack UNIFIL.”

She told the Senate on Tuesday, ahead of the European summit in Brussels this week, that the Israeli army’s position was “absolutely unjustified.”

“In the past few days, for the first time in a year since the start of the Israeli military operations, positions of an Italian military battalion operating within the UNIFIL mission came under fire from Israeli forces,” she added.

“There were no casualties or major damage, but I do not believe that this type of situation can be tolerated,” she continued.

“We consider the position of the Israeli forces to be completely unjustified and a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” Meroni said.

“On the other hand, we cannot ignore Hezbollah’s violations of the same resolution that have been committed over the years by Hezbollah, which has militarized areas under UNIFIL’s mandate,” she added.