Lebanon – The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced, yesterday, Friday, that it had submitted a new complaint to the UN Security Council once morest Israel, following the latter’s attacks on the agricultural sector and farmers and livestock breeders in the southern border villages.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants stated in a statement that on July 3, through Lebanon’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, it filed a complaint with the Security Council, following Israel’s attacks on the agricultural sector, farmers and livestock breeders in border villages.

Last March, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced that it had submitted 22 complaints to the UN Security Council once morest Israel, since the beginning of the Israeli “aggressions” on the country last October.

The new complaint included statistics on 653 fires resulting from Israel’s use of white phosphorus and 2,100 dunams (one dunam equals one thousand square meters) of land completely burned during the period from October 8, 2023 until mid-March 2024, in addition to 6,000 dunams of damaged forest and agricultural land, according to the statement.

The complaint indicated that “the systematic (Israeli) attacks are a flagrant violation of Article 55 of the First Additional Protocol (1977) to the Geneva Conventions (1949).”

The aforementioned article stipulates that “during combat, care must be taken to protect the natural environment from widespread, long-term and severe damage,” according to the statement.

In the complaint, Lebanon called on the Security Council to “condemn Israel for its direct, deliberate and repeated targeting of civilians and the country’s natural environment.”

He also called on the Security Council to “work to ensure that Israel does not escape punishment for these crimes, considering that failure to condemn would give Israel a free hand to continue its aggression, without any deterrent.”

Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, have been exchanging daily shelling with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line” since October 8, leaving hundreds dead and wounded, most of them on the Lebanese side.

These factions are making the cessation of the bombing conditional on Israel ending a war it has been waging with American support on the Gaza Strip since October 7, which has left more than 126,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing.

Anatolia