Irish soldiers, who are serving as peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, have come under fire while on a joint patrol with the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) has said.
The incident happened near the Blue Line in South Lebanon.
A number of small arm rounds were fired in the vicinity of the area in which the patrol was operating, the Irish Defence Force said.
There were no reported injuries and no damage to the armoured vehicles they were operating from.
Is the IDF so ill-disciplined and sickened culturally that taking potshots at peacekeepers is just something that 'happens'? Or is someone up the command structure giving veiled orders to harass international peacekeepers in the hopes of forcing an incident which would benefit the far-right Israeli government's aims of minimizing foreign observation and/or portraying the outside world as universally hostile towards poor, oppressed Israel?
This "oopsie woopsie we shot in your general direction" has happened more than enough to call it a structural problem which can only persist with support from the highest levels.
Any normal country leader needs to learn only once that his soldiers shot at friendly observers and he'd shit that shut down permanently. Netanyahu obviously knows about these shootings as it's continuously on the world news but shit hasnt been shut down, so you can pretty much assume it all has his blessings
The leash is kept so loose it might not even be held at all.
I would posit that they knew right well they were shooting at Irish peacekeepers and took glee in it. They were "go back" warning shots. Ireland's not super popular in Israel at the moment.
There was an incident a few months back where they were fired at before and, to the best of my recollection, the entire contingent had to spend the day in bunkers.
Pure speculation on my part though. It has happened to other peacekeeping groups too.