Israeli Strikes on UN Forces: A Pattern of Lethal Attacks
On January 28, 2015, Israeli artillery fire struck near the South Lebanese village of Ghajar, taking the life of 36-year-old Spanish peacekeeper Francisco Javier Soria. Soria served with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a mission charged with upholding the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in the occupied Golan Heights region.
His killing occurred during a period of heightened hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations placed responsibility squarely on the Israel Defence Forces, pointing to what he described as an escalation of violence originating from the Israeli side. While the full circumstances remained under investigation, Israeli officials offered condolences and stated their troops had been returning fire in the area.
Repeated Targeting of UNRWA Schools in Gaza
What made Soria’s death particularly troubling was that it fit a well-documented pattern. Israeli forces had been responsible for killing a disturbing number of United Nations personnel during military operations, and senior UN officials had openly accused the military of carrying out what appeared to be deliberate strikes on protected sites.
During the summer 2014 Gaza conflict, Israeli forces struck seven separate schools operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). These schools were functioning as emergency shelters for Palestinian civilians displaced by the fighting. Despite receiving repeated warnings and urgent requests to stop, the Israeli military continued hitting United Nations facilities throughout the operation.
An estimated 46 civilians lost their lives in these school attacks, along with eleven UNRWA staff members. One of the deadliest incidents involved a strike on a UN-administered elementary school in Beit Hanoun, where 15 civilians were killed and roughly 200 others sustained injuries. Reports indicated that shrapnel tore through crowds of families gathered in the school’s playground as they waited for transport to safer areas.
Emotional Fallout and International Condemnation
The toll of these attacks proved overwhelming even for seasoned humanitarian officials. UNRWA Commissioner-General Chris Gunness was unable to maintain composure during a live television broadcast, breaking down while condemning what he characterized as a wholesale denial of Palestinian rights by Israeli forces during the military campaign.
Rather than expressing remorse, Israeli officials sought to justify the strikes by alleging that UNRWA schools were located near rocket launch sites, making them collateral damage in counter-fire operations. UNRWA officials vigorously rejected these claims. A subsequent investigation conducted by Human Rights Watch examined several of the school attacks and concluded that they did not appear to have targeted legitimate military objectives and were otherwise carried out in an unlawfully indiscriminate manner.
Thirty-Three Warnings Ignored Before Rafah School Strike
The notion that these repeated bombings of clearly marked UN facilities were simply accidental strains credibility. In one particularly damning example involving a school in Rafah, United Nations personnel contacted the IDF on 33 separate occasions to notify them that the building was sheltering civilians. The strike proceeded regardless.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly denounced that attack as both a moral outrage and a criminal act, declaring that nothing was more shameful than attacking sleeping children. Even the United States, historically Israel’s most steadfast defender in international forums, stated it was appalled by what it called a disgraceful assault on the school.
White Phosphorus and the 2008-2009 Gaza Offensive
These incidents from 2014 were not without precedent. During the 2008-2009 Gaza War, Israeli forces targeted UNRWA schools as well as the compound housing UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. That particular assault involved the use of white phosphorus munitions — weapons whose deployment in civilian areas violates international law. The resulting fires destroyed tons of critical food aid and medical supplies that Gaza’s large refugee population depended on for basic survival.
Israeli officials claimed at the time that rocket fire had originated from the compound. United Nations officials dismissed this justification as total nonsense.
Six-Hour Bombardment of a UN Outpost in Lebanon
An even more disturbing precedent occurred during Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon, when Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded a single United Nations observation post for more than six consecutive hours. Throughout the sustained bombardment, UN officials repeatedly pleaded with Israel to halt its fire. Four peacekeepers died in the attack, which then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan publicly described as apparently deliberate.
Israel’s Hostility Toward UN Operations in the Region
Israel has maintained a deeply adversarial relationship with United Nations agencies operating in the Middle East for years. Israeli officials have accused UN personnel of providing shelter to militants — a charge the organization firmly denies. More broadly, some Israeli leaders have argued that UNRWA itself perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by granting refugee status and providing services to displaced Palestinians and their descendants.
Following the 2014 Gaza conflict, certain Israeli political figures went so far as to call for UNRWA to be formally designated a hostile organization. While the suggestion was widely condemned, it revealed the depth of institutional animosity toward the United Nations within official Israeli circles.
A Culture of Impunity Without Accountability
Francisco Javier Soria’s death in January 2015 represented only the latest in a long series of incidents where Israeli forces killed UN personnel. As of that date, no individual had been held legally accountable for any of these attacks.
The double standard is striking. Had Hamas or Hezbollah repeatedly struck United Nations schools housing thousands of displaced civilians — then denied responsibility or offered justifications — the international response would have been immediate and severe. Yet Israeli forces carried out precisely these actions across multiple conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza without facing meaningful consequences.
This expanding culture of impunity, sustained in part by the extraordinary diplomatic protection the United States has extended to Israeli officials, left UN personnel and facilities increasingly vulnerable to lethal violence from the Israeli military.
As UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl stated after one of the deadly 2014 school bombings in Gaza, the attack represented an affront to all of us and a source of universal shame, adding that the world stood disgraced.
Originally reported by The Intercept, January 30, 2015.
