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INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING FORCES could have a role to play in the resolution of the current situation in Gaza. In over 73 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, UN peacekeepers have frequently helped to sustain ceasefires, facilitated humanitarian operations and gained time for the emergence of political solutions.
As UN forces and military observers played a large role in stabilising the situation on the Golan Heights and in Lebanon, why not also in Gaza? Moreover, the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), with its HQ in Jerusalem, is still in place, and able to deploy the first teams of military observers at short notice.
After 11 days of attacks, Egypt successfully managed to negotiate a ceasefire. However, ceasefires do not last if measures to sustain them are not put in place. Unmonitored belligerent parties will break ceasefires where it is to their advantage.
When incidents do occur, international military observers can act as impartial witnesses and can also negotiate localised ceasefires, when required. However, maintaining the current ceasefire is essential now, to avoid the heavy casualties that occurred during the 2014 conflict.
The challenges
Comparisons between 2014 and the present situation are relevant. In 2014, the conflict was provoked by the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinians. On this occasion, the spark that lit the fuse was the attempted eviction of 500 Palestinians from Israeli occupied Palestinian lands and the heavy-handed follow-up action against Palestinian protesters.
In 2014, official UN figures show that at least 2,104 Palestinians died. Official Israeli sources reported 67 Israeli soldiers were killed, mainly in the ground assault into Gaza, and five civilians killed by rocket and mortar attacks.
So far, in the present conflict, 243 Palestinians are reported to have been killed in Gaza and 12 Israelis, and others, killed by rocket attacks in Israel. While the Hamas attacks have produced a small number of casualties the psychological impact among the Israeli population has been considerable.
Because of the indiscriminate nature of the rocket attacks, directed at a civilian population, Hamas commanders, however, may be guilty of war crimes. The Israelis can argue that their targets are military, even though far more Palestinian civilians were killed than Israelis.
The relatively low number of Palestinian casualties, compared to 2014, may be attributed to more accurate targeting by the Israeli Air Force and artillery batteries, to Israeli warning messages being passed to Gazan authorities and also to Hamas moving the local population back from the immediate locations of the mobile rocket launch sites. Over 75,000 people have been internally displaced.
In the case of Gaza, military observers alone would not be enough. A peacekeeping force will be necessary to address the security concerns of both Israel and Hamas and international civilian police required to handle civil issues.
There may also be a political agenda at play. Israel wants peace and probably feels it will negotiate easier with the Palestinian Authority if Hamas is removed from the equation. At one stage in the past, the emergence of Hamas served Israeli purposes by dividing the Palestinians. Hamas’s presence and actions greatly undermined Palestinian unity for a long period. During this period, in the eighties, Israel took advantage of Palestinian disunity to extend its settlements.
Hamas’s objective was, and is, to end the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. This ending of the Israeli blockade will help Hamas to maintain its influence in future peace talks. The civilian population in Gaza suffered terribly due to the blockade, which, in any case, failed to stop Hamas regaining its military capabilities.
Hamas arsenal should be decommissioned and Israeli blockade lifted
An international peacekeeping force could assist in restoring security in Gaza. It could supervise the decommissioning of Hamas’s rocket arsenal and the closing up of the tunnel complex through which the enclave was kept supplied.
In return, Israel should lift its blockade, but internationally manned checkpoints and patrols should be used to prevent the movement of arms and ammunition into Gaza.
A buffer, or disengagement, zone needs to be created and monitored. Consideration could be given to deploying a combination of an EU peacekeeping force, with UN military observers and UN Civilian Police.
Once a permanent ceasefire is in place, efforts should be intensified to seek a political solution. Peacekeeping itself will not solve the problem, but it can gain time.
The current situation in Gaza will bring back memories of better times to many Irish UN personnel, and their families, who were stationed with the UN in the Middle East. The, long destroyed, ramshackle UN Gaza “Beach Club” and its tiny slice of a beach, was once a welcome oasis from the conflicts in the surrounding countries.
The ever-friendly Gazans who welcomed us to their overcrowded Strip, deserve a better future.
A lasting peace can be found in Gaza if there is the political will to do so.
Colonel Dorcha Lee (Retd) is a defence analyst and a former Deputy Chief Operations Officer of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation in Jerusalem.
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In the article he says Israel wants peace… this is obviously not true.. the only peace Israel wants is every piece of Palestine #BDS # Israeli Apartheid
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Past peace negotiations and opinion polls would say that you’re wrong. The narrative on the Israeli side would be that every piece of land evacuated by Israel is taken over by radical groups and used as a staging ground for attacks- Gaza, South Lebanon and the PA controlled West Bank (during second intifada) are the examples. Of course, the actions of Israel are also driving Palestinians to HAMAS.
@Damon16: The Israelis are continuously evicting Palestinians to make way for right wing supremacists from America, Europe and Russia. They have driven Palestinians into smaller and more fragmented bantustans that are unsustainable and that is their deliberate policy. Until they lose the support of the US and until the UN can force a withdrawal to the 1967 borders nothing will change. And since that is a pipe dream nothing will change and the ethnic cleansing will continue. The few countries not afraid of the Israel lobby need to do more. Ireland talks up a storm but never follows with concrete action despite the support of the Irish public. It’s dismaying and infuriating.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Yes, there are plenty of observers on the ground already if he would care to look. Take care would he look at the repeated stormings of the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the flattening of civilian tower blocks, the decades long seige or the targeting of journalists. The impression here is that Hamas is the cause and not a symptom of Israeli apartheid.
@Sandra Duffy: Most of the settlers live in established settlements bordering the green line, many of them built on sites of former Jewish settlements evacuated during the 1948 war. It has already been agreed that in a future peace deal these would be annexed to Israel in exchange for land of equivalent value. The other settlements would have to be evacuated. Settlers have been evacuated by Israel from Gaza and Sinai in the past to achieve peace. So it could happen again.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: unfortunately lad when you have terrorists looking to wipe you’re people out they have to be defensive. If hamas and co disbanded publicly in the morning there would be way forward.
@Tom Ripley: Don’t lad me you patronising Israeli apologist, it wouldn’t surprise me if you were holding up in the Israeli embassy.
Israel won’t let the UN in as they will observe the continuing land grab and the oppression of the Palestinian people.
@Charles Coughlan: so true!
@Charles Coughlan: You’re right. I was working with the UN in 2000 when Israel withdrew from South Lebanon.
We had to move our observation posts forward to police the vacuum that was created when they went. We had to travel through a part of Israel in convoy to reach the new observation positions, because of the minefields left by the Israelis on the Lebanese side of the border.
The Knesset had to have a special sitting just to allow us over their border with weapons for a few hours while we reached the new positions.
Do you really think that the same Israelis are prepared to allow armed UN troops occupy their ‘God given’ soil?
@Stephen Deegan: well forigen troops coming through land with weapons and you think that’s not a matter for their parliament to legislate for? Sure what if the Americans had to move troops and gear by road from Shannon to Dublin? Sovereign soil. Legally it would have to be allowed. You can be sure we would be same.
@Stephen Deegan: if you were Jewish who would you trust? It certainly would not be the UN or the Irish state whoshowed little support for the Jews before or after the foundation of Israel. However in reality the hard fact is that your opinion is largely irrelevant.
@Dermot N Killian: I’m sorry, where did I mention the Jewish religion?
@Tom Ripley: Just like the Israeli war machine waits for other sovereign governments to allow them into their country?
Israeli’s want peace ?
They want to seize territory for their Zionist state
@Waylanderj: well you sound like a neutral party without a biased opinion.
@Karl: I’m not neutral !
How could you be
Tanks and bombers against home made rockets
Even our own government recognises Israel is the aggressor here
Well, yeah. Most of us with interests in that part of the world know all this. Hamas needs to be out of the equation. Iran needs to stop supplying these terrorists with arms. Hamas should not be in control of a disputed land, and it is disputed for very good reasons on two sides, whether reddit tells you differently or not.
@Contrary Mary: if you swap the words Hamas with Israel and Iran with USA the same applies.
@Contrary Mary:
How does Iran supply Hamas with arms when there is a strict blockade of Gaza from the sea, air and land by Israel and Egypt?
If Hamas are getting arms from Iran why are they using only home made rockets?
@Shedonny: tunnels from Egypt! They are firing more than home made rockets!
@Shedonny: if the strict blockade works so well then where are they getting the explosives for the rockets?
That would only work as part of an final binding agreement between Israel and the Palestinians guaranteed by the US & the Arab league . Anything else would be just turning the UN into Jailers for the Israelis.
Good article. I’m not sure that Hamas or Islamic Jihad would agree to a UN force on those terms though. Their ability and willingness to strike Israel is what distinguishes them from the Kleptomaniacs in the PLO.
@Thomas O’Donoghue: exactly. What if their are observed bringing in missiles? Few dead UN troops I imagine.
Moe prison offices wanted
@Gerard Heanue: : Bart, are you going to Moe the lawn today? Okay, but you promised me Moe money. I Moe, I Moe. Moe, Moe, Moe… When Bart’s done, can we Moe to the Moevies for the Moetinee? Of course. All work and Moe play makes Moe a Moe Moe.
Ireland’s reputation for neutrality is seriously undermined by our support for the Isreal/US side, providing staging facilities at Shannon.
have your say