Markus E. Bouillon, "The Arab-Israeli Conflict," in David Malone, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, and Sebastian...

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The United Nations Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century

Part 5: Major UNSC Operations on Four Continents

THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

Markus E. Bouillon1

Introduction: A region that has shaped the Organization

One of the first United Nations mediators called the Middle East “the sort of problem for

which no really satisfactory solution is possible.”2 Indeed, for seven decades, the “situation in

the Middle East,” particularly the “Palestinian question,” to use its own terminology for the

interlocking issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, has presented the Security Council with

one of the most vexing problems on its agenda: “No issue has been on the agenda of the

Council as long as that of the Middle East; nor has any issue generated as many resolutions

[…] or as many vetoes.”3

As a result, the region has shaped the United Nations in many ways. Brian Urquhart

noted that “the UN’s actual role in critical situations was, to a considerable extent, pioneered

in Palestine.”4 Bruce Jones, more recently, enumerated the instances in which “the Arab-

Israeli theatre has been a laboratory for UN innovation: the first subsidiary organ (UNSCOP),

the first specialized agency (UNRWA), the first mediator (Count Folke Bernadotte), the first

observer mission (UNTSO), the first peacekeeping mission (UNEF), the first integrated

mission (UNSCO),5 and the first instance of investigatory challenge to a member state,” the

UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) in Lebanon.6

But while the Security Council has been deeply and often innovatively (as far as

institutional mechanisms are concerned) involved in the Middle East, it has rarely been able

to set defining parameters. In fact, the Council has often struggled to uphold its own norms in

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the region. In consequence, “the UN’s performance in the Arab-Israeli theatre, and in the

broader Middle East, has long shaped public perception of the body.”7 At the same time,

peacekeeping has been “a key element in whatever peace the people of the region have

enjoyed.” And one has to acknowledge that “when the UN’s intergovernmental debates

became vociferously partisan, the organization lost much of its credibility, although it

unquestionably provided a useful safety valve for dangerous passions and resentments, and

kept vital issues – Palestinian rights, the status of Jerusalem – alive.”8

In this chapter, the Council’s involvement in and on the Middle East is explored in

more detail. The picture that emerges is profoundly mixed: While the Council has addressed

acute crises and ensured a degree of stability through the instruments at its disposal, it has all

too often been unable to play a leading, decisive or norm-setting role. Divisions within the

Council, particularly between the United States and the rest of the Council, have run deep.

All too often, the Security Council has remained mired in discussions over issues that, albeit

important, are but facets of the bigger conflict, rendering it less and less likely (or possible)

that the Council could contribute decisively to settling the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Acute crisis management and peacekeeping: From 1947 until the end of the Cold War

For the first several decades of its engagement in the Middle East, the Security Council “did

not succeed in preventing conflict, though it often contributed to the process of bringing

hostilities to an end.”9 It also set out important principles for peacemaking, before it became

increasingly “irrelevant to events on the ground.”10

The Council’s involvement began shortly after the General Assembly recommended

the partition of mandatory Palestine in November 1947.11 As soon as Israel declared

independence in May 1948 and five Arab states invaded it, the Council appointed its first-ever

mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, who began to engage in shuttle diplomacy between the

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parties. Bernadotte engineered the Security Council’s first truce resolution (resolution 50 of

29 May 1948) and the subsequent establishment of the first United Nations observer mission,

the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)12. Following Bernadotte’s assassination

by a Jewish terrorist group in September 1948, Ralph Bunche assumed charge of UN efforts

to end the conflict, obtaining Council resolutions that called, once again, for a ceasefire

(resolution 59 of 19 October 1948) and then for ‘permanent armistice’ arrangements between

Israel and each of its Arab neighbours (resolution 62 of 16 November 1948). By March 1949,

Bunche had successfully negotiated a series of bilateral armistice agreements, which were

endorsed by the Security Council. Shortly thereafter, the Council voted to admit Israel as a

member of the United Nations (resolution 69 of 4 March 1949).

This early experience exhibits several important characteristics of how the Council

would continue to address conflict not only in the Middle East, but also globally. First, the

Council relied to a large extent on the active engagement of a representative of the Secretary-

General (in later parlance, a special envoy), who worked closely with key Council members.

Second, the Council refrained from direct (military) intervention, instead resorting to cautious

diplomacy, not least against the background of diverging interests among its members.13

The next major crisis in the region established further patterns of typical Council

action. In the context of the Suez crisis 1956, the Soviet Union first vetoed a draft resolution

proposed by Britain and France, who in turn vetoed two successive drafts calling for a

ceasefire and the withdrawal of their forces. As would happen on other occasions in the face

of Council deadlock, it was the General Assembly, which convened in an emergency session

and called for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of all foreign forces and the establishment of what

would become the first United Nations peacekeeping mission, the UN Emergency Force

(UNEF I).14 Peacekeeping to preserve fragile ceasefires, in the absence of a consensus on

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how to resolve the underlying issues, would henceforth become the primary manifestation of

Council involvement in the Middle East.15

The next war erupted when, in a climate of growing tension, Egypt demanded the

withdrawal of UNEF from the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. The acute crisis prompted lengthy

debate in the Council as well as several, initially unsuccessful attempts to address the renewed

conflict.16 But Cold War dynamics and great power divisions meant that the Council was

incapable of taking early action , and the Council was more successful in addressing the

aftermath of the war and shaping the political process ahead than in preventing or halting the

conflict on the ground.

Resolution 242, perhaps the “most famous resolution in the Security Council’s

history,”17 was thus adopted several months after the Six-Day war, on 22 November 1967.

Presented as a compromise by the United Kingdom, the resolution was “ambiguous on

important points and vague enough to command general approval.”18 It asserted the

inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force and stipulated that Israel should return

‘territories’ occupied in the conflict. Crucially, the resolution’s English version refers

ambivalently to “territories” without the definite article, thus leaving open whether Israel

would be required to withdraw from all territory occupied in the course of the war. Although

its British drafters have made it clear that the definite article was dropped deliberately, the

French version of the resolution at the very least can be read as including it (“retrait des

forces armées israéliennes des territoires occupés au cours du récent conflit”) and is often

cited to support a broader interpretation. Despite this never conclusively resolved ambiguity,

Security Council resolution 242 established the fundamental principle of ‘land for peace,’

creating a link between Israel’s relinquishing of occupied territory and recognition and

negotiations to settle the conflict. In doing so, the Security Council laid down perhaps the

most enduring principle of the search for peace in the Middle East, even if it did not manage

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to contribute much to achieving its implementation in practice in subsequent decades. The

renewed mission of a UN mediator, Gunnar Jarring, came to nought and was abandoned by

1971.19

The pattern of unheeded ceasefire calls during conflict and the shaping of the

aftermath of crisis continued with the next war in October 1973. Direct US-Soviet Union

negotiations during the latter stages of the conflict – ‘facilitated’ by a threat of unilateral

Soviet intervention – laid the ground for the adoption of Security Council resolution 338,

which re-stated and codified resolution 242 and called for negotiations to establish a “just and

durable peace in the Middle East,” another formula that has since become indelible from the

dictionary of Middle East peacemaking. Much like before, the Council established a static

peacekeeping force, UNEF II, to create a buffer along the Egypt-Israel ceasefire line.20 A

similar arrangement was agreed with some delay in 1974 along the Israel-Syria line, resulting

in the deployment, to this day, of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force

(UNDOF).21

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, a similar buffer force was created in south

Lebanon in the form of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), through the

adoptions of Security Council resolutions 425 and 426, despite serious misgivings in the UN

Secretariat over the absence of actual truce conditions.22 Both UNDOF and UNIFIL would

continue to play an important role for several decades, although the latter found itself over-

run and sidelined during Israel’s renewed invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Israel-

Lebanon war of 2006. Both missions also came under growing pressure amidst rising

tensions and violence in the context of the ‘Arab Spring.’ UNDOF, in particular, was

weakened. Initially, several troop-contributing countries withdrew their contingents in late

2012 and early 2013 when the civil war in Syria threatened to affect the mission. In the

course of 2014, Syrian rebels took control of large parts of UNDOF’s mission area and at one

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stage held sizeable contingents of Filipino and Fiji peacekeepers hostage, drawing into

question whether the mission would be able to remain in situ altogether.

For decades, however, static peacekeepers and military observers brought about

considerable stability and predictability along the fault-lines of the Middle East. This was

also the case in the Egyptian Sinai following the conclusion of the Camp David accords in

1978, which led to the deployment of the (non-UN) Multilateral Forces and Observers in

Sinai (MFO). However, the blocking of a UN peacekeeping force by the Arab states marked

a low-point for the Council.23 Nonetheless, the fact that the Council chose to maintain its

peacekeeping and observer missions over many years “testifies both to the unfinished

business before them and to their continued utility in the eyes of the Security Council and

most of the actors in the region.”24

Yet it is equally important to record the shortcomings of these missions as well as the

limits of the Council’s ability to “manage” conflict. As a research paper by Security Council

Report noted, prior to 2006,

None of the decisions to deploy a new peace operation in the Middle East

had the united support of the five permanent members of the Security

Council […] None of the missions has had an explicit Chapter VII mandate.

The deployments have always followed, never preceded, the outbreak of

large-scale hostilities [and] peacekeeping in the area has been more

successful at helping prevent inter-state conflict than at curbing the use of

violence by non-state actors.25

In addition, with the exception of resolutions 242 and 338, which defined fundamental

parameters of peace, the Security Council rarely sought to resolve the underlying issues.

Indeed, perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the Geneva Peace Conference convened under

UN auspices after the October 1973 war was that it was endorsed by the Security Council in

resolution 344 of 15 December 1973 with ten votes in favour and four abstentions – which

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came from the permanent members of France, the UK, the United States, and the Soviet

Union (China did not vote).26

As Cold War dynamics impeded Council action, there were many debates,

“innumerable resolutions, and almost as many vetoes, but little result.”27 In consequence, the

Security Council, and the United Nations at large, became all but marginal in the Middle East

until well after the end of the Cold War. In fact, the UN remained sidelined in the two most

significant breakthroughs in the region during the immediate post-Cold War era, the 1991

Madrid peace conference – in which Israel agreed to participate only on condition that the

United Nations would not – and the 1993 Oslo accords, which provided for mutual

recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and autonomous

Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.28

Serial crises and the delegation of norm-setting: Into the 21st century

The end of the Cold War ushered in a period of unprecedented activism and expansion of the

Council’s agenda. But although the United Nations gained, for the first time, a role on the

ground with Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s appointment of one of the architects

of the Oslo process, Terje Rød-Larsen, as his Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories

(UNSCO) in 1994, the Security Council did not assume a bigger role. Indeed, Rød-Larsen

operated on the basis of his personal networks and under a General Assembly mandate, rather

than the aegis of the Security Council.

This did not change when the al-Aqsa intifada erupted in September 2000. Indeed, the

Security Council soon yielded any policy-making and norm-setting function to a new

mechanism, the Quartet, which was not directly linked to it. Established in April 2002, the

Quartet grouped together the political power of the United States and Russia, the financial

clout of the European Union, and the international legitimacy represented by the United

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Nations – albeit in the person of the Secretary-General, rather than the Security Council.29

The Council, by contrast, became more and more of a talk-shop on the region, unable to take

decisive action. As bilateral ties between the United States and Israel grew closer as well, the

Council faced deepening divisions and successive US vetoes against resolutions it considered

biased against Israel, a trend that would continue under Presidents Bush and Obama. From

1991 to 2012, the United States cast fourteen vetoes, all but one of them on the Middle East

(there were a total of 27 vetoes during that period). In each instance, and in a rare break of

the unity between the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, the US found itself

isolated, with all other Council members supporting the proposed draft resolution. Seven of

these vetoes came during the years of the intifada, between 2001 and 2004, alone.30

But the Council was not entirely inactive with respect to the Middle East during those

years. On 7 October 2000, the United States enabled, by refraining from a veto, the adoption

of resolution 1322, which condemned Israel’s excessive use of force and called for an

international commission of inquiry into the violence of the intifada.31 Subsequently, in the

context of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the growing focus of the Council on terrorism,

a number of resolutions – three in the course of 2002 alone – and statements were adopted,

which for the first time – and then regularly, as standard practice – condemned terrorist

actions against Israeli citizens (albeit balanced by cautioning against or criticizing Israel’s use

of force in Palestinian areas).32 The peak of the intifada, with Israel’s re-occupation of the

West Bank following a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli targets, also prompted the

adoption of US-sponsored Council Resolution 1397 (2002), which still stands as the

Council’s most significant pronouncement on the Arab-Israeli conflict since resolution 242

by, for the first time, envisioning clearly the outcome of peace negotiations: “a region, where

two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within recognized and secure borders.”33

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Yet, the Council’s dedication of a growing amount of time to the Middle East

reflected deterioration, rather than progress. In practical terms, the Security Council became

essentially a venting mechanism. Indeed, the worse the situation became, the more the

Council talked – and the less it acted. Starting in February 2002, it began to receive

‘periodic’ (soon monthly) briefings from the Secretariat on the situation on the ground,

initially in the private setting of informal consultations, later complemented by quarterly open

debates, which allowed the wider membership to air its views as well.34

Policy was instead defined by the Quartet. It was the Quartet that presented the so-

called Road Map in 2003, which set out parallel actions that Israelis and Palestinians would

need to take to achieve the eventual peaceful coexistence of two states, the goal defined in

resolution 1397. The Quartet would also oversee and endorse the process leading to Israel’s

unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, which was considered an important

step towards peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.35 Finally, the Quartet defined the

international community’s stance vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority in the wake of legislative

elections in January 2006 won by Hamas.36

In all these instances, the Security Council had no role other than to legitimate Quartet

positions. On 19 November 2003, the Council adopted resolution 1515, endorsing the Road

Map. In September and November 2005, the Council issued presidential statements mirroring

the Quartet’s positions on Israel’s ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the subsequent Agreement

on Movement and Access, largely negotiated by Quartet Special Envoy James Wolfensohn.37

And on 3 February 2006, the Council endorsed the Quartet’s 30 January ‘principles’ limiting

international donor assistance and diplomatic contact with the Hamas-led Palestinian

Authority.38 The Quartet was far from uncontroversial: Alvaro de Soto, Rød-Larsen’s

successor as Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, would depart his post in

May 2007 criticising it – in an internal document that was leaked to the press – as a mere tool

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to endorse biased US policy.39 And the efforts of several elected Council members to at least

obtain a briefing from Quartet Representative Tony Blair in the years after he succeeded

Wolfensohn in August 2007 would also remain unsuccessful.

In subsequent years, there was even less action from the Council. Despite significant

developments on the ground – the widening split between the Fatah-dominated West Bank

and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, escalating rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli air-strikes and

incursions, as well as the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006 – there was

only one presidential statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2006 and two press

statements in 2007.40 Indeed, the Council found itself incapable of responding to an

unusually candid, impromptu Middle East report submitted by departing Secretary-General

Annan in December 2006, which exhorted Member States to “match their professions of

concern with a concerted effort to empower the United Nations to make a strategic

difference.”41 In November 2007, the United States tabled a resolution to endorse the first

major international peace meeting in more than a decade, the Annapolis Conference, but

withdrew it the following day. Israel, long dismissive of the United Nations as inherently

biased and preferring to work bilaterally with the United States, had rejected even a US-

sponsored welcoming statement or resolution out of fear this would “multilateralize” the

process.42

More than a year later, and only with a strong push from the United States and the

Quartet, the Security Council adopted resolution 1850 of 16 December 2008, its first on the

Middle East in nearly five years. The resolution finally declared the Council’s commitment

to the Annapolis process. It was followed by a presidential statement in May 2009, which –

as the Council’s last overall pronouncement on the Arab-Israeli conflict for at least the next

four years – noted the “urgency of reaching comprehensive peace in the Middle East” as well

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as the need for “vigorous diplomatic action” to realize the two-state solution. Both had little

impact.43

While the Council found it increasingly difficult to address the overall parameters of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, repeated crises, particularly related to Gaza, did capture its

attention. But a rare May 2004 resolution calling on Israel to halt house demolitions in the

southern Gaza Strip aside,44 the Council took action only when Israel launched a major

military offensive against Gaza on 27 December 2008. Security Council resolution 1860 of 8

January 2009, the last resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until the time of writing,

called for an immediate and durable ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces,

and defined key parameters for humanitarian access and the movement of people and goods in

and out of Gaza. Still, on the ground, it was an effort led by Egypt, with French and

American support, which ended Israel’s operation ‘Cast Lead’ (indeed, the United States

abstained on the vote, arguing that the Egyptian efforts required more time), while in New

York, it took a special mission by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and eight

Arab Foreign Ministers for the Security Council to act at all.

A subsequent Human Rights Council-mandated investigation into the twenty-eight

day conflict, led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, called on the Security Council to

pronounce itself on the Gaza war.45 Yet, despite repeated consideration of the so-called

Goldstone report and a renewed Human Rights Council resolution in March 2011, which

recommended that the Security Council refer the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory

to the International Criminal Court, the Council could not agree on any action. The same held

true for a report of a Board of Inquiry, set up by the Secretary-General to investigate the

damage to UN facilities and loss of life during the Gaza war, which was forwarded to the

Council in May 2009. In May 2010, following the death of nine people in an Israeli military

operation aboard a Turkish humanitarian flotilla headed to Gaza, the Council adopted a

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presidential statement expressing deep regret at the loss of life and injuries and calling for a

“prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation.”46 However, the subsequent

investigation was driven by Israel and Turkey themselves, and the Council did not consider

the matter further after the report of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s investigation panel

was made public on 2 September 2011.

Further episodes in and around Gaza in November 2012 and in the summer of 2014 –

when Israel and Hamas fought out a vicious 50-day war – followed the pattern of deep

division and Council inability to act early and decisively. In November 2012, renewed Israeli

military action prompted the Council to meet in emergency consultations. However, first, the

United States blocked a press statement condemning the violence, before Russia circulated a

draft resolution, suggesting it would call for a vote if the press statement could not be

adopted. Achievement of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on 21 November pre-empted a

visible Council split and likely US veto. The Council instead adopted a different press

statement, welcoming the ceasefire and calling on the international community to contribute

to improving the living conditions of the people in the Gaza Strip.47

When in the summer of 2014, the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who had been

abducted and murdered in the West Bank, were discovered on 30 June, and a Palestinian

youth was subsequently abducted and killed in Jerusalem on 2 July, the Council issued press

statements condemning the incidents. However, as intensifying rocket fire soon after led to

Israel’s operation ‘Protective Edge,’ which would last for seven weeks and far exceed all

previous conflicts in Gaza, leaving more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead, the

Council played no major role in managing the conflict. A brief press statement was issued on

12 July, in which the members of the Security Council expressed “serious concern regarding

the crisis related to Gaza and the protection and welfare of civilians on both sides.”48

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However, it was only two weeks later and after intense efforts by US Secretary of

State John Kerry, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, that

the Council could agree a Presidential Statement expressing “strong support” for calls (by

others!) for an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire.49 The US, Egypt and

other actors remained the main players brokering a series of unsuccessful ceasefires before an

enduring cessation of hostilities was finally agreed on 26 August. The widespread

recognition in the international community that the situation in Gaza had become untenable

and that the fundamental concerns of both sides – Israel’s insistence that Hamas needed to be

disarmed, Hamas’ emphasis that the blockade of Gaza had to be broken – would need to be

addressed did translate into a draft resolution backed by several Council members. Yet,

lengthy discussions over the exact language and parameters of a resolution meant that it was

never adopted, and the Council remained essentially mute on what stands as the most serious

conflict in Gaza to date – and on all critical underlying issues, such as Israel’s blockade

against Gaza, Hamas’ militancy and rearming, the deep split among Palestinians as well as the

need to revive a further-reaching political process between Israelis and Palestinians.

In many ways, by this point, the deep schism in the Council, particularly between the

United States and the rest of the Council, had long made meaningful action all but impossible,

and the Council was unable even to uphold its own norms and values. In spite of the

immense growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank since the Oslo years – the Council

had declared that settlements had “no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to

achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in a series of resolutions in 1979 and 1980

– the Security Council had never taken much action.50 The strong focus of the Obama

administration on settlements from 2009 onwards, however, prompted the Council to consider

the issue. Yet a draft resolution on settlements, submitted by Lebanon with a total of 122 co-

sponsors in January 2011, led to the first instance that the Obama administration resorted to a

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veto and the first US veto overall since 2006. The United States had sought to avert a vote,

proposing instead a presidential statement along the lines of the resolution, stronger Quartet

language on 1967 borders, and endorsing a Russian-backed proposal for a Security Council

mission to the occupied Palestinian territory – all in vain. The US veto underlined how

difficult Council action had become at this stage even on issues where clear precedents

appeared to exist. It also reflected the strong domestic pressure within the United States,

which made it impossible for the Obama administration to sanction a resolution that, by all

accounts, it agreed with.

Twice more during this period, in December 2011 and in December 2012, the United

States found itself isolated and exposed in public, when members of the Council – including

all its European representatives – made strong statements to the press denouncing Israeli

settlement activity.51 On both occasions, Council members embarked on this course of action

because it was clear that the United States would block any collective pronouncement.

The Council was equally split and unable to respond coherently when the Palestinian

Authority applied for United Nations membership in September 2011. Whereas the Council

had unanimously welcomed South Sudan’s membership application only months earlier, its

standing Committee on the Admission of New Members reported that it was unable to reach

the required unanimous recommendation on Palestine’s application by November 2011. A

year later, the General Assembly would vote to confer non-member observer state status on

Palestine with the votes of nine Council members, five abstentions from Council members,

and one against, from the United States.

Hope emerged briefly during 2013 that the long-standing deadlock in the peace

process would be broken, as US Secretary of State John Kerry’s intense diplomatic efforts led

to a resumption of negotiations before they ultimately failed in April 2014. Throughout,

however, these efforts remained driven by the US and saw the involvement of neither the

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Quartet (which issued a statement welcoming the renewed talks) nor the Security Council. As

so often, momentum on the peace process reinforced bilateral, rather than multilateral,

engagement – a tendency that was also on display during the 2014 war in Gaza when all

serious efforts to broker a ceasefire were bilateral or, if they did involve multiple parties,

excluded the formal mechanics of the Security Council.

Overall, in recent years, the Council has thus found it increasingly difficult to focus on

the ‘big picture’ of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Divided over acute crises and sub-dimensions of

the conflict, the Council has been unable to act – or, as the most recent discussions over

Israeli settlement policy illustrate – even re-state language that had been agreed in earlier

years. The polarization has grown deeper as the 2000s have unfolded, limiting the prospects

for an eventual, more decisive engagement by the Council. This has harmed the reputation

and image of the Council and of the United Nations at large, particularly when compared to

instances elsewhere in the region where the Council acted – and acted decisively.

Growing regional focus and micromanagement of Lebanese affairs

The 2000s saw the Security Council increasingly involved in the wider region, particularly in

Lebanon, where it created a dense framework of norms and parameters through a large

number of resolutions and presidential statements. It deployed not only the UN’s third-largest

peacekeeping operation – with the by far highest density of troops – in Lebanon, but also an

unparalleled number of senior UN officials and envoys.52

The Council’s deep involvement began in 1999 when Ehud Barak became Israeli

Prime Minister on the back of a campaign pledge to withdraw Israel’s troops from south

Lebanon and sought Security Council certification that the withdrawal satisfied the

requirements of resolution 425. In an unprecedented operational engagement, a United

Nations team worked closely with the Council to first identify the route of the so-called Blue

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Line, then to confirm Israel’s withdrawal behind that line, in compliance with the resolution.

The Council endorsed both in presidential statements in the course of 2000.53

On 2 September 2004, prompted by the crude effort of a Syrian-backed Lebanese

government to prolong then-President Emile Lahoud’s term in office, the Council adopted

resolution 1559. The resolution called not only for a free and fair electoral process, but also

for the withdrawal of all remaining foreign (i.e. Syrian) forces and the disbanding and

disarming of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias (i.e. the Syrian-supported Hizbullah and

Palestinian groups). Although approved only with the minimum nine votes in favour and

with six abstentions, the resolution marked the beginning of unprecedented Council

involvement in Lebanese affairs (Terje Rød-Larsen would serve as special envoy for the

implementation of resolution 1559 from January 2005 through the time of writing) and

represented a watershed. First, it was the cause through which France and the US reconciled

after their deep split in the Council over the Iraq war in 2003.54 Second, the intense

engagement of the Council in pursuit of resolution 1559 as well as the subsequent ‘roadmap’

for its implementation, resolution 1680 of 17 May 2006, yielded undeniable results. By April

2005, Syria had ended its three decade-long military presence in Lebanon. A National

Dialogue agreed on the disarmament of Palestinian militias (even if no concrete action

followed) and began debating Hizbullah’s arms. In August 2008, Lebanon and Syria

established diplomatic relations for the first time in their history.

At the same time, resolution 1559 contributed to deepening existing sectarian and

political divisions in Lebanon.55 In the context of a highly charged political climate, on 14

February 2005, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was killed by a car bomb.56 The next day

– and invoking previous resolutions on international terrorism – the Council called on the

Lebanese government to “bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of this

heinous terrorist act.”57 On 7 April 2005, the Council adopted resolution 1595, creating the

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International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), which was mandated to gather

evidence and assist the Lebanese authorities in their investigation of the assassination.

In the following months, the Council utilised the two-pronged set of resolutions 1559

and 1595 to exert intense pressure on Syria and its Lebanese allies. By August 2005, Detlev

Mehlis, the first head of the Investigation Commission, had four powerful, previously near-

untouchable Lebanese generals arrested in conjunction with the Hariri assassination. An

advance version of his first report to the Security Council in October 2005, circulated in

electronic format, inadvertently displayed tracked changes showing that an earlier version of

the draft had explicitly suggested the involvement of senior Lebanese and Syrian figures,

including President Bashar al-Assad’s brother and brother-in-law.58 Mehlis also obtained

Security Council backing for his request to interview senior Syrian officials in the form of

resolution 1636 of 31 October 2005. Shortly afterwards, the Council first acknowledged a

request from the Lebanese government to establish a Tribunal of “international character,”

then requested the Secretary-General to negotiate the necessary agreement on the

establishment of such a Tribunal.59 While UNIIIC took on a much lower profile once Mehlis

was replaced by Serge Brammertz in January 2006, its work continued, and the probe’s

mandate was extended repeatedly until it was eventually absorbed into the Special Tribunal

for Lebanon (STL) as of 1 March 2009.60

Lebanese politics remained in turmoil. A number of prominent Lebanese politicians

and public figures were targeted in a series of assassinations and assassination attempts that

began in October 2004 and would continue until January 2008 when the top Lebanese official

working with UNIIIC on the Hariri assassination was killed. The Security Council

condemned these incidents and widened the investigation to include some of them, although

few concrete leads emerged. Amidst deep polarization, two Lebanese governments would fall

over issues immediately linked to the investigation and the Tribunal. In November 2006, pro-

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Syrian Shiite Ministers resigned from Prime Minister Siniora’s government, questioning its

constitutionality. In this context, the Security Council responded to Siniora’s request to

establish the Special Tribunal by adopting a Chapter VII resolution. Resolution 1757 of 30

May 2007 passed with five abstentions, including from China and Russia as well as the Arab

representative on the Council, Qatar, and further fuelled the divisions in Lebanon. Prolonged

protests in downtown Beirut would escalate in May 2008 into the most serious episode of

internecine violence since the end of the civil war before a national unity government was

negotiated under Qatari sponsorship, a new President agreed, and elections held in 2009. The

cabinet formed after these elections, headed by Saad Hariri (Rafiq’s son), would fall in

January 2011 as speculation peaked that a widely anticipated STL indictment would accuse

Hizbullah, not Syria, of having assassinated Rafiq Hariri.

The Tribunal would remain controversial, even if the issuing of arrest warrants against

four Hizbullah members following an indictment by STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare – who

had succeeded Serge Brammertz as head of UNIIIC in November 2007 – did not trigger

widely-feared protests or violence. In November 2011, Hizbullah prioritized the maintenance

of the new government it was backing over its own earlier insistence that Lebanon cease all

cooperation with the STL and enabled Prime Minister Najib Miqati to comply with Lebanon’s

funding obligations for it. The long-delayed trial started in January 2014 but against the

background of the tumultuous events in Syria – whose repercussions triggered Miqati’s

resignation in March 2013 – the STL had become largely irrelevant to politics in Lebanon.

Instead, the intensifying Syrian civil war became the decisive determinant of political

dynamics in Lebanon, prompting growing instability and creating a prolonged vacuum when

factions could not agree on a new president after Michel Sleiman’s term ended in May 2014.

Although the Security Council adopted Presidential Statements appealing to the Lebanese to

19

maintain national unity and elect a new President, a newly created ‘International Support

Group’ for Lebanon soon usurped the Council’s role.61

Nevertheless, the Council’s two-pronged engagement in Lebanon in the years after

2004 was instructive. First, the Council issued far-reaching and binding parameters on how

Lebanon was to deal with major – and domestically highly divisive – issues. This contrasts

with the Council’s inability to set similar defining norms on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

reflecting relative unity on Lebanon and deep divisions between Council members –

particularly between the United States and the other members – on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Second, following its mixed experience with legal investigation and the establishment of a

subsequent Tribunal, the Council has refrained from repeating the experiment, at least to date.

Third, the political turmoil that accompanied and followed the Hariri assassination and the

establishment of the Special Tribunal highlights the inherent tension between justice and

stability in the Council’s engagement. In the case of Lebanon, the Council appeared to value

principles of justice more highly than stability, although the abstentions in the vote on the

establishment of the STL in 2007 underline that the Council was far from united. Yet, the

Council’s actions in Lebanon differ significantly from its inability to be similarly principled –

for example, on settlements – in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, where the United States, in

particular, is under strong domestic pressure to protect Israeli interests.

The Security Council was, however, not only focused on the situation inside Lebanon

during this period. The drawing of the Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel had not

brought the stability the Council had hoped for in 2000. The so-called Sheb’a Farms, a small

hamlet of farms claimed by Lebanon but determined (by the Secretariat, with subsequent

Council endorsement) to be part of Israeli-occupied Syria, had grown into the purported

justification for Hizbullah to maintain its arms and continue its attacks against Israel. The

first such instance, in October 2000, left three Israeli soldiers dead whose bodies were not

20

returned until January 2003, but did not trigger wider conflict. The next major instance, on 12

July 2006, when Hizbullah fighters crossed the Blue Line to ambush an Israeli patrol, killing

three soldiers and abducting two others, sparked war.

Thirty-four days of conflict would leave 1,200 Lebanese and 140 Israelis dead and

vital infrastructure destroyed, particularly in Lebanon. The Security Council, however, could

not act for several weeks. Indeed, its first reaction to the fighting was a presidential statement

on 27 July 2006 to express “shock” and “distress” at the killing of four United Nations

observers when Israeli aircraft struck their outpost.62 Although most Council members

favoured calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, some contended that it would

be better to wait to allow Israel to defeat Hizbullah. Talks by a UN delegation dispatched to

Lebanon and Israel laid the foundations for an eventual ceasefire resolution, but it took

several weeks until agreement was reached. Resolution 1701, co-sponsored by France and

the United States, was adopted on 11 August 2006. Two days later, a ceasefire took hold.63

Resolution 1701 marked the first time that the Council agreed unanimously on the

mandate of an essentially new peacekeeping mission in the region. Israel lobbied hard for the

deployment of a NATO-led force to replace UNIFIL. Instead, UNIFIL was expanded six-

fold, to the authorized troop strength of 15,000, and its mandate reinforced significantly.

UNIFIL would henceforth assist the Lebanese government – which agreed to deploy 15,000

troops in south Lebanon as well – to establish an area “free of armed personnel, assets and

weapons other than those of the Lebanese government.” European troop contributors,

particularly France, Italy and Spain, provided the force’s backbone. In return, these troop

contributors insisted on unprecedented operational control, prompting the establishment of a

separate “military strategic cell” in New York, which comprised personnel from the troop-

contributing countries and was designed to reinforce the chain of command between the

21

troops on the ground and New York headquarters. In addition, a maritime task force was

created to support the Lebanese navy in patrolling territorial waters.64

In the following years, resolution 1701 and the reinforced UNIFIL would enable the

longest period of relative stability between Israel and Lebanon in more than three decades.

However, the new UNIFIL continued to come under criticism. Israel wanted the force to be

more proactive, searching for arms, which it alleged continued to be smuggled into south

Lebanon after 2006, allowing Hizbullah to re-build a significant arsenal of missiles and

rockets. Israel also maintained its intrusive regime of aerial surveillance of Lebanese

territory, prompting bitter Lebanese complaints. UNIFIL itself pointed out that it could not

exceed its mandate under resolution 1701, which tasked it only with supporting the Lebanese

Armed Forces. UNIFIL troops also walked a fine line between taking an assertive stance on

the one hand, and compromising their own security on the other. An attack against a Spanish-

Colombian contingent in 2007 killed six soldiers; subsequent attacks were also committed

against French and Italian troops in May and July 2011. The attacks – never conclusively

investigated – underlined UNIFIL’s precarious position and, ultimately, precipitated

significant reductions by European troop contributors. By the end of 2011, Indonesia was the

largest troop contributor, and UNIFIL had settled into a mode of operations reminiscent of the

pre-2006 period.

The reinforced UNIFIL had been intended to “buy time, not substitute, for progress on

the political track both within Lebanon and also between Lebanon and its neighbours.”65 But

there was no progress towards the disarmament of Hizbullah or the clarification of Lebanon’s

international boundaries, including in the disputed Sheb’a Farms area. The northern half of

the village of Ghajar, which had been divided by the Blue Line in 2000, remained under

Israeli occupation after 2006, despite the fact that neither side actually disputed its status as

belonging to Lebanon.

22

Resolution 1701 was successful in outlining the principles and elements for a

“permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution” between Israel and Lebanon. But it did not

achieve either in practice. In addition, resolutions 1559 and 1701, despite the considerable

overlap between them, continued to co-exist alongside each other, with reporting cycles that

led to the Council hearing briefings on almost identical issues within weeks of each other

twice a year. Although some Council members suggested merging the two mandates, their

co-existence, and the density of parallel processes and resolutions on Lebanon, also enabled

the Council to maintain a degree of unity, precisely because the plurality of mandates and

issues allowed each Council member to choose their respective areas of emphasis.

Nonetheless, the Council’s unprecedented activism in and around the Lebanese arena

during the 2000s contrasted starkly with its inability to shape events, establish broader

frameworks, or uphold norms on the Israeli-Palestinian front where the deepening divisions in

the Council, particularly between the United States and the other Council members, made

action impossible. As a result, of this imbalance, the Council increasingly distanced itself

from its erstwhile aspiration to address the Arab-Israeli conflict in its regional totality. This

trend grew more and more pronounced following the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, when

the acute crisis in Syria as well as its reverberations in Lebanon and Jordan absorbed most of

the Council’s attention, while Middle East peace remained a domain of bilateral, US-led

efforts.

Conclusion: Assert responsibility, with benefits beyond the Middle East

The Middle East is one of the Security Council’s longest-standing and most labour-intensive

agenda items. Yet over the decades, the Council has found it difficult to play a leading role in

addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict, defining decisive parameters, and contributing to resolve

major crises conclusively. Instead, the Council became increasingly focused on acute crisis

23

management issues that are but facets or sub-dimensions of the overall Arab-Israeli conflict as

well as the definition and implementation of temporary and stop-gap measures, including its

primary tool, peacekeeping.

That said, the Council has defined – if not proactively, then through its endorsement,

at least – the key parameters of what an eventual Arab-Israeli peace settlement would look

like. It has also contributed over the decades to maintaining considerable stability along the

borders separating Israel from the Arab world, notably by deploying peacekeeping operations.

For many years, the Council consciously approached the different dimensions of the

Arab-Israeli conflict as parts of a wider issue that needed to be addressed holistically. Since

the early to mid-2000s, this effort to maintain a broad regional perspective has been hollowed

out, particularly as a result of the Council’s deep engagement on Lebanon under resolutions

1559, 1701, and 1595 and the subsequent Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This trend has

accelerated significantly since the onset of the Arab Spring, with Council discussions

dedicated to the situation in Syria, for example, in a way that has been disconnected entirely

from the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this regard, the Council’s increasing focus on country-

specific situations and its decreasing consideration of the Arab-Israeli conflict in its regional

totality, of course, reflects a wider reality shaping the Middle East itself: to a considerable

extent, the importance ascribed to the Arab-Israeli conflict has receded, and domestic

developments within the countries in the region have begun to take precedence and priority.

The Council’s engagement in and on the Middle East over the past seven decades has

also been a struggle with the specific nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict as an almost

singularly high-profile conflict that evokes strong sentiments around the world. Divisions

that have deepened over the past decade, reflect that the conflict is relevant or closely related

to important national security and domestic interests of key permanent Council members.

Burgeoning bilateral ties between the United States and Israel have made it increasingly

24

difficult for the US to support meaningful Council pronouncements on the Arab-Israeli or

Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a result, Council action has become an ever-more distant

prospect.

The United States remains indispensable to settling the conflict but has, because of

domestic political constraints, found it difficult to use the Council as a policy-defining

mechanism, or even an arena for constructive debate. It played a key role in the establishment

of the Quartet as a mechanism intended to convey the legitimacy of the United Nations, but

the Quartet encountered criticism precisely because it did not encompass the same

legitimating breadth of views as the Council.

It would be in the interest of the Council – collectively, as well as in terms of its

individual members – to seek to overcome the debilitating divisions that have characterised it

in recent years. As a result of the inability of Council members to use the instruments at their

disposal more effectively, arguably, the Council and the UN as a whole have been weakened.

Public perception of the United Nations has often been susceptible to the Security Council’s

failures in and on the Middle East – especially if one includes Iraq and Syria. The Council’s

role as the primary guardian of international peace and security has, against a reality of

deadlock and its own inability to act, often been usurped by other mechanisms, such as the

Quartet, the General Assembly, or, at times, an enterprising Secretary-General or special

envoy.

It might therefore be useful for the Council to try and re-focus on the bigger picture,

on broad parameters. Instead of being drawn into addressing acute crises, it could, in fact,

leave the ‘day to day’ management of crises to others – whether special envoys or the Quartet.

In doing so, it would retain the role of ultimate arbiter and norm-setter. Given the difficulties

and sensitivities related to the Middle East – and the deep polarization within the Council – a

25

focus on broad, strategic, general parameters instead might indeed facilitate constructive

engagement.

The Council has also suffered from a deep mismatch of expectations and political

realities. To satisfy public expectations, the Council devotes much time to the Middle East –

but it fails to meet those expectations precisely because it talks too much and does too little.

Ostensible dedication of time to the issue must be better matched with concrete outcomes and

actions.

At the time of writing, the Middle East was in the process of undergoing the most far-

reaching changes since the end of the Mandate period. This will inevitably alter not only

political constellations and dynamics across the region, but also the Council’s perspective and

ability to address conflict in the Middle East. That said, if the Council cannot find a

constructive role to play while the region transforms, it may find itself without any role or

relevancy to speak of. The Middle East will undoubtedly remain one of the most vexing

problems on its agenda.

1 The views expressed in this chapter are solely those of the author and not those of the United

Nations.

2 Ralph Bunche, quoted in Urquhart, Ralph Bunche, p. 150.

3 Jones, “Middle East Peace Process,” p. 400.

4 Urquhart, “United Nations in the Middle East,” p. 1.

5 In integrated missions, all United Nations operations in a country fall under a single

management structure, overseen by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General.

6 Jones, “Security Council and the Arab-Israeli Wars,” p. 322.



9 Jones, “Security Council and the Arab-Israeli Wars,” pp. 299-300.

26

10 Ibid.

11 Security Council Report, Special Research Report, p. 10.

12 UNTSO’s mandate of monitoring the 1948 truce was superseded by realities in subsequent

years but the mission continues to exist, now primarily lending support to two other regional

peacekeeping operations, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the UN

Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) through the Observer Group Lebanon (OGL) and

Observer Group Golan (OGG).


14 Urquhart, “United Nations in the Middle East,” p. 3; Security Council Report, Special

Research Report, p. 13.

15 Wm. Roger Louis, “The Suez Crisis.”

16 The Council did unanimously adopt four resolutions calling for a ceasefire during June

1967 (resolutions 233, 234, 235 and 236), but the parties simply ignored them.




20 Security Council resolution 340 of 25 October 1973.

21 Security Council resolution 350 of 31 May 1974.








27

29 Annan, Interventions, chapter 7.

30 Okhovat, United Nations Security Council, as well as UN overviews of Security Council

meetings and outcomes for 2011 and 2012.

31 Jones, “Middle East Peace Process,” p. 397; Jones, “Security Council and the Arab-Israeli

Wars,” p. 317. The Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, led by former US Senator

George Mitchell, submitted its report – commonly known as the Mitchell Report – in April

2001. It was an important reference point but quickly receded into the background due the

continuing escalation of violence on the ground. The report can be accessed at

<http://eeas.europa.eu/mepp/docs/mitchell_report_2001_en.pdf>.

32 See, for example, resolutions 1402 (2002), 1435 (2002), and 1450 (2002).

33 Jones, “Middle East Peace Process,” pp. 398-399; Jones, “Security Council and the Arab-

Israeli Wars,” pp. 318-319.


35 Quartet statement of 20 September 2005.

36 Quartet statement of 30 January 2006.

37 S/PRST/2005/44 of 23 September 2005 and S/PRST/2005/57 of 30 November 2005.

38 S/PRST/2006/6 of 3 February 2006.

39 De Soto’s confidential report, leaked to and published by the Guardian, accessible at

<http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf.>


41 S/2006/956, 11 December 2006.

42 Security Council Report, Special Research Report, pp. 3-4.

43 S/PRST/2009/14 of 11 May 2009.

44 Security Council resolution 1544 of 19 May 2004.

28

45 Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (known as the

Goldstone report), A/HRC/12/48, 25 September 2009.

46 S/PRST/2010/9 of 1 June 2010.

47 Security Council Report, Israel/Palestine.

48 Security Council press statement issued on 12 July 2014.

49 S/PRST/2014/13 of 28 July 2014.

50 Security Council resolution 446 (1979), followed by resolution 452 (1979), 468, 469, 476,

478 and 484 (1980). See Security Council Report, Special Research Report, p. 18.

51 Nichols, “Israeli Settlements.”

52 Bouillon, “Zwischen den Stühlen.”

53 Reports of the Secretary-General of 22 May 2000 (S/2000/460) and of 16 June 2000

(S/2000/590), and S/PRST/2000/18 of 23 May 2000 and S/PRST/2000/21 of 18 June 2000.

54 Malone, International Struggle over Iraq.

55 Leenders, “UN Pressure on Hizballah.”

56 Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon and Young, Ghosts of Martyr Square.

57 S/PRST/2005/4 of 15 February 2005.

58 S/2005/662 of 20 October 2005. The marked up advance version is accessible at

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/syria/mehlis.report.doc.>

59 Security Council resolutions 1644 of 15 December 2005 and 1664 of 29 March 2006.

60 Security Council resolutions 1686 of 15 June 2006, 1748 of 27 March 2007, 1815 of 2 June

2008, and 1852 of 17 December 2008.

61 S/PRST/2013/9 of 10 July 2013 and S/PRST/2014/10 of 29 May 2014.

62 S/PRST/2006/34 of 27 July 2006.

63 Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days.


29

65 S/2006/956, para. 32.

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