UN Peacekeepers Stop Pretending to Keep Peace - The End of an Era

...The international community also likes the idea of considering the Golan Heights occupied Syrian territory. They should ask the UN peacekeeping forces if they’d like the land to which they’ve currently retreated to still be on the Syrian side of the border. They should ask that question, by the way, while there still is technically a country called Syria.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
15 September '14..

The United Nations has come up with a strange follow-up to Israel’s credible accusations that UN facilities allowed themselves to be used essentially as human shields for Hamas in Gaza: the UN is now, apparently, using Israeli soldiers as human shields up north. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Israeli authorities had in mind when they protested the UN’s one-sided wartime behavior.

What appears to have happened, and which has been confirmed by UN spokesmen, is that UN peacekeeping forces on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights are in retreat. They have, in fact, left Syria. The phrase “peacekeeping forces” should have made them aware of the fact that they would not be supervising a game of hacky sack. A peacekeeping force, theoretically, would arrive during a period of temporary peace to ensure it becomes a permanent peace. The UN forces see it differently.

An AP story today very gently and generously breaks the news, and in doing so buries the lede a bit:

The United Nations said Monday it has withdrawn its peacekeepers from many positions on the Golan Heights because of escalating fighting in the war between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters.

Which positions on the Golan Heights? Asked and answered:

The situation has deteriorated severely over the last few days and advances by armed groups posed “a direct threat to the safety and security of the U.N. peacekeepers” along the Syrian side of the border and in Camp Faouar where many troops are based, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. He said all troops in those areas have been relocated to the Israeli side of the border.

The Syrian side of the border! That’s seems pretty significant. Indeed, it’s the end of an era, as AP notes:

The 1,200-strong U.N. force has patrolled a buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after the Arab-Israeli war. For nearly four decades, U.N. monitors helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria, but the spillover from the Syrian war has led to the abduction of peacekeepers four times since March 2013, made troop contributors wary, and led several countries to withdraw their soldiers.

But all is not lost. It’s possible, says the UN–though they don’t know for sure–that someone affiliated with the UN is still in Syria, somewhere, keeping some kind of peace:

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told The Associated Press earlier that he doesn’t think every single post has been vacated.

Seems like an important detail. But never mind. The important thing is that the UN peacekeepers are safe, hiding behind Israelis.

Surprised? IDF Saves Irish Troops from Jihadists

...But that, of course, is precisely the problem with seeking to empower your enemies rather than your allies: If you succeed, your allies will no longer be able to help you when you need them.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
08 September '14..

Ireland is one of the most consistently anti-Israel countries in Europe. So it was interesting to read in Ireland’s Sunday Independent yesterday that Israeli troops were instrumental in saving the lives of Irish peacekeepers on the Golan Heights last week. Citing “senior sources,” the newspaper reported that after the peacekeepers were attacked by a Syrian rebel group, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, “Irish soldiers would have been killed or taken hostage by Islamist extremists if it wasn’t for the military intervention of the Israeli army … The Israeli assistance was described as ‘decisive’ in the success of the mission.”

Specifically, the Israel Defense Forces used its precise intelligence about the area to guide the troops to safety along a route that avoided Nusra fighters. Additionally, there were “unconfirmed reports that the Israelis directed fire at the Islamists to stop them from attacking the Filipino and Irish soldiers.”

There’s nothing surprising about the IDF’s intervention. After all, Israel has consistently intervened to save Syrian lives even though it’s formally at war with Syria, providing food and other humanitarian assistance to besieged Syrian villages and offering medical care to everyone from wounded fighters to mothers in labor. (Safed’s Rebecca Sieff Hospital delivered its seventh Syrian baby earlier this month.) So intervening to save the nationals of a country it’s not at war with is a no-brainer.

What is surprising, however, is what this says about Ireland, and by extension, about Europe as a whole. For here you have the difference between Israel and its enemies in the starkest form: on one hand, radical jihadists who sought to kill or kidnap Irish soldiers; on the other, a stable country that intervened to save their lives. The choice between the two would seem self-evident. But in fact, Ireland has consistently chosen the jihadists.

UN lays bare its peacekeeping irrelevance for Israel

Rather than scrounging for replacement troops, the UN should ask why Israel should have any faith in the peacekeeping that has failed to protect it so many times in the past.

James Kirchick..
Haaretz..
19 June '13..

Last Wednesday, the government of Austria began withdrawing its 377 soldiers serving in the Golan Heights as part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF. Since 1974, UNDOF has policed the disputed boundary between Syria and Israel, which captured the Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War. For nearly four decades, these international peacekeepers – deployed by their respective countries yet serving under the auspices of the UN flag – have patrolled the frontier between two states still technically at war.

But over two years into Syria’s own civil war, a conflict that has seen intense fighting erupt near the Golan, the situation has become too hot for some. Citing danger to its forces, Austria abruptly ordered their exit. Vienna’s decision to abscond follows the brief kidnapping of 21 Filipino peacekeepers (whose government, unlike that of Austria, remains committed to the UN mission).

In response to the Austrian pullout, UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon has reverted to form, panhandling the “international community” for handouts in the form of replacement forces. One might ask what is the purpose of a “peacekeeping” mission that flees the scene at the slightest indication of peacebreaking, but then, such an observation misses the larger point about the role the UN has played, or not played, in the maintenance of peace between Israel and its neighbors.

Contrary to what the Secretary General and other UN enthusiasts believe, it is not UNDOF that has kept the Golan quiet for most of the past four decades. The maintenance of peace and security is due almost entirely to Israel’s unquestioned military supremacy.

For 25 years after Israel’s founding in 1948, its neighbors genuinely believed they could destroy it, which is why they repeatedly expended so much blood and treasure trying to do just that.

But the era of Arab state-level warfare against the Jewish State came to an end with Israel’s stunning 1973 victory. Hafez al-Assad soon realized that even the slightest provocation would be met with a punishing Israeli response, a lesson he passed along to his son, Bashar (who did absolutely nothing when Israel destroyed an illegal nuclear reactor he was secretly constructing in 2007, nor when Israeli jets struck a Syrian arms shipment bound for Hezbollah last month). And Syria, despite its endless bellicose rhetoric about ending the “Zionist occupation” of the Golan, has never attempted to retake the territory.

This model characterizes the Jewish State’s relations with its neighbors. When Israel is strong and the Arab states fear its awesome power, they either sign peace treaties (Egypt and Jordan) or limit their hostility to bombast and support for subnational terrorist organizations (Syria).

History of international troops in our region - Between the farcical and the tragic

...a history highlighted by the panicked withdrawal of U.N. troops from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza in 1967, by Hezbollah terrorists entrenching themselves in southern Lebanon in contradiction to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, and by the incessant kidnapping of U.N. troops currently stationed on the Golan Heights.

Zalman Shoval..
Israel Hayom..
09 June '13..

The stated task assigned to Gen. John Allen, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy on security matters in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, who visited Israel last month, was to formulate an American "security net" for Israel in any future permanent-status agreement with the Palestinians. In other words: to convince Israel to make concessions on the issue of the 1967 borders.

These American attempts, while not contrary to Israel's diplomatic and security interests in and of themselves, are something of a prelude for a future American peace plan that would include the presence of an international military force in the West Bank and Jordan Valley. It should be remembered that Gen. James Jones, who was tasked with a similar mission by former President George W. Bush, suggested an outline based on stationing American and NATO troops, as well as other international soldiers (such as the U.N.) along the borders of the future Palestinian state.

Then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert indeed conceded -- including during his talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- Israel's military presence in the Jordan Valley. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, rejected such proposals outright, insisting that the security threat such a plan would pose to Israel was too great.

In Israel's view, since signing the Camp David Accords with Egypt in 1978, the most basic condition for any peace agreement with the Palestinians has been the operational freedom of its security forces in the West Bank. While the American security ideas touch primarily on preventing violent acts inside and from the Palestinian territories, for Israel the matter is much more complex and far-reaching, namely that without an Israeli military presence on the ground the Palestinian entity could ally itself, actively or passively, with other countries or terrorist organizations seeking to attack Israel.

Incoming fire from Syria on the northern border

Syrian woman takes a picture of an Israeli community located on the Golan Heights [Image Source] 

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 September '12..

It's the eve of Yom Kippur and though the mood here in Jerusalem is calm (thankfully) and the weather glorious (of course), the reverberations of the war that broke out on that day in 1973 are in the air (inevitably).

In the past hour, mortar fire erupted on Israel's northern border, causing explosions in what appear, for now, to be open fields. No injuries, but some property damage that's not yet detailed in the news here. It's reported that the fire is a kind of spillover from the barbarism unfolding over the past year inside Syria: the source is believed to be forces of the Syrian army "engaged" - as the journalists like to put it - with rebel forces near Syria's border with Israel. AFP says the mortars crashed into Israel "by accident". They were intended to hit civilian villages inside Syria.

That ongoing engagement has caused thousands of deaths since it broke out in March 2011. Wikipedia says various sources, including the UN, place the rising death toll at between 26,000 [source] and 39,120 [source] people killed, about half of them civilians. Where is the outrage?

So where was UNDOF on Sunday?

Elder of Ziyon
06 June '11

UNDOF is the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force in Syria. This is its mandate:

Maintain the ceasefire between Israel and Syria;

Supervise the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces; and

Supervise the areas of separation and limitation, as provided in the May 1974 Agreement on Disengagement.

Here is a map showing its area of operations. I have highlighted Majdal Shams, where the riots were yesterday and on May 15th.

The map shows that the Arab rioters passed through miles of UNDOF areas patrolled by the Austrian contingent of UNDOF.

The entire UNDOF forces consist of around 1200 lightly armed peacekeepers.

So what did they do on Sunday to defuse tensions on the border?

(Read full "So where was UNDOF on Sunday?")

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