The peacekeeping mission in Lebanon

On the ‘Muddle East’ scene, the latest news is that a multinational force is being deployed in the south of Lebanon under the insignia of the United Nations and the terms of UNSC resolution 1701 [1]. The weeks leading to the launch of UNIFIL 2 – named after the UNIFIL mission of 1978 - were characterised by reservations concerning the mandate of mission, considered ambiguous, and by a diffuse misreading of the role of peacekeepers.

The mandate

As for the alleged volatility of the mission’s mandate, UNSC 1701 asks in substance to UNIFIL 2 to provide the security conditions necessary to ensure a transaction to normality following the July/August 2006 crisis. In details par.11 of UN Resolution 1701 states that the mission will ‘(a) monitor the cessation of hostilities; (b) accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South [in coordination with the governments of Lebanon and Israel], (c) extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons, (d) assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area between the Blue Line and the Litani river free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL; (e) assist the Government of Lebanon, at its request, to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel[2]. To discharge its duties, furthermore, UNIFIL is authorised ‘to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces’ and also ‘to protect [Lebanese] civilians under imminent threat of physical violence’. This last sentence, in particular, seems to give wide discretion to the PKs, which will be, in principle, able to use the force against whomever threatens the civilian population, be it black or white. Overall, therefore, and although some ambiguities remain in the wording, the mandate of the resolution is altogether clear: security and control of the territory, interposition, and support to the Lebanese government in the pursuit of disarmament[3].

About Peacekeeping

Beyond the content of the mandate, the reservations on the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon appeared to stem from a common misreading of what a peacekeeping mission actually is, and what results can be reasonably expected from it and which not. The term ‘peacekeeping’ refers to a situation in which the warring parties halt the fighting and agree on the intervention of a neutral third party acting as force of interposition[4]. The peacekeepers’ role is limited to making sure that de minimis conditions – in primis a halt to hostilities – are kept and that the situation does not go back to square one[5]. However, once the peacekeeping mission is deployed, it is up to the diplomacy, and to the parties involved in the conflict, to address the root causes of the conflict and to work out a durable settlement of it.

Past experience

Past experience tells us that, on one hand, the success or the failure of peacekeeping missions largely depends on the restraint put on politics to interfere with the fulfilment of the peacekeeping mandate; on the other hand, the attainment of a conflict’s solution is very much dependent on the ability of politics to follow up to the peacekeeping mission with appropriate political solutions. Out of 60 missions carried out since 1948 to date, recalls Prof. Rufini, Course Coordinator at the Institute for International Politics Studies in "La Sapienza" University in Rome and the Bocconi University in Milan, failures have been less than ten. Among them, in Somalia in 1993, the United States, ignoring the terms of the UNSC mandate, turned the peacekeeping intervention into a full scale conflict, becoming part of it; in Rwanda in 1994, France and United States held back the action of General Dellaire’s troops which could have prevented the genocide; in Yugoslavia in 1995, it was the veto of Russia which rendered UN troops impotent to protect with the use of force the life of civilians. Instead, when peacekeepers could work according to the guidelines of the mandate, they proved quite effective[6]. If, afterwards, hostilities broke out again, this was due to the incapacity of diplomacy and politics to work out sustainable political solutions to the crisis.

Unapplied provisions of the UN Charter

Eventually, it is worth noting that there is an entire chapter of the UN Charter which provides that the UN shall have its own army and a Military Staff Committee to command it[7]. It has never been put into practice. Instead, when an international consensus is reached about organising a mission, the Secretary General must beg for troops around the world, make them up in a puzzle, seal it and deliver it. Once the packaging is complete, the peacekeeping troops and the UN Secretary General remain subject, notwithstanding the Brahimi reform which rendered the decision making process smoother, to the vetoes of the UN Security Council’s permanent members, who can influence at will the conduct of the mission .

[1] http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2006/sc8808.doc.htm The resolution calls for ‘the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations’ A consensus was reached among the permanent members of the UN Security Council to give mandate to ‘up to 15,000 United Nations peacekeepers [to] help[ing] Lebanese troops take control of the area […] between the United Nations-drawn Blue Line in southern Lebanon and the Litani River (12 miles from the Israeli border)’

[2] UNSC resolution 1701, par. 11.
[3] A map of UNIFIL deployment as of July 2006 can be found at http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/dpko/unifil.pdf; see also UNIFIL - UN official mandate at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/mandate.html
[4] Peace enforcement instead entails the international community’s initiative to forcefully bring a conflict to an end. Peace enforcement missions were launched by the UN only two times, in Korea (1950) and in the Gulf War (1991).
[5] Welcoming the resolution ahead of the Council’s adoption Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General said he was greatly relieved that it provided for a full and immediate cessation of all hostilities. “It is absolutely vital that the fighting now stop”, he said, adding: “Provided it does, I believe this resolution will make it possible to conclude a sustainable and lasting ceasefire agreement in the days ahead. And, I hope that this could be the beginning of a process to solve the underlying political problems in the region through peaceful means.”
[6] The first success of the peacekeepers dates back to 1956 Suez war, when the PKs successfully managed to keep peace between Egypt and the UK-France-Israel alliance; the latest success is recorded in Burundi, in 2004, when the PKs succeeded in keeping peace in one of the most politically volatile African states.
[7] See articles 43 and 47 Un Charter, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
[8] http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/
[9] For an comprehensive analysis and critics, see R.A. Falk, Reflections on the Gulf War Experience : Force and war in the United Nations System, Juridisk Tidskrift, 3 (1991).

Israel’s will, Lebanese weakness, Arab states’ tacit approval and international consensus made the conditions ripe for a full scale Israeli war on Lebanon

On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah, the Shia armed group based in the south of Lebanon, launched a military operation against Israel. In the attack, two Israeli soldiers were abducted and seven were killed[1] . Israel, which said it considered the assault/abduction an act of war, swiftly responded initiating operation ‘Just Reward’, massively bombing areas in the south of the country and also in Beirut, the capital of the Levantine state. Hezbollah’s counter reaction, the launching of rockets into some northern Israeli cities including Haifa, prompted Israel to unfold a full scale war, the sixth one in the history of the fifty-eight year old Israeli – Arab conflict [2].

To disband Hezbollah, Israel is adopting two strategies aimed respectively at compelling the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah and deploying its army on the Israeli border, and at wiping out Hezbollah’s military ability. To achieve the former, the Israeli army is meticulously targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, hoping that this will raise a tide of popular anger against Hezbollah for igniting Israel’s ferocious reaction. To tear Hezbollah’s military machine down, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are heavily shelling the villages of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s arms stocks, rocket launchers and headquarters are believed to be located. In both cases, civilian costs are calculated as, yet lamentable, consequences of the attack’s general goals.

The situation at the international level has arguably favoured Israel’s decision to wage such full scale, massive war against Lebanon. Inside Lebanon, the disarmament of Hezbollah has been on the political agenda for the last two years, spurring tensions among the Lebanese public. At best, Israel thought, the Lebanese government would blame the attack on Hezbollah and confront it openly; if not, Israel could plausibly expect that long established sectarian divisions within the country and the recent UN inspired debate on the role of Hezbollah[3] would prevent the creation of a compact front behind the Shia group.

As for Hezbollah themselves, Lebanese analysts are inclined to believe that the Shia leadership miscalculated the extent of Israel’s reaction. Arguably, Hezbollah expected that after bombing some positions in the south, Israel would sit down and negotiate the release of the abducted soldiers[4] . Israel thought otherwise and opted to make the most out of the incumbent conditions.

The Jewish state upheld that the Arab world or, more appropriately, Arab leadership would not launch outraged protests against a major Israeli attack on Hezbollah. In the aftermath of the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, regional powers such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in fact officially blamed Hezbollah’s initiative, claiming that it was ‘inimical to Lebanese and Arab interests’[5] . Besides de façade reasons, such as the defence of the peace process, the protection of Arab interests was mainly related to those states’ own domestic problems, notably the rise of Islamic opposition movements, and externally to the fear that Iran would increase its influence in the region through Hezbollah.

At the international level, it was quite unlikely that a full fledged attack on Lebanon would generate a split among western countries like the one that preceded and followed the US invasion in Iraq. In any case a resolution of the Security Council condemning Israel would undoubtedly have run into the veto of the United States, but the main difference with the Iraqi war is that France, the major opponent to the Iraqi campaign and strongest advocate of multilateralism then, is now the co-drafter, with the United States, of UNSC resolution 1559, a piece of international law of crucial importance to the current conflict. Adopted in September 2004, UNSC resolution 1559 consists of three points: it calls for the evacuation of foreign troops from Lebanon – a reference to the Syrian presence in Lebanon; it calls on the Lebanese government to deploy its troops on the internationally recognised southern border with Israel, the so called Blue line; and it calls for the disarmament of militias, read Hezbollah.

In the absence of a political consensus inside Lebanon, in the light of an international consensus embodied in UNSC 1559 calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and for full Lebanese sovereignty on the entire Lebanese territory, and provided that Arab leaders tacitly favoured a military intervention against Hezbollah, it appears that Israel, the only regional super power, calculated that the conditions were ripe to rip down Hezbollah and took action. So far, it has been vindicated.

[1] According to available reports, the combat operation against Israel led to the death of three Israeli soldiers and the capture of two. In the course of the Israeli pursuit, an IDF tank was destroyed and four soldiers died.
[2] In chronological order, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. Indeed, one might correctly dispute that the current war is in fact a war tout court on the grounds that only one of the warring parties is a state. Hezbollah is in fact considered a state in the state because it has own militias which are not integrated in the Lebanese army. Such ‘anomaly’ has always been of greater concern to the state of Israel, which sees the presence of militias on its northern border a gruesome threat to its security.
[3] Security Council resolution 1559 (2004) - The situation in the Middle East, http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892.pdf?OpenElement
[4] After the abduction of the IDF soldiers, the group’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah appeared on television to explain the conditions for the release of the captives, namely a prisoners’ swamp with Israel. In 2004, a prisoners’ exchange took place with the mediation of Germany.

[5] On Tuesday 18 July 2006, in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers held an emergency meeting over Israel's expanding assault on Lebanon. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, the summit witnessed a division on ‘how far should Arab countries go in criticising Hezbollah (and Hamas) for what many insisted to call ‘miscalculated moves’ and how much should they blame Iran for instigating such moves on the part of Hamas and Hezbollah’. Arab leaders divided into three camps: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, supported by Morocco, Kuwait and Bahrain, who were very critical; Syria and Lebanon with had the support of Algeria, Sudan, Yemen and Qatar; and a third camp made up of countries apparently indifferent.

While in Jerusalem, I was invited to spend ten days with a family living in Al-Amari refugee camp, near the city of Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. I went there alone and in a very ‘personal capacity’, introduced to the family by a friend who took me there and then returned to the Holy city.

Al-Amari rests a few hundreds meters away from the security fence and the Israeli checkpoint of Qalandia. The guarded crossing point separating Ramallah and the West Bank from the metropolitan district of Jerusalem covers a large area with parking lots and buildings which make this place look like a customs between two countries. On its way from Jerusalem to Ramallah, past the checkpoint, bus number 18 stops just in front of Al-Amari camp, which lies on the left hand of the road leading to the centre of the city. There are no signs indicating its presence.

Just like any refugee camps in Palestine, Al-Amari has gone from temporary accommodation attached for practical reasons to the closest urban centre, to permanent suburb connected to the general urban outfit. As I would later discover, locals say they live at Al-Amari, Balata, Shuffat, dropping the term ‘refugee camp’ or ‘camp’, somehow suggesting reception of the idea that what was once a temporary condition has become and a permanent one; however, the inhabitants also like to remind where they come from, Lydda or Ramleh or Jaffa, today Israeli cities, suggesting the resident’s lasting consciousness that their present condition is the result of the expulsions from the cities of partitioned Palestine in 1948. As of today, in Al-Amari there are 7000 people.

Unlike what the term ‘camp’ might suggest, there are no tents in Al-Amari - as well as in any other refugee camp in Palestine -, but houses in concrete or bricks. Likewise, houses are mostly unpainted, a sluggish mass of grey which makes it easy to instantly recognise a refugee camp from the distance. Buildings are generally little and maladroit, sprawling accidentally along the camp’s Main Road, - the ‘avenue’ which tights the camp together - in a dedalus of narrow alleys and whacked streets.

At the beginning of the Main Road, the U.N.R.W.A. centre is usually found. Formed by a school, a leisure camp for children and a few offices, UNRWA centres are administered by Palestinians employed by the UN as local contractors; they are easily recognisable by the Punto with bold UN insignia that they drive. Past the UNRWA centre and along the Main Road, there are houses and small shops. In Al-Amari there are three groceries, a butcher’s, three (!) barber’s shops, a tearoom, a one-roomed bubbling falafel bistrot, two internet points, one billiard room and a videogames’ one, a mechanic, and a taxi service.

My host, a guy called Adam, owns the taxi service. He lives with his wife, his parents, his three brothers and wives, and many gambolling children in a three floored house at the top of the Main Road. This house was my home for the week I spent at Al-Amari. Adam’s home is indisputably ruled by his mother. From a sofa in the living room, Fatima dispenses orders to the household, women, men and children alike; and to myself. The cooking, the cleaning, and the healing; the quarrels, the finances, and the children’s cries; the marriages, the crisis and the family’s public relations, all hinge around the authority of this old woman, a refugee from Haifa and from Gaza, whose advices, orders, and forbids echoes loud and clear through the pulsating rooms.

Unsurprisingly, Adam, 26, recently-married, and I spend most of the day outside, at his office. His ‘company’ is formed of Adam himself and two other friends. The office is made of a single room with a telephone which works but never rings. In front of it, there is a barber’s shop; the barber, Ahmed, is a gentle and quite man of 25 and one of Adam’s best friends.

During the week I stayed in the ‘camp’, I had two hair cuts. The reason why I had two hair cuts in seven days is that there is not much to do in Al-Amari. There is no work to do and no money to spend. And, besides Ramallah, there is no place to go. What I did was talking, playing with children, smoking countless cigarettes, drinking coffee after coffee, tea after tea, marameye after marameye, linger with people in the street, receive friends, pay visits to friends, catch any excuse to kill the time. Very soon, I found out that in a refugee camp there is nothing else to do.

After a couple of days of life in the camp, I spent a full day in Jerusalem. Prevented to enter the Holy City since 2000 for security reasons, Adam and his friends could not accompany me; we agreed we would meet up again in the evening. However, when the time came to go back ‘home’ to Al-Amari, I reckon I did not want to leave Jerusalem. I knew that friends and a good meal were waiting for me, but I felt I was under normal conditions and I just did not want to go back to that sort of prison. The prospective of another empty day made me sick.

Dependent as I was on my host and his friends, I was living inside an envelope, sealed off, suffocating. I could move freely only inside Ramallah. Wherever else I elected to go in the West Bank, I needed to cross a military checkpoint; but according to the colour of the ID my hosts held – blue, orange, green etc…- , we could go only to certain areas and cities, south or north of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which is 15 minutes away by car, was simply out of the question. Whatever the business or commerce we wanted to carry out, the study we wanted to pursue, we needed either the proper ID card or permissions by the ruling military authority. In addition, the people I was hanging out with were damn scared of any checkpoints; many of them, who actually had the right to cross the checkpoint, refused to do so fearing they could be arrested for ‘irregularities’ in their documents or for routine ‘security controls’; others just could not stand being questioned and searched, and preferred staying home.

In the lengthy talks I had, Adam and his friends made no mystery that they hate life in Al-Amari. They all said they wanted to leave, to go with me to Italy and Europe. ‘We want our life but there is no way we can get it here. We want to leave this place. We can’t do anything’. ‘What would you do if you were in my shoes?’ he asked. What would I do if I were in Adam’s shoes?

I felt in a prison in Al-Amari and I wanted to leave. I left. Yes, people were nice, talking was interesting and food was great, yet the likes of Adam and his friends are just wasting their best years. Yes, Palestinians are nice, are hospitable, yet they are painfully unhappy. Their life is long, empty talks, limitless cigarettes. After a week I grew sick of Al-Amari and its sickening sights. I could not stand even the thought that people of my age had spent their youth there, that they’ll probably spend their life there, and that their children will grow up in the same anguish.