The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (53 page)

BRUCE D. JONES
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conflicts and wars have preoccupied the Security Council since its founding, and preoccupy it still. More vetoes have been cast in the Security Council on this issue than on any other – nearly as many as on all other issues combined. Until the 1990s, Security Council-mandated peacekeeping operations were heavily focused on the Middle East. Likewise, in their interactions with the Security Council, successive Secretaries-General chose or were compelled to devote considerable attention to the prospects for peace-making in what, during more optimistic phases, has been called the Middle East peace process.

The Arab–Israeli issue, moreover, is one in which Security Council dynamics are intimately tied to complex foreign and domestic politics of the major capitals, including those of the superpowers. Unlike Security Council responses to second-order conflicts (the majority of the Security Council’s work in recent years), Security Council decision-making around the Middle East question often involves weeks of high-level deliberations in and between Washington, London, Moscow, and Paris (Beijing having taken, by and large, a more passive stand on the question). Complex Israeli security and democratic policy-making processes are in play, as are the multifaceted relations between Israel, the United States, and the Jewish community. No Security Council action is taken without facing equally complex dynamics in the Arab world, including the continuing search for prestige and influence by the leading Arab states, the strong emotions the issue evokes among Arab populations, and the often bitter rivalries between Israel’s Arab neighbours. To add further complexity, pressure from the US and the international media on this issue is consistently intense.
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Owing to the significance and profile of the issue, the UN’s performance in the Arab–Israeli theatre, and in the broader Middle East, has long shaped public perception of the body. The UN’s relationship with Israel – complex at the best of times – heavily influences perception of the organization in the US media and by the US Congress. The UN’s relationship with the Palestinians has long been among the primary issues by which the UN is judged in the Arab world. More recently, of course, the UN’s actions and inactions in Iraq have deeply shaped international opinion about the UN – though that is a subject for a different chapter.
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Moreover, to this day, one encounters the perception that the UN’s inability to prevent the outbreak of the first Arab–Israeli war (1947–9) shaped or revealed the real limits of the UN; a perception recalled in Dean Acheson’s astute observation that ‘[t]his idea that the UN was and should be different from its members and could assume responsibility without power has been a curiously persistent one.’
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Seen through the lens not of public perception but of the impact on events on the ground, the UN’s role in the Arab–Israeli theatre can be seen to have evolved in three distinct phases, around which this chapter is organized. Between 1946 and 1978, the Security Council was engaged in what is best described as conflict management in every Arab–Israeli conflict other than the Suez crisis. During this period, it did not succeed in preventing conflict, though it often contributed to the process of bringing hostilities to an end. Only towards the end of the period did it begin the process of setting out principles or parameters for peace-making. Between 1979 and 1999, the Security Council was, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to events on the ground (though of course, during the 1990s, the Security Council was heavily preoccupied and influential in the management of a different Middle East problem, that of Iraq). Most recently, from 1999 to the present, the Security Council has had a growing role in conflict management, peace-making, and even political transformation in the Arab–Israeli theatre. Whether this new role will be sustained is as yet uncertain.

When the Arab–Israeli issue was first thrust upon it, the Security Council had barely been formed and was meeting at a hotel at Lake Success, while the UN General Assembly was meeting in a converted skating rink in Flushing Meadows, Queens.

For contemporary observers of the UN, two features of the Security Council’s role during this period will be unfamiliar: the tensions and rivalry between the United States and the United Kingdom, and the fluidity and ease of relations between the General Assembly and the Security Council. Two other features are more familiar: the importance of the US in shaping overall strategy, and the important role of the UN Secretariat in shaping and implementing Security Council decisions.

The backdrop to the UN’s involvement in what, to this day, is referred to in the UN as ‘the question of Palestine’ was Britain’s effort to hand over its mandate responsibility for Palestine. It was an issue that evoked strong emotions, not least in the US where President Truman supported the British intention to transfer the mandate to the UN, while the US State Department resisted it. As then US Secretary of State George Marshall told British Foreign Secretary Ernst Bevin during the course of their negotiations, ‘[t]he transfer of a vexatious problem to the UN unfortunately does not render it any less complicated or difficult.’
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The result of sometimes bitter negotiations between the US and the UK over the problem was the establishment of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) by a Special Session of the General Assembly. UNSCOP was tasked with exploring options for Palestine, including the option of partition.
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Intense lobbying followed. In London, Cairo, Washington, and New York, the Jewish Agency for Palestine lobbied for UNSCOP to recommend an independent Jewish state – an outcome that required a partition decision – while the Arab League, the UK, and others lobbied for outcomes that would leave the state primarily in Arab hands, with protections built in for the Jewish population. The Jewish Agency was more successful: five months after it was established, UNSCOP gave its report, calling for partition. The issue was then brought to a vote in the General Assembly. On 29 November 1947, after fierce debate, the General Assembly adopted GA Resolution 181, thereby adopting the UNSCOP Partition Plan, by which the British Mandate was divided into two states, Arab and Jewish.

Sir Brian Urquhart, in his biography of Ralph Bunche, recalls how close the vote was in the General Assembly, with a bare majority mustered to pass the resolution, following which the Arab delegations walked out of the Assembly.
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Abba Eban, Israel’s legendary diplomat and first Permanent Representative to the UN, recalled the euphoria in the Jewish Agency delegation (led by the then aged and unwell Chaim Weizmann from his hotel room at the Waldorf) upon hearing of the result of the vote. He also recalled the stormy reaction of Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, who warned that ‘the partition line shall be nothing but a line of fire and blood’, and the dejected certainty of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s Prime Minister-in-waiting, that the UN vote was ‘the signal for a savage war’.
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The rejection of the Partition Plan by the Arabs – just as the Zionist movement had earlier rejected a similar proposal sponsored by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour – meant in real terms that its provisions could not be implemented. The UN, confronted with the first (though by no means the last) instance of a party or parties to a conflict not abiding by UN decisions, established a UN Palestine Commission to oversee implementation of the General Assembly resolution.
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Establishment of a force presence was also considered. Foreshadowing later actions, Secretary-General Trygve Lie instructed Ralph Bunche, then a political advisor in the Secretariat, to draft a proposal for the establishment of a UN force to assist in the implementation of the Partition Plan – a proposal that was never formalized after US objections.
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Given the inability over the ensuing weeks of the Palestine Commission to make progress, the General Assembly disbanded the Commission following a US request, and the Security Council established a Truce Commission designed to ease the sharply escalating tensions in the region. The Truce Commission was composed of those Security Council members with consulates in Jerusalem, namely the US, France, and Belgium.
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However, within three weeks of the establishment of the Truce Commission, just in advance of a 14 May 1948 midnight deadline for the expiration of the British mandate and against a backdrop of mounting violence on the ground, Israel declared its independence. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Transjordan mounted a joint attack the next day.

During the 13-month war that followed, the search for an end to hostilities dominated the General Assembly and Security Council agendas, as well as that of the Secretary-General and the Secretariat. Indeed, on the same day as the outbreak of hostilities, the General Assembly established the position of UN Mediator in Palestine,
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a post that was to be filled by Count Folke Bernadotte upon his selection by the Security Council. Bernadotte was a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, already famous for his work in negotiating the release of several hundred Jews from Nazi Germany to Sweden and other neutral nations. It was not the last time that the UN would make use of Scandinavian neutrality in its search for peaceful solutions.

Bernadotte was immediately dispatched to the region, famously on a plane that was adorned with the emblems both of the UN and the Red Cross.
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In Kati Marton’s biography of Bernadotte, and in Urquhart’s biography of Bunche (who had been Secretary to the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine and was to become Bernadotte’s principal aide and then successor), we see Bernadotte’s shortlived mission unfolding in a way that is now familiar: the UN mediator travelling back and forth between the parties, engaged in shuttle diplomacy in the search for a ceasefire. Eight days after his appointment, Bernadotte wielded the tool of the Security Council, requesting and receiving a Security Council resolution calling for a truce. Resolution 50 was the first truce resolution in the UN’s history, and also called for the establishment of a truce supervision capacity.
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The UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was established soon after, the first of its kind and a precursor to modern peacekeeping.
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(It is at the same time amusing and dispiriting to read Marton’s account of Bernadotte’s concern about the slow deployment of police personnel and equipment to UNTSO, occasioned by disconnects between the field and headquarters, slow action by troop contributors, and UN administrative inefficiency.
Plus ça change
…!)

On 11 June 1948, the first UNTSO observers arrived in Jerusalem. One month later, faced with continued military action, the Security Council adopted Resolution 54 insisting that the parties desist from military action and agree to a ceasefire.
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The binding nature of the Security Council resolution had some effect, and two weeks later Bernadotte and Bunche were able to send the Security Council a plan for the supervision of the truce that was gradually beginning to take hold.
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Negotiations and UNTSO deployments continued over the next two months until, on 17 September 1948, shortly after arriving back from his rear base in Rhodes, Bernadotte was ambushed by the Stern Gang, a hard-line Jewish resistance movement, and assassinated.

Three days later, the Security Council appointed Bunche as ‘acting Mediator’. The ‘acting’ remained in Bunche’s title throughout the subsequent months, at his own request, as a mark of respect for Bernadotte. Bunche took a very different tack to the ceasefire negotiations from Bernadotte, who had concentrated on getting a comprehensive ceasefire encompassing all the parties. Bunche recognized that the ceasefire would not hold unless tied to a political process leading to a longer-term framework, and decided to tackle each of the major Arab parties to the conflict separately.
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Thus, in addition to the Security Council’s renewed call for a ceasefire on 19 October,
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Bunche sought and received a Security Council resolution calling for ‘permanent armistice’ arrangements, stipulated by Resolution 62 of 16 November 1948.

By 6 January 1949, following intense shuttle negotiations, Bunche was able to inform the Security Council that Israel and Egypt had accepted the ceasefire and had agreed to launch armistice negotiations, which Bunche would host and facilitate in Rhodes. Just over six weeks later, on 24 February 1949, Israel and Egypt concluded the Rhodes Armistice. This was followed on 1 March by the start of simultaneous but separate Israel–Jordan and Israel–Lebanon armistice talks. Each of the two tracks was led by one of Bunche’s deputies, though Bunche oversaw the entire process. An Israel–Lebanon armistice agreement was reached on 23 March, and on 3 April an Israeli-Transjordan armistice agreement was concluded. All three armistice agreements were subsequently formalized by the Security Council. While the Israel–Egypt and Israel–Jordan armistice agreements were superseded by peace agreements in 1978 and 1994 respectively, the Israel–Lebanon armistice agreement remains in force to this day.

This protracted episode laid the foundations for Security Council diplomacy and more broadly for UN peace-making and peacekeeping, not only in the Middle East. It illustrates two essential themes. First, there are always strong pressures for the UN to act through negotiated consent with parties to a conflict, rather than by authorizing a major military operation, which it has done only rarely.
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Secondly, to affect those parties’ actions, there must be a direct connection between, on the one hand, formal action by the Security Council and, on the other, diplomatic or peacekeeping action by the Secretary-General or Secretariat on the ground. Such a connection can be achieved only if the Secretary-General, or his principal envoys or advisors, retain close relations of trust with the United States or another of the Permanent Members of the Security Council, as Bunche – an American himself, but a life-long civil servant of the UN – did with the US.
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