The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (54 page)

In the seven years following the passage of the armistice resolution, the Security Council continued to pass occasional resolutions (eleven in all) in response to episodic violence in the still-tense Arab–Israeli theatre, calling for Israel and various Arab parties to abide by their commitments under the armistice resolution.

Tensions in the region began to mount discernibly in 1956 when the newly installed President Nasser of Egypt began to posture on the question of Israeli access to the Suez Canal. Over the course of several months during the summer of 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles engaged in shuttle diplomacy designed to defuse the mounting crisis. The UK also put pressure on Nasser to back down from his threats: at the time, the UK maintained a naval fleet off the coast of Egypt for the sole purpose of ensuring free passage through the Suez Canal. Nevertheless, on 13 October 1956, Nasser closed the Suez Canal to all international shipping, including that of Israel and the UK.

As elaborated in Roger Louis’ chapter in this volume,
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the UK resisted having the issue brought to the Security Council, as it feared that the vote would go against UK interests. When the issue finally did end up in front of the Security Council, sharp divisions between the UK and France on the one hand, and the United States on the other, created an intensely uncomfortable period in the Security Council.

Given the involvement of both the UK and France in military action in the Sinai, the Security Council was paralysed. But a procedural feint allowed the US, with support from the Soviet Union, to move forward on UN action. On 31 October, taking advantage of the fact that Security Council procedural motions are not subject to vetoes, the US tabled a procedural resolution calling for a General Assembly emergency session. Resolution 119 passed with seven ‘yes’ votes, two abstentions, and two ‘no’ votes from the UK and France, though these ‘no’ votes did not have the force of vetoes. By this device, the US managed to move the Suez Crisis issue from the Security Council to the General Assembly – a striking reflection of the fact that, in the 1950s, the General Assembly was still a body in which the US could normally count on a majority vote in support of its actions. By this time, however, Israel had moved against Egyptian positions in the Sinai on 29 October, followed within two days by UK and French forces. Once again, the Security Council was unable to prevent a war.

Having secured a swift and substantial military victory, and faced with the prospect of UN action through the General Assembly, Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula on 7 November. The same day, General Assembly Resolution 1001 established the UN’s first major peacekeeping force, the UN Emergency Force. This force of over 6,000 troops, which included troops from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden, and Yugoslavia, deployed within 48 hours to the Sinai Peninsula. To his chagrin, Ralph Bunche was once again dispatched to conduct the detailed negotiations on deployment of the force.

The Suez Crisis, discussed in far greater detail in Louis’ chapter above, was thus an important instance of UN conflict management in the Middle East, but less so for the Security Council. It reveals only the obvious: that where a Permanent Member of the Security Council is actively engaged in a military conflict, the Security Council will not be able to act.

It was not long, however, before the Security Council was again engaged in the Middle East. Reeling from military defeat in the Suez conflict, President Nasser announced in March 1957 that Egypt and Syria would unite into the United Arab Republic (UAR). In January 1958, Lebanese President Chamoun called for a Security Council meeting to complain about Syrian/UAR interference in Lebanese domestic affairs, a call supported by the US, France and the UK (and Israel), but ultimately blocked by the Soviet Union. Following rising tensions, on 15 July 1958, the US deployed marines into Beirut to protect Chamoun. On the same day, the Security Council created a small (three-person) Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL, perhaps the least well-known UN mission),
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later increased in size by then Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. The US marines withdrew on 25 October 1958, and UNOGIL had withdrawn by the end of November 1958.

The episode did not involve Israel, and thus does not fall within the scope of this chapter’s focus on Arab–Israeli wars, nor was it a particularly significant episode either in the Middle East context or in the life of the UN. But what it does illustrate is that the character of Security Council involvement in the Middle East was starting to change. By the late 1950s, the Security Council’s ability to act and the manner in which it did so was dominated – and not only in this theatre – by the Cold War, and by two concerns shared by the US and the Soviet Union: to prevent the other from taking a lead in the region, and to prevent the region from becoming a spark to a broader US–Soviet war.

These Cold War preoccupations would be front and centre as the region once again fell into violence in 1967. Since 1948, of course, the region had never been free from political tension and sporadic military clashes. Yet after a few years of relative calm on the Arab–Israeli front following the Suez Crisis, tensions began to mount again in 1966. Tensions reached a crescendo in April 1967, as Israel and Egypt clashed in an aerial battle over the Golan Heights. (Wreckage from Egyptian MiGs can still be found on the eastern hillside of Mount Harmon.)

As had been true in 1956, escalation in the Middle East was matched by a ratcheting up of US shuttle diplomacy. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s autobiography of the period reflects his own realization about the ultimate futility of this diplomacy.
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Certainly nothing in his diplomatic effort succeeded in dulling Nasser’s appetite for a conflict, or in ultimately preventing war.

Security Council engagement in this pre-war period was dominated by the fact that on 18 May 1967, Egypt requested the withdrawal of UNEF from its borders. This episode has coloured perceptions of the UN ever since, especially in the Israeli mindset. Egypt had given its consent to the deployment of the force and could, according to the force’s mandate (and the general realities of the UN), withdraw its consent at any moment, thereby facing Secretary-General U Thant with an acute dilemma. Thant was concerned that, should he not comply, UN forces on the ground would be targeted by Egypt. More to the point, it was far from clear, in legal terms, that the UN had any choice but to comply with the Egyptian request. On the other hand, compliance with the request would be seen to constitute UN acquiescence to a war.

Urquhart has written eloquently about the hypocrisy of member states that set certain conditions for the UN and then complain when the UN complies with them. In his view, the international outcry that accompanied Thant’s decision ultimately to withdraw UNEF was an example of such hypocrisy.
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Having supported a UN force for the Sinai on the condition that it was agreed to by the parties, member states then complained when the UN complied with a logical outcome of that condition. Certain historians, however, maintain that U Thant did too little to test Egyptian resolve or to rally international support in defence of UNEF and against the Egyptian request.
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For example, Thant might have referred the matter to the General Assembly for debate prior to withdrawing the troops, thereby forcing Egypt to explain its actions.

Whichever perception is true, two facts remain: UNEF was withdrawn in late May 1967; and this decision was received by the Israeli public as a fundamental betrayal by the UN, forging a negative perception of the UN in the Israeli public mindset that has not been dispelled to this day. Abba Eban, at the time Israel’s Foreign Minister, is fair in his treatment of U Thant’s action during this period, calling his reasons for withdrawing UNEF forces – especially U Thant’s argument about ‘the essentially fragile nature of the basis for UNEF’s operation throughout its existence’
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– as being ‘beyond challenge’.
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He is more searing in his conclusion that ‘this “fragile nature” meant that, thereafter, Israel would refuse to place its vital interests in the UN’s hands.’
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On 23 May 1967, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, a shipping route at the edge of the Sinai Peninsula critical to Israeli security and commerce. On 5 June, Israel attacked Egyptian forces in the Sinai, along with Egyptian and Syrian air defences, Syrian positions in the Golan, and the Jordanian front lines in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. At the end of the Six Day War, Israel controlled the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, and East Jerusalem.

Volumes have been written about this one episode in the broader history of Arab–Israeli conflict, most recently, in Michael Oren’s sweeping account of the Six Day War.
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Certainly this entire chapter, and even an entire volume could be devoted to an account of the Security Council’s role during this period. However, the themes relating to Security Council action are few.

As with 1948, the Security Council was not used as an instrument in this case for the avoidance or prevention of war. Indeed, some would argue that the decision by the Secretary-General to withdraw UNEF helped trigger the war, though that seems an excessive judgement given the evident intent of Egypt to create a crisis. In any case, it remains true that, in 1967 as in 1948, the Security Council’s engagement in conflict management largely took the form of seeking to stabilize the situation in the
aftermath
of war, and shape the political process ahead.

UN efforts to stabilize the political situation after the end of the war took place in three phases. First, the Security Council sought a resolution that would set out conditions for a ceasefire. Draft resolutions introduced by the Soviet Union called for the ceasefire to be based on a withdrawal to the lines that preceded the outbreak of hostilities, a position rejected by Israel and also by the United States. Israeli officials lobbied hard in Washington for the US to reject the Soviet proposal, and opened up an alternative by suggesting that Israel both wished to abandon the armistice agreements that had held since 1948 and was prepared to negotiate towards a peace deal. This in turn was rejected by the Soviets and the Arabs. By the time of the normal UN summer recess, no agreement had been reached in the Security Council. A late effort by the Soviets to obtain a General Assembly resolution failed when a joint US–Israeli lobbying effort managed to deprive the Soviets of the two-thirds majority needed.

With the return to New York in the autumn, the Security Council again sought to pass a resolution. Negotiations in New York produced no results. Then in November, the Soviets raised the stakes by threatening intervention should no agreement be reached. Ultimately, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko cut a deal with the US State Department, whereby the two great powers took a common position on draft language that would link a ceasefire to withdrawal from the territories occupied during the Six Day War. However, as has been a steady pattern in Middle East diplomacy, the State Department discovered that it was not quite on the same page as the President when President Johnson reassured the Israelis that he would not accept a resolution that saw them return to the pre-1967 lines without political gains in return.
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Ultimately, the UK Permanent Representative to the UN Lord Caradon approached the Israelis with a set of proposals. Lord Caradon argued that there was no way of achieving a ceasefire resolution without emphasizing ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’, but noting that this could be kept to a preambular paragraph, with an operative paragraph linking actual withdrawal to political negotiations.
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The end result was Resolution 242, probably the most famous resolution in the Security Council’s history, which established the principle thereafter referred to in shorthand as ‘land for peace’.
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Specifically, Resolution 242 asserted the non-admissibility of the acquisition of territory through force, and stipulated that Israel should ultimately return ‘territories’ occupied through the course of the 1967 conflict. Famously, the English language version of Resolution 242 did not specify that Israel should return ‘the’ territories, though the French language version does – the formulation ‘the territories’ was understood by Israel to constitute too precise a reference to all of the land east of the 1967 ceasefire line. The French language version is used to support a broad interpretation of Resolution 242, particularly by Arab states, such that Israel is required by Resolution 242 to return all of the lands seized during the 1967 war to gain peace and recognition. This interpretation, however, is at odds with the account of Lord Caradon, who made it clear that the definitive article ‘the’ was deliberately excised from the resolution to gain consensus within the Security Council.
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The Soviets accepted the resolution, stating in their vote that they did so on the basis of the interpretation that the reference to ‘territories’ encompassed all territories gained in 1967, an interpretation explicitly rejected by the US and the UK in their vote. Rarely has a definite article been of such import in international politics.

Two points about this period are critical. First, the politics of the Security Council’s actions were importantly shaped by a mutual US and Soviet desire to avoid direct confrontation between the powers in the Middle East. Secondly, in passing Resolution 242, the Security Council evolved from its earlier role as merely shaping the end of hostilities, to attempting to lay down the basic principles of peace-making in the Middle East – principles, or parameters, that shaped subsequent negotiations and diplomacy until the Security Council itself changed those parameters in 2002.