United Nations peacekeeping has a long history in the Middle East and has encountered many obstacles along the way. But with the multiple conflicts and major shifts in the geopolitical landscape that have occurred recently, missions operating in the region face perhaps their most significant difficulties to date. An inability to prevent the recent escalation of violence between Israel and Hezbollah, which included direct attacks on peacekeepers, highlighted the inherent vulnerabilities of that mission, while regime transition in Syria has left peacekeepers unable to prevent the advance of Israeli forces through a demilitarized zone.
Amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and the tremendous uncertainty following the collapse of the Assad regime, U.N. operations in Lebanon and Syria confront mounting challenges for which they are ill-prepared. Combined with broader geopolitical dynamics that make for an uneasy environment in the short term, as well as the retrenchment of the U.N.’s global peacekeeping activities writ large, these missions face an existential crisis.
Peacekeeping Under Fire
Though peacekeepers have been present in the region for decades, their activities rarely receive much public attention. This all changed in recent months when the mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL (the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon) found itself caught in the middle of escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah. During Israel’s offensive that began on Oct. 1, UNIFIL recorded more than 40 strikes on peacekeepers and U.N. property. The mission directly attributed many of them to the Israeli military. Israel asserted the damage was unintentional and that it occurred because of Hezbollah’s strategic placement of outposts near U.N. facilities. UNIFIL, however, reported that a number of these incidents deliberately targeted the U.N., including its watchtowers and a UNIFIL convoy, and in at least one instance involved forced entry into one of its compounds. Hezbollah, too, was accused of firing rockets at UNIFIL headquarters and of deliberately placing peacekeepers between themselves and IDF forces. While no peacekeepers have been killed as a result of the attacks, a considerable number suffered injuries.
Condemnation came swiftly from the U.N. secretary-general and from 40 countries whose troops serve in the mission. The U.N. also rebuffed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands that peacekeepers withdraw from the combat zones, insisting the mission still has a mandate from the international community to deliver peace.
The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has now thrust another operation into the spotlight. UNDOF (the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force) operates in a buffer zone along the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, which Israel occupies and long ago annexed but remains contested. In the days since the rebel takeover of Syria, Israeli troops have entered the buffer zone, ostensibly to prevent incursions from Syria during the chaos ensuing in the aftermath of the regime’s collapse. UNDOF has declared Israeli actions a violation of the 1974 agreement that UNDOF is in position to monitor, which prohibits the presence of troops from either side in the area of separation. This has failed to deter Israel, however, which has declared its plans to expand its control over the Golan Heights. UNDOF peacekeepers reportedly also have come under attack, though the U.N. has yet to corroborate Israel’s claim that such attacks are being perpetrated by armed rebels on the Syrian side.
Peacekeepers taking no active part in hostilities are protected by international humanitarian law (IHL), which means they must not be made the object of attack and the rules of proportionality and precaution must be respected. Despite this, peacekeepers are frequently the subject of violence amid conflict. UNIFIL has been the U.N.’s deadliest operation, with in excess of 300 peacekeeper fatalities since its founding in 1978. In the 1980s, peacekeepers with the mission were killed in a series of separate incidents perpetrated by Palestinian militants, Hezbollah, the Southern Lebanese Army, and Israel. More recently, six Spanish and Colombian peacekeepers were killed in a car bomb attack in 2007, which was later attributed to Islamist militants fighting against the Lebanese Army. Among the countries whose peacekeepers have died serving in the mission, Ireland, France, Ghana, Fiji, and Nepal have each experienced more than 30 fatalities.
While it has experienced less violence than UNIFIL, UNDOF has not avoided peril. In 2014, at the height of the Syrian civil war, rebels captured 45 Fijian peacekeepers and held them hostage for almost two weeks. On the same day, the rebels surrounded the camps of over 70 Philippine peacekeepers. A siege lasting multiple hours ended in a fortunate escape for the peacekeepers. No fatalities resulted from either incident.
Attacks on U.N. peacekeepers, therefore, are not uncommon. However, the recent strikes on UNIFIL and the emerging vulnerability of UNDOF highlight the formidable task laid before both missions in the coming days and beyond. A fragile ceasefire in Lebanon will do little to raise confidence that UNIFIL can fulfill its mandate, even as Hezbollah sees its position weakened. And as Syria is thrust into turbulence, UNDOF will face a host of challenges. This all brings to the fore key questions concerning the future of both missions and that of U.N. peacekeeping in the region more broadly.
Peacekeeping’s Long History in the Middle East
Although the Middle East has played host to fewer peacekeeping operations than any other region, they have operated among some of the most contentious and enduring conflicts in the Post-World War II era. After the establishment of U.N. peacekeeping in 1948, three of the first four operations were deployed to the Middle East, particularly as tensions arose between Israel and its neighbors following its independence. In 1948, The United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was mandated to monitor the truce following the First Arab-Israeli War, and today it plays a supporting role to other ongoing missions in the region. In 1956, the First United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I) supervised the end of hostilities and withdrawal of troops amid the Suez Crisis, subsequently acting as a buffer between Israeli and Egyptian forces. Then in 1958, the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL) monitored the Lebanese border to prevent personnel and arms entering the country to support rebels in their bid to topple the government.
Later operations would address disputes between Iraq and Iran in 1988, Iraq and Kuwait in 1991, and Israel and Egypt following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, as well as the involvement of Saudi Arabia and Egypt in Yemen’s civil war in 1963. Of all Middle East missions, only three remain: UNDOF, UNIFIL, and the much smaller UNTSO, which have operated for a combined 172 years. Yet, the geopolitical earthquake that has thrown the region into tremendous volatility in recent months threatens the prospects of these missions too. The U.N. will surely be assessing the viability of UNDOF and UNIFIL – its two major operations in the region — amid this changing landscape, as they have been mired in the status quo for decades and look less likely than ever to see the conditions necessary to complete their mandates. Though UNTSO’s mandate is more fluid and adaptable, providing observers to the two larger operations, it may also become obsolete should UNIFIL and UNDOF withdraw.
Recurring Violence in Lebanon
UNIFIL has been active at the Israel-Lebanon border since 1978. As evidenced even in its name, it has far outlived its originally intended purpose, that being an “interim” force with the aim of quickly restoring peace and order to the region. The mission was created at the height of the Lebanese civil war, as Palestinian groups in the south of the country battled with Lebanese militias, while simultaneously staging attacks against Israel. When Israel crossed the border to repel the Palestinians, the Lebanese government, with the support of the United States, requested a U.N. presence. UNIFIL was deployed with a mandate comprising three tasks: 1) to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, 2) to restore international peace and security to the territory, and 3) to assist the government of Lebanon in reclaiming control of the area.
UNIFIL’s fundamental limitations were highlighted by Israel’s invasion in 1982, when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) crossed the border with little opposition and took control of Lebanon’s southern territory. It would take another 18 years for Israeli forces to withdraw altogether. Consequently, UNIFIL was unable to deliver on mandate items two and three, as sporadic violence continued and control of the territory changed hands from Israel to its proxy militia the Southern Lebanese Army, and later to Hezbollah as it grew considerably in strength.
Since then, UNIFIL has operated in a delicate middle ground between Israel and Hezbollah, guarding an undefined border known as the “Blue Line.”
Even after the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 1701 in 2006 raised the authorized troop ceiling from 2,000 to 15,000 troops and expanded the mission’s authority by enabling peacekeepers to “take all necessary action” to deliver the mandate, UNIFIL has never fully assumed control of its zone of operation. Nor has it been able to completely deter attacks from either side. Moreover, UNIFIL has failed to fulfill its charge to assist the Lebanese government in reclaiming control of the territory, though this is as much a result of the government’s dysfunction and incapacity as it is a failure of UNIFIL.
In recent years, Israel has grown increasingly impatient with the mission’s inability to constrain Hezbollah, demanding that it take a stronger role in disarming the group and reducing its activity in the region. UNIFIL, however, recognizes that any stronger stance against Hezbollah risks upsetting the tenuous balance that enables it to coexist with the group in Lebanon. In short, the mission has been on shaky ground for some time prior to the recent conflagration.
Syria’s Changing Landscape
UNDOF was established in 1974 to maintain a ceasefire agreed between Syria and Israel at the conclusion of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israel had occupied the Golan Heights region of southwestern Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. Syria’s attempt to reclaim the territory in 1973 led to a disengagement agreement that created a narrow buffer zone between the two countries, leaving Israel in possession of about two thirds of the Golan Heights and Syria one third (only the United States recognizes Israel’s control of this area, after President Donald Trump changed the U.S. position on the matter in 2019). The disengagement agreement called for UNDOF to be deployed in the buffer zone in order to oversee the removal of both sides’ troops and to prevent recurring violence.
UNDOF would become a successful case of “traditional peacekeeping,” which places a limited number of troops between two warring parties following a ceasefire to create sufficient stability to allow political dialogue to ensue. For most of its existence, UNDOF has successfully delivered on this (albeit limited) mandate. Israel and Syria never signed a permanent peace deal and both maintained their territorial claims over the Golan Heights. The roughly 1,000 peacekeepers did, however, stabilize a highly contentious area where violence between the two would all but disappear. The challenges presented by the Syrian civil war that began in full force in 2012 tested UNDOF’s mettle, but did little to diminish the effectiveness of the buffer zone.
The mission today faces its greatest challenge, as Israeli forces last week assumed control of the demilitarized zone, arguing that it was a necessary and temporary security maneuver in light of the instability in Syria. The U.N. criticized the move as a violation of the 1974 agreement and has even sent in more troops as reinforcement. The move was also condemned by regional players such as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Yet the mission’s ability to operate has been severely restricted by Israel’s push into the DMZ, and the ease with which Israel moved in highlights the inherent feebleness of such operations.
Peacekeeping’s Diminution
The challenging predicament of both missions comes at a time when U.N. peacekeeping is experiencing a broader recession. The U.N. has always faced problems in acquiring sufficient personnel and funding from member States to execute operational mandates. However, the crisis appears to be worsening. In October, the U.N. Secretariat reported that States had failed to pay 35.9 percent of dues assessed for peacekeeping for the 2023-24 year, a shortfall of more than $2 billion. Peacekeepers are increasingly asked to do more with less.
Other indicators suggest peacekeeping as we know it may be a thing of the past. Only one operation has been established in the last decade – the short-lived (2 ½ years) U.N. Mission for Justice Support in Haiti that ended in 2018 – while major operations have been massively downsized or terminated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, and Mali. The latest international security mission in Haiti, the Multinational Security Support Mission, was approved by a U.N. Security Council resolution but isn’t operating under a U.N. umbrella and is already struggling so badly that sponsors including the United States have tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the U.N. to take it on after all.
Repeated attempts to restructure the U.N.’s own peacekeeping efforts have been insufficient to assuage these problems. Initiatives such as Action for Peacekeeping (2018) and the New Agenda for Peace (2023), overhauling the force-generation system, and changing the funding rules to overcome persistent liquidity crises seem to have moved the needle only fractionally.
What Future?
With all this considered, it seems there will be little appetite to throw significantly more resources at UNIFIL and UNDOF; resources that would be critical to their ability to be effective going forward. While peacekeeping was an expedient tool in the Middle East during the Cold War as major powers sought to avoid escalatory conflict, there is less impetus for its role today. Last week, President-elect Trump stated that the U.S. ought to “have nothing to do with” Syria and should “not get involved.”
Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the U.N. in general and fought to reduce U.S. financial commitments to peacekeeping during his first term in office. Russia may be motivated to prevent further Israeli incursions into Syria given its strategic military positions there, but is unlikely to turn to UNDOF for this as a longtime critic of U.N. intervention, especially as it wages its own war of occupation in Ukraine. A Security Council resolution expanding the mandate or increasing the capabilities of either mission therefore seems far off.
The U.N. will therefore, sooner or later, have to either terminate one or both missions or leave them largely the same. Removal without the successful completion of their mandates would reinforce perceptions of the U.N.’s growing irrelevance to global conflict amid its failures to address wars in Gaza and Ukraine in particular. Anticipating a reduction in U.S. support under another Trump term compounds the U.N.’s problems and gives it greater incentive to avoid looking weak and ineffective.
On the ground, terminating either mission would remove the only viable means of maintaining stability in each respective case. Though UNIFIL has been far less capable of preventing conflict than UNDOF, the mission should receive much credit for the situation not being much worse over the years. In its absence, critical channels of communication between Israel and Hezbollah would collapse, as UNIFIL’s role of interlocutor would vanish. The removal of an impartial observer verifying the implementation of Resolution 1701 — the 2006 measure called for the cessation of hostilities, respect for the Blue Line, and removal of combatants from the area — would lead to a deterioration of confidence in both sides’ commitment to the resolution’s terms. A source of physical security — at least when the two sides aren’t in outright military conflict — and of economic stability for the local population, which benefits from employment and other business opportunities from such missions, would vanish. The Lebanese government and armed forces would forego a crucial partner in extending their capacity. Combined, these factors would make a resumption of violence much more probable.
There also would be at least some local resistance in Lebanon to removing the mission. Historically, UNIFIL has been popular among Lebanese citizens (though its favorability has declined in recent years). Having operated in the territory for so long, and with a notable absence of government-run programs and development in the area, UNIFIL has both established a political presence and generated a local economy of its own. In her 2019 book, Lise Morjé Howard identifies UNIFIL as “the largest formal-sector employer in southern Lebanon.” The economic instability left in the wake of a departure by UNIFIL would have major consequences for local development and escalate the risk of renewed conflict. Having competed with UNIFIL in the provision of infrastructure and services, Hezbollah would likely be welcomed to fill the void, which in turn would strengthen the organization and undermine peace with Israel. Any future outbreak of violence would likely decimate the economy, as has occurred in the current conflict.
The removal of UNDOF may be feasible if stability comes quickly to Syria and it chooses not to challenge Israel for control of the Golan Heights, nor tolerate armed groups that might. However, it would send an important signal of international concession to Israeli aggression and the violation of international law. Israel’s complete occupation of the area would also further inflame antipathy among Arab States and the international community writ large, which has grown increasingly critical of Israeli occupation. Armed groups may be emboldened to conduct attacks against Israel, and the absence of a buffer zone with impartial monitors means it would take little to spark major conflict. This is particularly true of the various Syrian rebel groups who, with the removal of Assad, have now lost the common enemy that fueled their existence. Several Palestinian factions have also enjoyed a presence in Syria for many years. Compromised as it may be, the removal of UNDOF is therefore likely to cause more harm than good.
The status quo is hardly desirable for the missions, either. The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hezbollah, should it hold, will likely prolong UNIFIL’s presence, as it is the only real actor capable of providing any degree of enforcement of the agreement’s terms. But the ceasefire warrants a great deal of pessimism. Reports of attacks from both sides have already emerged since the agreement. Even with the support of UNIFIL, the United States, and France, the Lebanese Armed Forces will almost certainly lack the capacity to oversee Hezbollah’s removal, and that may be coupled with a lack of desire to enforce violations against their fellow citizens.
It will also be difficult to convince Israel that any such removal has been achieved since Hezbollah’s activities go far beyond its armed resistance. Rather, it is a well-established political entity that holds 12 percent of the seats in the Lebanese parliament and wields considerable influence in the south. Its provision of public services such as health care and education also make it indispensable to the region. It is unlikely Israel can be convinced that such a continued presence is not surreptitiously providing a staging ground for militant activities. The collapse of the agreement therefore seems highly likely and would threaten to reignite tensions. If and when it does, UNIFIL will once again find itself in a highly vulnerable position.
If anything gives UNIFIL cause for hope, it is that Hezbollah has been significantly weakened in three ways: by its clash with the IDF, its loss of a supply route through Syria, and the weakening of Iran. Hezbollah, previously one of the most powerful non-State armed groups in the world, appears to have underestimated the resolve of Israel’s current government, which has cost the organization in fighters, weaponry, and most critically, its leader Hassan Nasrallah. Moreover, events in recent months have devastated Iran’s broader regional strategy. Hamas has been decimated and Hezbollah severely weakened, wiping out much of Iran’s proxy influence in the region. The removal of Assad, Iran’s sole Middle Eastern state ally, leaves Iran virtually alone in its Axis of Resistance campaign. The coming weeks will reveal if Iran will capitulate, or instead if it pursues risky and escalatory actions to salvage its position, such as pushing its uranium enrichment program to completion and establishing a nuclear arsenal.
UNIFIL, then, may enjoy some breathing space to reassert a degree of control over its area of operation. But enforcing the withdrawal of Hezbollah will be a monumental task. The group will remain steadfast in its ideology and will continue to receive at least some support from Iran as that country’s own relations with Israel deteriorate further and its regional allies become scarcer. It is also highly likely to establish alternative supply routes to Syria. The organization is certainly going to be forced to change and, for the near future at least, Hezbollah has incentives to avoid another major outbreak of violence. But to suggest its threat has been eradicated would be shortsighted. At best, then, UNIFIL may sustain itself for months and maybe years. The likelihood of it completing a demonstrably challenging mandate, however, remains low.
The future of UNDOF is no less uncertain and depends highly on whether Syria’s transition will create stability and how the new government navigates relations with Israel. In a best-case scenario, UNDOF may consider its mandate complete as the two countries reach a mutual understanding. Netanyahu has stated that Israel has no interest in a conflict with Syria. This sentiment has been echoed by the interim leadership in Syria, citing war weariness and a desire to focus on rebuilding the country.
Israel has also made clear that the 1974 agreement no longer applies, since it was made with Assad’s government. This may give the U.N. the ability to remove the mission while saving face, while recognizing that Israel would be unlikely to cooperate should the mission remain. It is optimistic to suggest that the Golan Heights will not be a source of contention in the future, though, much less that Israel and Syria will enjoy good relations. Israel is not shy about its plan to increase Israeli settlements in the territory, while continued strikes on Syrian military sites will do little to endear it to the Syrian people. Israel’s heavy-handed approach to the transition in Syria may seem opportunistic in the short term, but risks creating a new enemy by its own hand.
Overall, the missions in Lebanon and in the Golan Heights show that peacekeeping is effective in many ways, even if only to separate two sides and support a long and uncertain cessation of hostilities. Yet, events in Lebanon and Syria are a clear indication of its limitations. In the face of a seemingly emboldened Israel, shifting regional dynamics, and declining support for such interventions (which will continue and likely worsen with the new Trump administration), it is difficult to imagine UNIFIL and UNDOF playing a meaningful role in the future without a major injection of support from the international community. Should this not be forthcoming — and many signs indicate that it won’t — and lacking alternatives, the missions may receive life support for a short while. But the odds are high that they will remain vulnerable, weak, and increasingly unwelcome.