Falling from grace: United Nations peacemaking and peacekeeping in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1947-1982

This PhD thesis examines United Nations (UN) peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts in the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1947 and 1982. It explores the goals and strategies employed by the UN, their efficacy, and the belligerents’ response to them, in what could be best described as a slow yet steady fall from grace. In 1947 the General Assembly adopted the partition plan with the intention to create one Jewish and one Arab state in historical Palestine. However, a failure to implement this plan left the Arab-Israeli conflict hanging. By the end of 1982, the UN’s ongoing failure in mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict stripped it of its mediatory and peacekeeping prominence. Drawing upon an extensive range of primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, this PhD thesis advances four interconnected arguments: First, while many dominant powers in New York always seemingly favoured a ‘just and lasting peace’, this was often not the priority of Arabs and Israelis. Second, Arabs and Israelis cooperated with UN decisions voluntarily when it suited their interests, or when coerced by the international community. Third, UN practices that always failed were the appointment of underequipped UN envoys, the reliance on short-term condemnations, and on peacekeeping forces. Fourth, UN tactics that did work included the use of UN observers and the imposition of ceasefires. This thesis also shows that one seemingly basic technique that the UN never tried in the examined period was to attach Arab and Israeli advisers to peacemaking and peacekeeping missions, plausibly due to the assumption that unbiased mediators must be outsiders. Overall, this study demonstrates that in some cases, such as the Palestine Commission and the Lebanese government in 1982, military power did not necessarily correlate to historical significance.