It took the United Nations Security Council all of five minutes late last month to vote unanimously to approve the continuation of UNDOF, the 800-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force that is charged with monitoring Syrian and Israel compliance with the terms of the 1974 disengagement.
This semi-annual UN endorsement is a well-established ritual, but continues long after reality has made it irrelevant to the situation on the ground.
UNDOF and the Multi-National Force and Observers – the United States-led organisation that monitors Egyptian and Israeli compliance with the terms of their 1979 peace treaty – together symbolised the “security architecture” born out of the blood and fire of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
UNDOF and the MFO represented international support for and leadership of the post-war era. For decades, successive administrations, with uneven success, have charted a diplomatic path characterised by formal peace talks that aimed at Israel withdrawing from territories captured in June 1967 and negotiation of treaties of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
During this era, both UNDOF and MFO operated without incident, confirming the broad success of a security system that is aimed at preventing another general Arab-Israeli conflict. Today, however, the ground in the Golan and in Sinai is shaking.
On the Golan, the Syrian government was a key partner in the original agreement that established UNDOF. Today, it no longer exercises decisive sovereignty east of the “Bravo” line. The Syrian side of the Golan is instead a hotly-contested no-man’s-land. In Sinai, the MFO fears for its own safety. More broadly, little is left of its mandate because both Egypt and Israel have agreed to exceed arms limitations specified in their own treaty in the hope of winning a counterinsurgency victory over the local ISIL affiliate.
In both the Golan and Sinai, the sentiments and institutions that have sustained an Israeli-Arab ceasefire still exist, but only as a dim echo of the past.
In their place, we see new ways of addressing security issues. These include a wholesale if still informal revision of the military restrictions on Egypt rearmament in Sinai detailed in the 1979 Camp David peace treaty. Also new is the agreed inclusion of Saudi Arabia in maritime security in the Tiran Straits. Washington is now content to “lead from behind”.
The situation on the Golan offers a forum to chart the rise of a new, informal set of rules. In June a report listed key shortcomings of the current security environment in the Golan. The long quiescent Area of Separation (AOS) and Syrian territory to the east is a war zone. Two years ago, UNDOF abandoned all posts on the Syrian side of the AOS after Fijian soldiers in the contingent were briefly held by Jabhat Al Nusra.
In this dawning era, we are seeing the slow dissolution of UNDOF as participating nations withdraw their forces, close down monitoring stations and focus on force protection instead of compliance.
Russian-Israeli coordination of new “rules of the game”, without the direct participation of Washington or Damascus, is the focus of the security system now emerging along the Israeli-Syrian frontier. Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are developing informal bilateral understandings that reflect their interests rather than those of Syria and it allies. There are both political and military dimensions to this new order. Washington is conspicuous by its absence.
Politically, Israel is taking advantage of Syrian weakness to formalise an aggressive change in its objectives towards Syria. If Israel once aspired to recognising Syrian sovereignty over all of the Golan in return for a peace agreement, today it demands international recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the area occupied by Israeli forces since June 1967. It hardly bothers even to mention Syria.
On the all-important security front, Israel has successfully engaged with Moscow. Israel believes that “red lines” agreed upon with Moscow will govern not only Israel-Russian military coordination in the skies above Syria, but will also bind Moscow to enable Israel to take military action when necessary to prevent Hizbollah’s or Iran’s deployment in the Golan, and to continue to prevent the transfer of weapons systems from Syrian territory to Hizbollah arsenal.
In the midst of this dynamic environment, there is little room for organisations such as the MFO or UNDOF. That these institutions remain is a testament to the failure of all concerned to create new mechanisms to stop the wars now raging.
Geoffrey Aronson is a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC
