How to Keep the Peace in Gaza

For more than ten months, the war in the Gaza Strip has raged on with catastrophic consequences. Israel has considerably weakened Hamas’s military capabilities, but at the cost of a staggering death toll and massive destruction. Although Hamas may no longer be a serious threat to Israel, the group will likely survive in some form.

As Washington and governments in the region desperately search for an end to the fighting and an arrangement for the day after, many are turning to the idea of deploying an international peacekeeping mission to Gaza. They hope that an international mission might enforce a cease-fire, stabilize the devastated territory, and eventually rebuild it. And although the authorization and deployment of such a mission seems far-fetched now, there are indications that Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA)—which governs parts of the West Bank—and a growing number of Arab countries are becoming more amenable to the idea. In July, Lana Nusseibeh, an Emirati diplomat, announced that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would be willing to contribute forces to a “temporary international mission” in Gaza, making it the first country to do so.

A peacekeeping mission may be the best way to help Gaza heal. Indeed, the brutality of Hamas’s October 7 attack and the subsequent carnage in Gaza have made a return to the status quo ante impossible. Rebuilding Gaza will take years and require extraordinary levels of funding and mobilization. Potential donors are unlikely to send the necessary funds as long as Hamas remains in power. The PA in its current form can’t stabilize or rebuild Gaza on its own. And if Israeli forces remain on the ground, their presence will hamper any meaningful effort to provide relief. A massive international effort is required to provide law and order, reopen schools and hospitals, clean up the rubble, and remove unexploded ordnance.

Recent peacekeeping missions hardly have a perfect record. The United States, for example, catastrophically failed to create an alternative to Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the UN mission in Mali was kicked out by a military junta last year. A growing number of critics argue that peacekeeping interventions are ineffective and simply cannot manage complex political transitions. Although many of the criticisms are valid, it is a mistake to conflate peacekeeping missions with the political processes they are meant to accompany. Peacekeeping operations are meant to be only short-term measures to facilitate political changes, never solutions to conflicts in and of themselves. And some peacekeeping missions, including in the Middle East, have helped end wars, reinforce agreements, and prevent military escalations.

An international mission can work in Gaza, but Israel, the PA, and the United States will have to set the conditions for its success. Washington must better coordinate humanitarian efforts among its partners. Israeli and Palestinian leaders will need to make tough concessions to convince countries that a mission is worth joining. And, above all, Israel and Hamas will have to agree to a cease-fire.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF PEACEKEEPING

Peacekeeping as a concept was born out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first modern armed multinational peacekeeping body, the UN Emergency Force, was created following the 1956 Suez crisis, when the United Kingdom, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal. UNEF oversaw Israel’s withdrawal from the Egyptian territories of Sinai and Gaza and remained deployed on the Egyptian side of the cease-fire lines for just over ten years to reduce tensions and deter fighting. UNEF was initially seen as a massive success for the nascent UN. Member states clamored to contribute troops. The Eisenhower administration considered it a major diplomatic victory, especially since it came during the Soviet invasion of Hungary, one of the tensest moments in the Cold War.

But just a decade after the force’s creation, the cease-fire between Israel and Egypt that was bolstered by UNEF’s deployment collapsed. UNEF’s fatal flaw, which plagues most peacekeeping missions to this day, is that it required the legal consent of a belligerent to deploy on its territory—Egypt, in UNEF’s case. As a result, UNEF was vulnerable to Cairo’s whims, and in 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser revoked his consent for the mission, and the UN decided to withdraw the emergency force. Nasser’s decision helped spark the Six-Day War, which profoundly transformed the nature of the conflict and resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

Peacekeeping as a concept was born out of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Peacekeeping forces continued to deploy to various fault lines in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1974, for example, the UN Disengagement Observer Force was created to strengthen the agreement between Israel and Syria that ended the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This force, still in place today, maintains a buffer zone along the cease-fire lines in the Golan Heights. Despite periods of volatility, both countries continue to abide by it. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, brokered by the United States, created the Multinational Force and Observers, a non-UN peacekeeping force that supervises the implementation of the treaty and is now made up of troops from 13 countries.

Other missions have been more fraught. The history of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon shows the difficulties of working in a territory with strong nonstate actors and a governance vacuum, as is the case in Gaza today. UNIFIL originally deployed in 1978 to oversee Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory that the Israelis had seized while battling Palestinian militants. UNIFIL’s current mandate derives from UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia considered by most Western governments to be a terrorist group. The resolution outlined the cease-fire provisions and called for a significant increase in the deployment of troops to act as a deterrent. At the time, that was enough to facilitate a cessation of hostilities.

But Resolution 1701 was never fully implemented. Hezbollah, it turned out, was determined to rebuild its arsenal in southern Lebanon in violation of the resolution. UNIFIL was never in a position—nor did it have the mandate—to confront Hezbollah. For a time, many considered even a hamstrung UNIFIL better than no mission at all. But the October 7 attack and subsequent renewal of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have changed things. Now, any international force deployed along the Blue Line dividing Lebanon from Israel will need to be overhauled.

A MODEL FOR GAZA?

The peacekeeping missions that have been deployed in the Middle East to date all belong to the first generation of peacekeeping, known as “interposition” forces. These missions are limited to basic and mostly symbolic tasks. They serve as buffers between belligerent forces and can report on and facilitate the implementation of treaties or agreements. They might, for example, check that each side is abiding by limits on the deployment of weapons in a specific area.

But Gaza requires something far more complex, a mission along the lines of those deployed in Kosovo and Timor-Leste. These more comprehensive missions involve a broad configuration of UN and international agencies and, in addition to providing security, can serve as temporary administrations. They can help offer humanitarian and development assistance; support local authorities by reinstating law and order; provide critical services such as health, education, and electricity; and facilitate an internationally supported rebuilding effort. Still, people in Gaza have experienced more death, destruction, and lawlessness than did those in either Kosovo or Timor-Leste.

For an international deployment to work, several conditions must be met. For starters, Israel and Hamas must agree to a cease-fire. Hamas must give way to a new administration of Gaza led by the PA, which would ask the Security Council to deploy a mission. At the same time, in exchange for a peacekeeping mission, Israel would need to agree to pull its forces out of the mission’s area of operations. Israel would also have to cooperate with a reformed PA and allow the movement of goods and people into the territory with international supervision. A peacekeeping mission can’t be effective if it is seen as an extension of Israel’s regime.

A peacekeeping mission can’t be effective if it is seen as an extension of Israel’s regime.

Given the level of acrimony between Israel and the UN, the Israeli government is unlikely to accept a mission that is run fully by the UN. Israeli officials have made no secret of their disdain for the international body, which they blame for some of their security concerns. Israel, for example, has accused some UN staff of participating in the October 7 attacks, has argued that UN support in Gaza has entrenched Hamas’s rule, and has criticized UNIFIL for failing to stop Hezbollah’s rearmament. Although these criticisms are not entirely fair, bad relations between Israel and the UN could poison a peacekeeping mission. Regardless of exactly whose aegis a peacekeeping mission was under, UN agencies would still need to form the backbone of the actual humanitarian and development response on the ground. There is precedent for the UN taking a supporting role: in Timor-Leste, for example, Australia led an international peacekeeping force that laid the groundwork for a subsequent UN mission. Most of the actual troops for a mission in Gaza, meanwhile, would have to come from the UAE and other Arab states, with the United States orchestrating the overall effort. This means devising the concept of operations for the mission and supporting its logistics—but stopping short of deploying American boots on the ground.

If a peacekeeping mission is going to have buy-in from Arab countries—which would make it more palatable to the Palestinians—Israel and the PA will need to make some tough concessions and reforms. The UAE has said that it is willing to contribute to a peacekeeping force only if, first, the PA invites the deployment, undergoes significant reforms, and is empowered by Israel to take the lead in rebuilding Gaza and, second, the United States makes a renewed commitment to a two-state solution. Other Arab countries would likely demand at least as much in exchange for joining a mission.

Neither Israel nor the PA appears ready to meet the UAE’s conditions. Both sides suffer from political polarization, the trauma of extreme violence, and bad leadership. The PA is corrupt, repressive, and deeply unpopular. Israel is ruled by its most right-wing government in history, one that is deeply hostile to the PA and has presided over the country’s worst military disaster ever. Opposition to a Palestinian state within Israel has also skyrocketed since October 7. The United States and its partners should apply pressure to encourage the transformations needed on both sides. Although these probably won’t materialize any time soon, the imperative for intervention in Gaza will only grow. It is unlikely that every condition for successful peacekeeping will be met before such a mission becomes essential.

MISSION: POSSIBLE

In the meantime, there are steps the United States can take to lay the groundwork for a successful international mission, even if circumstances are far from perfect. UN Security Council Resolution 2735, which outlines the contours of a cease-fire, was adopted in June and forms the basis for the ongoing mediation between Israel and Hamas. The United States should build on this success by creating a contact group to support the resolution and coordinate the international response in Gaza. The contact group could also deploy a multinational maritime force off the coast of Gaza to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and counter weapons smuggling.

The United States should also reopen channels of communication between Israel, the PA, and UN agencies. Doing so would help ease the flow of aid and ensure that the appropriate types of assistance reach the right places. For now, the safety of aid workers remains a serious concern, and the internal distribution of aid is frequently blocked by the ongoing fighting and by Israeli security procedures. 

As unrealistic as it seems today, the eventual deployment of an international peacekeeping mission may be the best hope to solidify a cease-fire and begin the long road toward recovery for Gazans. Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. leaders must do everything in their power to set the stage for such a mission. The people of Gaza cannot wait for the perfect conditions to emerge.