The U.N.’s retreat from the Golan Heights
Al Jazeera is reporting that at least some elements of the Austrian contingent serving with the U.N.’s Golan Heights peacekeeping force have withdrawn: Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton in the Golan Heights witnessed armoured personnel-carriers transporting the Austrians to the main UN base on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line. She said that the troops ...
Al Jazeera is reporting that at least some elements of the Austrian contingent serving with the U.N.'s Golan Heights peacekeeping force have withdrawn:
Al Jazeera is reporting that at least some elements of the Austrian contingent serving with the U.N.’s Golan Heights peacekeeping force have withdrawn:
Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton in the Golan Heights witnessed armoured personnel-carriers transporting the Austrians to the main UN base on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line.
She said that the troops were from the logistics unit, and not from the main body of the peacekeepers.
“There isn’t a large number of them but it’s a significant that they’ve already started to come out,” Turton said, adding that Austria was expected to remove the rest of its force later this month.
Japan and Croatia have also withdrawn their troops in recent months, as battles between the Syrian government and opposition forces spread into the ceasefire zone.
Israel has reacted strongly to this latest step in what appears to be the dissolution of the peacekeeping force. Via the Guardian:
In Israel, the troop withdrawal was read as a betrayal of the United Nation’s commitment to regional security, pledged during Israeli disengagement from Syria in 1974. Austria, along with troops from India and the Philippines, has provided a critical portion of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (Undof) charged with ensuring quiet on this sensitive border for the past 40 years.
"The only reason you want anyone there in the first place is in time of trouble," one senior Israeli official told the Guardian. "For the first time in 40 years, it’s not easy so the presence ends? That sends a very problematic message to the Israeli public.
"This means that in any future deal with the Palestinians, we won’t accept any disengagement forces from the United Nations because at the first sign of trouble, they’ll disappear."
A more reserved statement issued by Israel’s foreign ministry expressed its regret at Austria’s decision and hoped that "it will not be conducive to further escalation in the region."
As UNDOF crumbles, it’s worth recalling why it’s there in the first place. From William Durch’s The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping:
The Golan Heights … rise from less than 200 meters above Israel’s Yarmak Valley at their southern end, to more than 2,700 meters at the northern end, at the summit of Mount Hermon. Guns placed on the Heights behind the old armistice demarcation line could dominate much of northern Israel. On the other hand, Syria’s capital, Damascus, is just 75 kilometers of good tank country northeast of the Heights. Neither Syria nor Israel, in short, can afford to allow the other side exclusive control of this land.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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