Why Israel Does Not Want International Observers
Singer, Saul
Why Israel Does Not Want International Observers Saul Singer As EARLY AS LAST JUNE ON A TRIP TO THE MIDDLE East, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell backed the idea of dispatching independent...
...Then, in a major address on the Middle East at the University of Louisville on Nov...
...7, 2000 kidnapping by Hezbollah of three Israeli soldiers...
...According to this report, "dozens of soldiers...
...Abba Eban summarized Israel's situation in a UN speech...
...Israeli officials have struggled to secure information about the three missing men...
...T h ey cannot observe a lack of peace...
...7. 2000...
...It is no surprise that representatives of the same nations that vote against Israel en masse in international bodies have trouble acting fairly when serving in an observer force...
...Sergeant Adi Avitan...
...Since it is Israel that does not trust the Palestinians to keep the cease-fire, Israel might be expected to be the first to demand international whistle-blowers...
...In this case, U N officials are blamed rather than Indian sol...
...UN-protected Less than an hour before he was abducted on Oct...
...T h e long record of international observers in the Arab-Israeli conflict is unblemished by a single example of basic fairness toward Israel, let alone protection from Arab aggression...
...2. 2001, the chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces announced that based on intelligence reports, the soldiers were presumed dead...
...which could help identify the attackers...
...A UN peacekeeper at the scene the next day filmed two vehicles used in the attack...
...but only with the faces of the Hezbollah operatives obscured...
...According to another report, a former U N official stationed in Lebanon claims the U N destroyed evidence found in the vehicles abandoned by Hezbollah that appeared in the infamous videotape...
...Even more serious allegations swirl around the possible complicity of UNIFIL in the kidnapping...
...Egypt has no interest in violating its demilitarization commitments in the Sinai, so Israel does not have a problem with the UN forces there...
...20, was captured following an attack on four IDF outposts at the border...
...The three are classified as fallen soldiers, whose place of burial is unknown.-SL...
...But the charge illustrates the kind of problem that can arise in monitoring arrangements...
...As Foreign Minister Shimon Peres recently observed, "Observers can observe once you have peace...
...But Larsen checked again with U N headquarters in New York C i t y and found the Israelis were right...
...The UN offered to release the tape to Israel...
...Israel, by contrast, must defend itself with its army and stand behind its actions...
...On Aug...
...These allegations remain to be proven...
...an area of the Lebanese border he and his unit were patrolling...
...Seventy-seven Jewish doctors, nurses, academics, and students were massacred that day, after top British officials had "personally guaranteed" that medical and civilian transports would be protected by the British army and police...
...On June 27, 2001, senior Israeli officers reportedly asked U N Mideast Envoy Terje Larsen and U N South Lebanon representative Stephen de Mistora to see a videotape the Israelis knew existed of the cars—disguised as U N vehicles— that Hezbollah had used in the kidnapping...
...On Nov...
...The distinction between peace making and peace keeping is a vital one...
...UNIFIL forces acted as a sieve—letting through attacks against Israel but subjecting Israel to scmtdny for responding to those attacks...
...Outside observers, after all, would logically be in the interest of any party who wants to guarantee that an agreement be kept...
...The discouraging record begins even before the founding of the state...
...In the months following the abduction, Israel demanded to see the tape...
...Observers ostensibly have a mandate to be impartial, but they frequendy do not forget the interests of the nations they represent...
...Why Israel Does Not Want International Observers Saul Singer As EARLY AS LAST JUNE ON A TRIP TO THE MIDDLE East, U.S...
...and First Sgt...
...Where peace has not "broken out," however, the situation is far different...
...T h e UN officials denied the existence of the tape...
...2001...
...A U N report, released in August, blamed the directors of the Asia and Middle East divisions in the UN peacekeeping department for not informing top UN officials about the existence of the videotape...
...The reason Israel objects also accounts for Arafat's enthusiasm: Experience shows that international observers will protect not the cease-fire, but Arafat's ability to violate it...
...In addition to whatever biases national representatives bring to the table, Israel also suffers from a structural asymmetry: the lack of plausible deniabilify...
...The video also showed several Hezbollah members...
...This hit us like a bomb...
...In the case of Syria, the arrangement "works" despite the lack of a Syrian-Israeli peace because Syria does not want t? attack Israel over its own border, preferring instead the demability of supporting Hezbollah's attacks from Lebanon...
...All this despite United Nations "observers...
...British military cars passed three times during the seven hours that the convoy, (which included Jerusalem's ranking British general) was under attack, but they did not stop to intervene or assist...
...The soldiers [at the post]," David Ben-Gurion wrote in his autobiography, "watched the attack but did nothing...
...On the other hand, there was no inhibition of resolutions criticizing Israel for retaliating against the attacks...
...On April 13, 1948, a convoy of ambulances and armored buses headed for Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus...
...was Quiet and beautiful...
...In the six months after Israel's withdrawal, Israel filed nearly 500 complaints regarding cross-border violations...
...Omar Sawayid...
...Thus the doctrine of the United Nations came to imply that Arab governments could conduct warfare and maintain belligerency against Israel while Israel could offer no response...
...International observers have been more successful once peace or non-belligerence has been established...
...Between 1950 and 1956, these attacks came from Egyptian-held Gaza...
...called his girlfriend...
...In the current violent situation, Israel has no reason to allow the placement of a one-way mirror between it and the Palestinians, with a special glaze that lets through Palestinian attacks, while reflecting back Israeli responses straight into the court of world opinion...
...showing false UN uniforms and bloodstains inside...
...T h e former U N observer told a Lebanese newspaper that Israel would have "screamed for" this evidence if its existence had been known...
...He told her the landscape of the Shebaa Farms...
...Avitan...
...The next we heard, he had been taken by Hezbollah...
...Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold recalls the standard pattern: " H e z b o l l a h would launch a r t i l l e r y attacks 50 meters away from a UNIFIL outpost, Israel would shoot back, and UNIFIL would protest against the Israeli response...
...along with companions First Sgt...
...Israeli officials reportedly insist that "covert contacts were held between Hezbollah and the Indian [UNIFIL contingent] before the abduction...
...Indian soldiers are generally well disciplined...
...diers...
...UNTFIL's neutrality and usefulness was most dramatically brought into question by the scandal surrounding the videotape made by UNIFIL soldiers shortly after the Oct...
...In the 18 years between the 1949 Armistice Agreement and the 1967 Six-Day War, there were hundreds, if not thousands of attacks against Israel...
...received hundreds of thousands of dollars for collaborating in the kidnapping...
...During the 1950s, he said, when U N rnilitary observers monitored the armistice lines: "Arabs could kill Israeli citizens across the border, blockade our port of Eilat, close the Suez Canal to our shipping, send armed groups into our territory for murder and havoc, and decline to carry out stipulated clauses of the armistice agreement in the complete certainty that the Security Council would not adopt even the mildest resolution of criticism...
...19, Powell said the United States was "ready to contribute actively" to an observer force that could eventually monitor and verify a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians...
...He later reportedly told Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer that he was "ashamed" at having unwittingly lied to Israel...
...The idea of international observers as neutral eyes and ears has simply not been borne out in practice...
...his uncle Yoel told the New York Times...
...Binyamin Avraham...
...Hezbollah members carried the three soldiers to a car on the Lebanese side of the border...
...between 1965 and 1967, Fatah attacked Israel from behind Syrian and Jordanian lines...
...U N forces monitor both the Egyptian Sinai and the Golan Heights border with Syria...
...Still, the U N has repeatedly refused to hand over the original videotape, offering to show Israel only a copy with the faces of Hezbollah personnel obscured...
...Even after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, cross-border violations continued, despite UNIFTLs continued presence...
...Israel is being attacked not by armies of sovereign nations or even by the Palestinian Authority per se, but by proxies that allow national leaders to deny responsibility...
...Secretary of State Colin Powell backed the idea of dispatching independent monitors to the West Bank and Gaza to report on cease-fire violations...
...Hezbollah, a militant Shi'ite group, fired heavily on the outposts and launched anMank missiles at an IDF patrol vehicle...
...In more recent times, Israel's experience with UNIFIL (the United Nations force in southern Lebanon) has been similar...
...Why is the seemingly innocuous matter of international observers at the top of the Palestinian agenda, and anathema to Israel...
...Israel will always be a more convenient address for international protest than murky bodies such as Hezbollah or the latest offshoot of Arafat's myriad security forces...
...Around 650 feet from the British military post that was supposed to secure the route, the convoy came under Arab attack from both sides of the road...
...Israeli officials finally viewed a modified version of the videotape...
Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1
