Opinion: Why the UN – not Israel – should oversee peacekeeping and security in Gaza

According to Bloomberg, the US and Israel have discussed three options: the first is to grant temporary oversight of Gaza to countries from the region, backed by troops from the United States, Britain, Germany and France.

The second is a peacekeeping force, modelled on the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) group that operates on and around the Sinai peninsula between Egypt and Israel. The third would be temporary governance of the strip under a UN umbrella.

None of these options looks perfect. On the first option, the White House has ruled out stationing US troops in Gaza. Despite being the largest financial contributor of global peacekeeping, the US has never really sent out large troops for such missions.

On the second option, the MFO group overseeing peace between Egypt and Israel has proven highly effective and successful. But this is because both countries hold a strong desire for durable and lasting peace.

The third option ushers in new light, in spite of inherent problems. Establishing a peacekeeping mission requires the consent of the parties involved. But who are the parties in this conflict? Israel will surely not allow Hamas to be one.

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Dozens killed as Gaza’s largest refugee camp hit by Israeli air strike targeting ‘Hamas terrorists’

Dozens killed as Gaza’s largest refugee camp hit by Israeli air strike targeting ‘Hamas terrorists’

Still, this option looks the most practical. The UN has seldom succeeded in stopping a war, but its peacekeeping operations have experience with cleaning up the mess. The legitimacy of UN Security Council mandates is second to none. With the consent of the parties – hopefully worked out through diplomacy – the UN Security Council would presumably have no problem in agreeing to establish a mission in one of the world’s most fragile and volatile regions.

The UN has more than enough troops to deploy. Despite growing tensions and conflicts in recent years, peacekeeping around the globe is shrinking. As a result, there are only 12 missions and about 90,000 personnel, down from the 125,000 UN peacekeepers deployed across 16 missions in 2015.

The most useful peacekeepers that could be sent to a would-be Gaza mission would be the UN’s “vanguard brigade” of 4,000 rapidly deployable troops, selected from member states. They can be dispatched within 60 days to troubled spots with protection of civilians as their first priority. Given the huge loss of life in Gaza, one can easily imagine how such peacekeeping troops are badly needed over there.

But however useful peacekeeping may be, it is but an ad hoc measure pending a final political solution. After the October 7 Hamas attacks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that “tragedy is part of Israeli life”. To end the tragedy, Israel needs to think about how and when the Palestinians can have their own homeland one day.

Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert