The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

American Hegemony and UN Intervention since 1947

Danilo Di Mauro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415685627
• eBook ISBN: 9781136484100
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This book provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the United Nations intervention in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1947. In his structured and exhaustive analysis, the author presents a long term perspective on the UN intervention in the conflict and explains its evolution during the last sixty years. He draws on a wealth of quantitative data to provide a complete picture of resolutions addressed to the Arab-Israeli conflict by the General Assembly and the Security Council, the mediation activity, and the UN peace missions in the area. Through his analysis, Di Mauro addresses such questions as:

• Why did the United Nations have different involvement and efforts of interventions in the conflict?
• How did the role of the UN change during the dispute, and why did it change?
• Is there still a role for the UN in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process?

Offering a contribution to both to the studies of UN intervention in conflict resolution and, more broadly, to the UN role in the international system, The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict will be of great interest to International Relation scholars and students, but also appreciable by historians, political scientists, methodologists and all the social scientists interested in the Palestine question and the United Nations.

1 The UN Activity in the Arab–Israeli Conflict

The analysis of the dependent variables, although often undervalued, is one of the most important preliminary steps of empirical enquiries. Before looking at the causes of a phenomenon, it is important to describe the phenomenon itself both statically and diachronically. The UN activity towards the Arab–Israeli conflict has been conceptualized and operationalized in the introductory chapter. It has been defined as “the sum of all of the deliberative (resolutions) and operative (mediation and peace missions) acts, aimed at controlling and resolving the conflict.” At this point, its indicators should be described in empirical terms, distinguishing between the normative activity stated by the SC and the GA, and the operative efforts implemented through mediation and peace missions.

The first indicators under analysis are the drafts submitted and voted on by the GA and the SC. They have been computed as two variables—one for each body—reporting the total number of drafts per year. Moreover, since it is possible to define a typology that distinguishes the drafts per topic, the number of drafts per each topic will also be used as dependent variables. The indicators of the mediation activity are variables extracted from the Bercovitch and the Levant datasets and describe the characteristics of UN mediation. In this case, the databases have sufficient information (variables) to describe the UN mediation activity. In contrast, the ad hoc dataset created for the UN missions, with all of the limits that will be shown below, produced four variables (number of missions, budget, type, and number of troops) describing the degree of the UN peace operation’s effort to pacify the dispute.

Sixty Years of Roll Calls on the Arab–Israeli Conflict

The first dependent variable is the number of the GA’s draft proposals about the Arab–Israeli conflict. This variable was preferred instead of the number of resolutions because the aim of the research is to explain the mechanisms of decision making within the UN, and not only the output activity. As noted in the research framework, in order to understand fully the variation of the UN output (resolutions), it is necessary to investigate the “black box” of the decision-making process. Data on roll calls regarding the Arab–Israeli conflict have been obtained from two sources. The proposals made in the GA during the period 1948–82 have been extrapolated from the database of the ICPSR “UN roll-call Data 1946–1985.” Those votes tallied in the GA during the period 1983–2007 were computed using the documents of the UNISPAL and the UNBISNET resources. The total amount of drafts voted in the period 1947–2007 was 1176. Their number varied over time, showing an evident positive increase since the early 1970s, and again during the decade 1982–92 (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Number of draft proposals in the GA about the Arab–Israeli conflict, 1948–2007

By dividing the number of roll calls into four periods, it is possible to observe an evident change in the averages of each period. During the period 1948–70, on average, six roll calls were cast per year. In the following decade (1971–81), the average number of roll calls increased to nineteen, and again increased during the period 1982–92 to thirty-eight roll calls per year. Finally, the last period (1993–2007) shows a stable average of approximately twenty-six roll calls (see Figure 1.2 and Table 1.1).

Only 3 percent of those roll calls were refused whilst 97 percent were approved (11 percent in unanimity). The GA rejected roll calls up until the early 1970s, while the unanimous votes have been counted from 1983 on (see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.2 Percentage of the drafts approved/rejected, 1948–2007

Table 1.1 Frequencies of the roll calls approved/rejected, 1948–2007

Figure 1.3 Number of GA proposals approved/rejected, 1948–2007

In order to classify the roll calls by their subject, a typology was drawn up defining eleven different categories. First, it is important to underline that the draft resolutions of the GA are “complex” documents, and, for this reason, their distinction in categories is affected by many limits of classification. The UN and the agencies involved in the cataloguing and publication of the documents do not provide ratings based on contents, and the title only partially sums up the prescriptive part of the resolution, while the content often contains different topics. However, even in the presence of these difficulties, it is possible to identify exclusive and exhaustive types using two criteria of selection. The first criterion concerns the main subject of the draft. It is inferred in part from the title, but especially from the body of the proposal, where it is often possible to detect a principal topic. The second criterion concerns the target of the proposal. The obligations and the principles of the roll calls are addressed to one (or more) state(s). Table 1.2 shows the process of clustering using these two criteria.

Table 1.2 Typology of the GA’s drafts by subject

Type	Target	Subject
1	Parts in conflict	Security
2	UN	Missions
3	Jerusalem	Jerusalem jurisdiction
4	Refugees	Rights of refugees
5	Israel	Condemnations towards Israel
6	Palestinians	Palestinians’ rights
7	UN bodies	Budget
8	UN members	Nuclear-free military zone
9	UN members/bodies	Internal dispositions
10	States, ONGs and UN agencies	Assistance to civilian population
11	All the states	Cooperation and peace

The resulting typology defines eleven categories:

1. Security provisions directly relating to the conflict between the parties: ceasefire, withdrawal of troops, setting up of committees, negotiations, peace conferences, etc.
2. Peacekeeping missions: the provisions regarding the establishment, funding, and guidelines for peace missions operating in the battlefield.
3. Jerusalem: all documents related to Jerusalem and the holy places.
4. Refugees: all documents related to the preservation and protection of refugees, including those concerning the United Nations Relief Work Agency (UNRWA).
5. Provisions for condemning Israel for its occupation and practices implemented in the Palestinian territories: the sentencing provisions for employment, human rights, acts of deportation, etc.
6. Provisions conferring rights to the Palestinian people: the right to self-determination, property rights, rights of exploitation of natural resources, etc.
7. Budget documents (with the exception of the documents related to the missions and to the UNRWA).
8. Nuclear weapons: the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
9. Provisions for the internal relations of UN bodies: admission of Israel to the UN, communications between the various bodies, dissemination of information, establishment of an observer for the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and the Arab League.
10. Assistance for the population and development plans for Palestine and Lebanon.
11. Provisions for international cooperation: cooperation with the Arab League, cooperation in the Mediterranean area, etc.

Looking at the number of roll calls by subject, it is possible to observe that types 4, 5, and 6 have more roll calls than the others, and represent approximately 71 percent of the total. In particular, the category “condemnations of Israeli violations of human rights” is over 30 percent of all the drafts. Types 1, 2, and 9 also have a conspicuous number of drafts, while the remaining categories (3, 7, 8, 10, and 11) represent only 2 percent of the total number of proposals presented in the GA (see Table 1.3).

Table 1.3 Roll calls voted in the GA by subject

The diachronic analysis of the subjects of the roll calls shows trends during the period 1947–2007. Since the early 1970s, the number of groups with the highest number of roll calls (4, 5, and 6) considerably increased. This trend encompassed all categories except for the one concerning refugees, for which the number of roll calls had begun to increase ten years earlier. The drafts of type 1 (Security) are more concentrated in the Arab– Israeli War (1948), in the 1950s (1950, 1952, 1956, and 1957), and in 1967, with few cases in the 1970s (1971, 1976, 1978, and 1979) and fewer, but more consistent cases, since 1981. The roll calls focused on peace missions are mainly distributed during the years 1956–66, 1973–88, and 1995–2005. The other categories of roll calls are usually concentrated in a short period (i.e. types 3 and 7: Jerusalem and Budget), or appear sporadically since the 1980s (Cooperation).

In summary, some types encompassed only the first few years of conflict ( Jerusalem and Budget), while those that produced the largest number of roll calls grew significantly since the 1970s, and maintained a stable average (Rights of the Palestinians, Condemnations of Israel). Other categories have a constant number during some periods with peaks in specific years (Missions and Security); while some types exhibit constant trends but few roll calls (nuclear weapons, organizational communications, assistance to civilian populations, international cooperation).

Figure 1.4 Number of GA drafts by subject

Figure 1.5 Distribution of GA drafts by subject, 1947–2007

The main result of this descriptive analysis is that the change in the average number of proposals observed since the 1970s is linked to a change in the subject of these proposals. Until 1970, most of the proposals (77 percent) relate to types 1, 2, 3, and 4 whilst types 9, 10, and 11 are absent. In contrast, since 1970, 76 percent of the roll calls concern the types 4, 5 and 6, and the category of Condemnations of Israel (type 5) accounts for 38 percent of the total number of roll calls. During this period, types 9, 10, and 11 make their appearance with a low number of drafts (see Figures 1.4 and 1.5).

The Drafts of the Security Council

Unlike the GA, all the roll calls voting records of the SC have been collected in an ad hoc database. The draft statements have been extracted from the publication of the UNISPAL archive, while the agency UNBISNET provided the voting records. From 1946 to 2007, 339 propo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Table of abbreviations
• Introduction: the research problem
• 1. The UN activity in the Arab–Israeli conflict
• 2. The Arab–Israeli conflict
• 3. The Arab–Israeli conflict and the draft resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council
• 4. The General Assembly activity: analyzing states’ voting behavior
• 5. The Arab–Israeli conflict in the Security Council
• 6. The UN mediation in the Arab–Israeli conflict
• 7. The UN peace missions in the Arab–Israeli conflict
• Conclusions
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index