ABSTRACT
The UN peacekeeping mechanism had become the key instrument of the Western-led consensus in the United Nations to contain the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel had rejected the request to dismantle fortifications in the zone on the ground that Syrian noncompliance with the armistice agreement openly threatened its security. Israel's policy of selective participation in Israel-Syria Mixed Armistice Commission meetings became especially perplexing by the mid-1960s. Israel countered that Syrian machine gun and rifle fire had been directed throughout February and early March against the village of Dardara and at fishermen near the Syrian village of El Kursi. The seemingly permanent political stalemate of the decade following the Sinai War was reflected on the frontiers. The tree-planting affair, which flared up in the summer of 1957 and occupied the United Nations into early 1958, was of little moment.
