ABSTRACT
This chapter examines events in the Middle East during Wiseman’s 19561967 Assertive period, and describes the emergence of a modern peacekeeping regime during the 1956 Suez Crisis, with a focus on the crucial case study of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). While the earlier United Nations Truce Supervision Organization was tasked with maintaining the armistice regime between Israel and its Arab neighbors, UNEF would prove to be a model for future peacekeeping missions in the Middle East as well as other conflict arenas. The Mixed Armistice Commissions set the framework for a peacekeeping regime in the Middle East, and UNEF was to borrow many of the norms and principles of that earlier regime. The emergence of a distinct peacekeeping regime, defined in terms of its recognizable norms, principles, rules, and procedures, however, began with the creation of UNEF. At its inception, UNEF was unique; it could lay claim to being the manifestation of a new category of military operations that would come to be known as peacekeeping. As such, UNEF served as the catalyst for the peacekeeping regime’s principles, developed by United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold: Consent and cooperation of the parties in dispute; troop contingents provided by member nations other than the permanent members of the Security Council; impartiality; and the use of force by peacekeepers only in self-defense.1 Despite what many critics would see as the ultimate failure of the Middle East peacekeeping regime to prevent the outbreak of war, both UNEF’s strengths and weaknesses would reappear in future peacekeeping missions. UNEF therefore is not just another historical mission; it is the crucial case study that for decades defined, for better or worse, the mind’s-eye view of international peacekeeping among policy makers.
