The current peace process between Israel and Palestine is coming to a head as US Secretary of State John Kerry’s April deadline approaches. An essential part of that plan is to include a third-party military force on the ground to ensure security and US General John Allen has been leading the discussions on how the US military may become involved. Not surprisingly, given Allen’s failure in Afghanistan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has taken a dim view of American forces manning his future border with Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always quietly insisted that Israel can only ever rely on its own forces for its security.
Rather than accept the Americans, Abbas has called for Nato to take on this military role.
But he is mistaken to do this and instead he should be asking for a United Nations force to come and act as the all-important buffer between Palestinians and Israelis. Nato is a treaty organisation between the democracies of the North Atlantic and it should stay that way. Its greatest success is bringing peace to western Europe and it should stop its unfortunate role as a roaming military force carrying out the wishes of US presidents without UN supervision.
It is fashionable in Washington to trash the UN. George W. Bush did it openly and his military expeditions left the world a much worse place. Barack Obama has not been so open in his disdain, but he has also accepted Washington’s fallacy that the UN cannot be trusted.
It is unfortunate that the Americans only trust their own forces under their own generals, but this policy has failed as is so obvious in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is time to change this and if the Palestinians and the Israelis need a third force it should come from the UN, as the only world body that still commands a certain amount of respect and can be seen to be neutral.
