At the end of last month, the UN Security Council passed a little-remarked-upon resolution renewing the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights (UNDOF) for the duration of 2018 and instructing this force to resume those operations that had ceased with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. UNDOF, created in 1974 to police the demilitarized zone separating Israel and Syria in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, presided over several decades of relative peace along the Golan, but largely ceased its activities due to the fighting in the area. Upon its return, writes Assaf Orion, it faces new challenges:
Unlike in the past, the UN force will not encounter the standing Syrian army but rather a spectrum comprising military forces, local and foreign militias, and armed civilians. As noted in [a recent] UN report, the prohibition against any military or armed presence in the DMZ is violated blatantly today, both by the regime forces and by all of the rebel organizations, which are battling among themselves in the territory. The complete disarmament of the population will take a long time, if it is possible at all, and will affect UNDOF’s safety.
The patient entrenchment efforts of Iran and its proxies can be expected to take the form not of tanks and cannon but rather of the assimilation of foreign forces into the ranks of the Syrian army; the building of military infrastructure—particularly underground infrastructure—under the guise of civilian rehabilitation (e.g., building bomb shelters that are in fact bunkers) and embedding it in a populated environment; and intelligence activity and military patrols [masquerading] as “journalists,” “ornithologists,” “hunters,” “environmental activists,” “angry civilians,” [and the like].
Shooting incidents, minelaying, and improvised-explosive-device attacks from Syria into Israeli territory are also possible. As in Lebanon, the Syrian army will provide explanations, excuses, and justifications for any UN findings attesting to violations, and will naturally impede UN forces from gaining access to prohibited military targets on the pretext of maintaining law and order, privacy, or preventing disruption of the population’s day-to-day life and local customs. UNDOF will have a hard time verifying or refuting these allegations by its own means if the UN continues to refrain from collecting intelligence.
At the same time, west of the buffer zone, Israel can be expected to continue to be the butt of criticism about its “violations” of the agreement—mainly response fire into Syrian territory [when Israel is fired upon], the deployment of Iron Dome missile-defense systems on the Golan Heights and on the Poriyya Heights (overlooking Tiberias), . . . clashes with forces on the other side of the border, and negligible delays in the opening of gates to UN forces that are crossing the security fence.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: http://www.inss.org.il/publication/cannot-step-river-twice-disengagement-forces-agreement-golan-1974-undof-2018/