2023-05-29 05:07:00
The mission of the UN blue helmets stationed in Israel is proving to be all the more delicate as renewed violence has once again gripped the region. Swiss soldiers keep watch.
This content was published on May 29, 2023
In anticipation of the International Day dedicated to United Nations Blue Helmets on May 29, swissinfo.ch recently traveled to Israel to dissect the work of the Swiss soldiers engaged in the field. Their mission: to be lookouts for the maintenance of peace and worthy representatives of a country for which preserving security is essential.
Promoting peace efforts at the international level remains a priority task for the Swiss army, a mission anchored in its legislation. Since 1990, Switzerland has sent unarmed observers and liaison officers to support UN operations.
Ranking at least as captains, twelve Swiss officers have been hired as part of UNOST, the oldest of these missions, which has been active for 75 years now in the Middle East. A total of 153 members of this force are currently stationed between Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Under a UN mandate, this mission had to receive the prior approval of the parties to the conflict. On site, swissinfo.ch was able to meet four of these Swiss peacekeepers in their offices in Jerusalem and on the Golan Heights, including the chief.
It was in the aftermath of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war that this peacekeeping force was deployed, after a UN-declared ceasefire followed by the dispatch of armed observers. to supervise the agreements concluded between Israel and its neighbours. In 1974, at the end of the Yom Kippur War, a new truce was signed between Israel and Syria. The agreement then drew the edges of a demilitarized zone along the borders of the two countries, limiting the number of soldiers from each side within a radius of 25 km and restricting armaments.
On the Golan Heights, UN peacekeepers are therefore ensuring that these agreements are respected. But according to the Swiss major Livio Räber, head of mission of the observers for the Golan-Tiberias region, violations occur almost daily.
perilous task
The main danger to which the Blue Helmets expose themselves is to be taken under the fire of the belligerents. Last April, a series of rockets were fired from Syria and Lebanon into Israel, and one of them landed in a field on the plateau. There were no victims, but this episode did not reassure the observers present.
Other pitfalls still threaten them: the anti-personnel mines which litter the ground, the reprimands of the local populations and perhaps more anecdotally… the stings of the scorpion. Since the UNTSO was deployed in this area, eighteen of its observers have lost their lives in the exercise of their functions.
Switzerland takes control
But for the UN, the maintenance of blue helmets is essential to preserve the ceasefire in this region, their presence helping to create a form of confidence among the parties in conflict. Until creating a climate conducive to peace talks. It is a high-ranking Swiss, the divisionnaire Patrick Gauchat, who has been presiding since the end of 2021 over the destinies of the ONUST. He is the first Swiss officer to have been entrusted with such a responsibility by the governing bodies of the UN.
But Patrick Gauchat is no novice in this area. Before taking the reins of this mission, this divisional had been appointed head of the Swiss delegation responsible for observing the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. For more than twenty years, he therefore worked to maintain peace in the former Yugoslavia, in Asia, and now in the Middle East.
On the usefulness of Swiss neutrality
Remember that Switzerland joined the UN in 2002 following a referendum approved by nearly 55% of the vote. It had not seen fit to take the step earlier, for fear of compromising its neutrality, but it was the only country to join on the basis of a popular vote.
New perspectives were then opened up to her, confirms Patrick Gauchat with hindsight. “Our participation in the United Nations has made it possible to better defend our ideas within this organization, which is all the more true as we now sit on the UN Security Council”, continues the divisional. The latter specifies that neutrality “still remains an intact value in the Middle East today”, and adds that at the beginning of his mission “the Israeli and Syrian authorities had insisted on this point”.
The senior officer explained to them that he himself was “a child of neutrality”. Position which he subsequently used to persuade his interlocutors to be the ideal person, reassuring them that his reports were going to be neutral, too.
Use of good offices
The two notions of federalism and neutrality, so dear to Switzerland, offer it the possibility of offering its good offices to parties in conflict. The presence of Patrick Gauchat at the head of ONUST attests to this.
If a channel of communication does indeed work between Lebanon and Israel within the framework of a tripartite agreement concluded with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the situation is currently quite different for the correspondence between Israel and the Syria. Patrick Gauchat plays the messenger here, transmitting to each of these countries the notes of their respective heads of diplomacy and generals, the latter remaining the guarantors of compliance with the disengagement agreement signed the day after the last conflict between the two countries. “I’m helping to ease tensions in this rather unstable region,” he told swissinfo.ch from his headquarters in Jerusalem.
Continuing our report, we then went to the training center in Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee, where UN observers are deployed to the demilitarized zone. Another Swiss soldier, Major Roman Gagua, provides them with explanations on the type of planes, tanks and artillery used on the Golan Heights, where the Israeli defense exercises regularly.
Roman Gagua continues to fulfill his military obligations in Switzerland where he was initially section chief within the infantry, then today a language expert. Abroad, it was in Bosnia-Herzegovina that he served his first career as a staff officer attached to the European Union Task Force (EUFOR). Then South Sudan, this time serving the United Nations Mission UNMISS, before its transfer to the Golan Heights.
Roman Gagua teaches observers the type of armaments to look for. swissinfo.ch
We then head by car to these heights to find Livio Räber in full exercise. The latter confided to us during our interview all the difficulties of working and living in this land, far from everything and hostile. Located along Israel’s northern border with Syria, the Golan Heights was conquered by Israel during the conflict with Syria (1967), before being subsequently annexed.
hopes for peace
Another Swiss soldier guides our steps during our impromptu visit to the Golan Heights. Lieutenant-Colonel Alex Neukomm is responsible for the liaison service with UNTSO. His work takes him from Amman in Jordan to Tel-Aviv in Israel, also playing the middleman.
Its mandate is to communicate with the Ministers of Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs of these two countries, while maintaining contacts with the academic and intellectual world. Objective: to draw up an inventory of these companies ahead of high-level meetings between UNTSO and Jordanian and Israeli ministers. Alex Neukomm also reads the press to take the pulse.
Lt. Col. Alex Neukomm. swissinfo.ch
Despite the resurgence of violence observed in recent times, the Swiss military remains optimistic about a possible lasting peace to come in this region. “Let us not forget that when the UN Mission was deployed, four demarcation zones had been established. Since then, Jordan and Egypt have signed peace agreements with Israel, in 1974 and 1994. Then Israel initialed a maritime demarcation agreement with Lebanon in 2022. of a gradual improvement in their relations”, he concludes.
70 years in the service of peace
This year, Switzerland celebrates 70 years of service in the maintenance of peace in the world. It was in 1953 that the federal government agreed for the first time to send soldiers on a mission abroad to monitor, in this case, the armistice agreement concluded between North and South Korea after the Korean War (1950-1953). This deployment marked the beginning of Switzerland’s efforts to promote peace abroad, a commitment that now breaks records for longevity, with the Swiss Guard at the Vatican remaining unclassified.
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Translated from English by Alain Meyer
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