Strategic Assessment

Keywords: UNTSO – Peacekeeping – Israel – Middle East – United Nations

1. Introduction – The Paradox of Invisibility

Israel–UN relations since October 7, 2023, have deteriorated to a degree unprecedented in their long and often complex history. Diplomatic ties between the Secretariat and Jerusalem have frayed, with operational engagement ranging from turbulent at best to non-existent at worst. Both sides now operate from a position of deep mistrust rather than pragmatic cooperation. Yet despite this rupture, neither Israel nor the UN system can disengage entirely (Salman, 2020). The aftermath of the Gaza war will necessitate an expansive humanitarian, political and reconstruction effort that no single coalition, however capable, can implement alone (Arielli & Stoil, 2025; Chen, 2024; Day, 2025). Much of this vital effort will inevitably pass through the UN system. Moreover, any sustainable post‑war architecture for Gaza will require a verifiable international mechanism capable of monitoring ceasefire lines, observing demilitarisation commitments, and lowering the risk of renewed escalation. No political framework, however limited, can endure in the absence of a minimally trusted mechanism of security oversight (United Nations Department of Peace Operations [DPO], 2008; Hylton, 2013)

Strikingly, in this increasingly crowded policy space filled with proposals for multinational forces, regional coalitions, ad hoc monitoring groups, or entirely new stabilisation structures, one long-standing UN mechanism is almost absent from the debate: the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO). The omission became explicit on November 17, 2025, when the Security Council adopted Resolution 2803. The resolution approved the creation of a temporary “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF), together with a “Board of Peace” described as “a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan.”

The ISF–Board of Peace (BoP) framework presents itself as a fresh framework for Gaza’s post-war stabilisation. However, in practice, it risks undermining a durable multilateral solution (Gowan, 2026). Rather than building on established UN verification, liaison, and data-sharing mechanisms, the BoP seeks to create a parallel structure whose legitimacy is closely tied to personalist leadership and a transient US political moment, raising concerns about continuity, legal grounding, and institutional memory. The absence of a concrete operational plan for the ISF in particular including, inter alia, the mandate, force composition, timelines, and on-the-ground authority, further theatents to weaken its credibility. At the same time, the top-down, US-driven design has already generated unease among European officials and scepticism among key international actors. Taken together, the ISF–BoP construct appears more of a political showcase than a viable security architecture, reinforcing the case for a framework that integrates existing multilateral assets such as UNTSO, whose established mandate, liaison networks, and modular deployability offer greater procedural credibility and strategic sustainability. The US-led framework effectively seeks to begin from a blank slate. It raises an immediate and uncomfortable question: what place, if any, remains for the existing international architecture already deployed on the ground?

The irony is stark. Resolution 2803 completely bypasses the oldest and most regionally embedded UN presence in the Middle East, despite that presence possessing assets, experience, access, and institutional memory that no newly formed mechanism can instantly replicate (Sommereyns, 1980; Novosseloff, 2022; Theobald, 2015; Salama, 2024). At a moment when both Israel and the UN system face the urgent need to rebuild a minimal foundation of operational trust, UNTSO’s neglect may be strategically short-sighted. Provided it is meaningfully reformed, UNTSO could offer an unexpected opportunity for low-profile, technically credible cooperation.

This question takes on added salience in light of the most ambitious UN peacekeeping reform summit in recent years: the 2025 Berlin Ministerial. Bringing together more than 90 Member States, including major troop contributors, donors, and regional actors, the Berlin Ministerial articulated a fundamentally new framework for UN operations. Its consensus was explicit: legacy missions must evolve. They must adopt modular deployments tailored to specific tasks, integrate surveillance technology and open-source intelligence, provide similar baseline training for observers equipped to address asymmetrical threats, and modernise data-sharing arrangements between missions and host governments (Wane et al., 2024; Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). The aim is not to reinvent peacekeeping but to make it more agile, lighter, and adaptable to the operational realities of contemporary conflict.

UNTSO is a natural test case. It operates across five borders, maintains established liaison channels with Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and possesses the institutional memory that new, ad hoc mechanisms simply do not. Its observers already provide training in Lebanon and on the Golan Heights (Kochavi, 1980; Theobald, 2015), and its structure contains the seeds of modularity that Berlin now champions (Salama, 2023).

Modernising UNTSO in line with Berlin’s guidelines will require political will, strategic vision, and pragmatic cooperation. Ignoring UNTSO, however, is not cost-free. Allowing it to wither leaves a potentially valuable mechanism underused while international resources flow into untested alternatives. It also perpetuates a status quo in which the only UN military mission headquartered in Jerusalem is treated as irrelevant—by both the host government and the multilateral system. In an environment where multilateral budgets are shrinking, leaving UNTSO out in the cold is a costly form of institutional neglect.

Israeli scepticism toward the United Nations has become a durable feature of its foreign‑policy doctrine rather than a situational reaction to isolated crises (Comay, 1983; Salman, 2025). This posture is rooted in the perception that the UN has evolved into a forum for political propaganda and diplomatic warfare, where “abuses of majoritarianism” are frequently used to isolate the Jewish state (Mréjen, 1998). Within this broader posture, UNTSO is often viewed with suspicion, dismissal, or disdain (Nachmias, 1997). The prevailing assessment in Israeli policy circles is simple: UNTSO is outdated, ineffective, and offers little operational value. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge that the proposals advanced in this paper will encounter scepticism and even cynicism.

These concerns are grounded in Israel’s cumulative experience with other UN mechanisms. For instance, even when participating in procedural frameworks like the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), Israel has found that technical engagements are frequently overshadowed by the “politicisation” of the agenda (Navoth, 2009; Salman, 2025). This creates a “lose‑lose” scenario: The UN loses its operational credibility and access; and at the same time, Israel forfeits the benefits of a neutral, verifiable mechanism that could help manage volatile frontiers and prevent miscalculation.

However, treating Israeli scepticism as an immutable barrier to reform is analytically misleading. A deeper examination of Israel’s relations with the UN reveals a significant strategic shift over the past two decades. Israeli policy has transitioned from the dismissive “Om Shmum” (the UN is nothing) approach of the early years of statehood toward a more proactive strategy of participation and influence (Salman, 2025). This proactive stance is predicated on the understanding that, while political convergence may be impossible, “operational diplomacy” grounded in procedural credibility and technical cooperation can yield significant security dividends (Salman, 2025).

This scepticism also need not be determinative. Historically, there were periods when Israel and UNTSO worked pragmatically and even productively together (Jonah, 1990; Theobald, 2009; Salama, 2024). Wherever UNTSO had operational room to manoeuvre, strong leadership, and adequate support from New York, it contributed tangible value. For Israel, modernising UNTSO would be a calculated investment in managing a volatile frontier with low political risk. For the UN, it would serve as a demonstrable implementation of the Berlin reform agenda, proof that reform is not merely rhetorical but operationally actionable. And for both sides, a revitalised UNTSO could offer a narrow but meaningful pathway toward functional coexistence within an otherwise fractured relationship. At a moment when the status quo is deeply unstable, the ability to stabilise even a sliver of operational cooperation would constitute a strategic achievement in itself.

Two caveats guide this paper. First, it does not claim that UNTSO is the solution to Gaza’s post-war challenges. It is not. Nor does it claim that UNTSO should operate alone; the stability of Gaza will depend on a multilateral architecture that extends far beyond UNTSO’s mandate and institutional capacities. This paper argues that, through targeted modernisation, a strictly technical mandate, and the appropriate operational tools, UNTSO could become an indispensable component of a broader architecture designed to prevent renewed violence, support reconstruction, and gradually rebuild channels of cooperation between Israel and the UN system. This is a tall order, but a necessary one (Safran-Hon & Salama, 2025). Notwithstanding that resolution 2803 omits any mention of UNTSO, any modernisation proposal must be designed to complement the architecture envisioned in the resolution, whatever form it ends up taking.

Second, modernising UNTSO should not depend on its integration into any specific stabilisation force in Gaza. Its exclusion from current planning underscores the urgency of institutional adaptation. UNTSO’s marginalisation is, or should be, a wake-up call: either it evolves to meet contemporary strategic conditions, or it risks remaining a permanent—yet invisible and toothless—fixture of the regional landscape. The reforms proposed in this paper should therefore be pursued regardless of whether UNTSO ultimately becomes directly involved in Gaza’s post-war security arrangements.

2. Historical Foundations and Institutional Assets: UNTSO And the Return of “One-Dimensional” Peace Operations

2.1. “Older One-Dimensional Missions” Still Matter

UNTSO belongs to a category of UN peace operations that the post–Cold War literature often treats as conceptually exhausted: the “older one-dimensional” observer and monitoring missions designed to supervise ceasefires, stabilise contact lines, and manage incidents without enforcement authority or statebuilding ambitions (Higgins, 1968).. Nevertheless, a growing strand of comparative scholarship argues that these missions are not historical anomalies; rather, they represent a distinct institutional form optimised for political constraint. Novosseloff’s comparative study of ongoing one-dimensional operations contends that their durability is structurally linked to their narrow remit: They were created for containment in high-stakes geopolitical theatres where ambitious mandates would have threatened fragile great-power consensus and where parties have been reluctant to authorise meaningful mandate evolution (Novosseloff, 2022). Operations such as UNTSO should be assessed less as instruments of conflict transformation than as mechanisms that reduce uncertainty, dampen escalation dynamics, and preserve minimal channels of engagement in the absence of a credible peace process.

This literature reframes UNTSO’s longevity as an institutional outcome rather than a historical accident. Novosseloff notes that one-dimensional operations persist in contexts that continue to attract intense strategic attention or carry escalation risks, making external stakeholders cautious about disruptive institutional innovation (Theobald, 2015; Novosseloff, 2022; Salama, 2024). In such settings, the UN is frequently assigned a stabilising role: observation, liaison, and low-key facilitation that creates space for political processes that may be stalled, intermittent, or externally driven. The presence of UN missions has often maintained stability even when political solutions remained elusive, illustrating a central trade-off of the mission type: limiting armed conflict does not necessarily yield peace, but it can reduce the probability of uncontrolled escalation (Novosseloff, 2022).

Recent UNTSO-focused assessment work builds on this repositioning. Hilding Norberg, Mood, and Bardalai argue that the “emerging trend of increased interest” in observer missions should be welcomed precisely because it enables learning from their role, relevance, functions, and utility “in times of trial and turbulence” (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). Their study treats UNTSO not as an anachronism but as a prototype case for contemporary peace operations debates—especially those concerned with prevention, agility, and modularity under constrained political conditions. Taken together, this literature supports a disciplined placement claim for Section 2: UNTSO is best analysed as an enduring institutional platform for de-escalation and verification, whose strategic value rises when larger political frameworks collapse.

2.2. UNTSO’s Longitudinal Adaptation: From Armistice Supervision to Modular Peacekeeping Support (1948–2024)

The empirical record supports the literature’s central intuition: UNTSO has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to survive strategic shocks by reverting to core functions—observation, reporting, and liaison—while incrementally repurposing its institutional assets to support new operational demands. Historically, UNTSO emerged from the Security Council’s early reliance on military observation as the least politically intrusive form of intervention following the 1948 war. The mission’s early decades were shaped by armistice supervision and liaison work, including the operational experience of Mixed Armistice Commissions and the practical challenges of maintaining credibility amid hostile narratives (Theobald, 2009; 2015).

UNTSO’s most consequential demonstration of institutional agility occurred during the 1967–1978 period, when regional war, mission displacement, and rapid UN mission proliferation created a demand for scalable operational continuity (Siilasvuo, 1981). Salama’s account shows that following Egypt’s expulsion of UNEF I in 1967, UNTSO remained operational despite severe disruption, becoming “homeless” after the loss of its headquarters and simultaneously being pressured to fill gaps left by the absence of a larger force (Salama, 2023). This mattered because it preserved an institutional foothold and a verification presence precisely when the Security Council was unwilling to authorise a new large-scale deployment.

The subsequent decade cemented UNTSO’s role as a mission incubator. After the 1973 war, UNTSO redeployed to fill an immediate operational vacuum and provided logistical and administrative support to the rapid deployment of UNEF II; it later played a comparable enabling role for UNDOF (1974) and UNIFIL (1978), including through headquarters reorganisation and the embedding/detachment of observers (Salama, 2023). UNTSO repeatedly served as a standing reservoir of trained military observers, field infrastructure, and liaison procedures, thereby reducing start-up time for successor missions and providing continuity across institutional transitions.

This “platform” function remains active to this day. Hilding Norberg et al. explain that UNTSO’s “vanguard rapid deployment capacity” has supported other operations since 1956, including temporary deployment of observers to new missions (including UNSMIS), detachment and reassignment of personnel to establish new missions, and continuing support to neighbouring operations in the region (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). Their associated case study of UNSMIS (2012) identifies the value of rapid military observer deployment under time pressure, tied to an externally led political process and a requirement for immediate monitoring capacity (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). UNTSO’s historical modularity can be reframed as a deliberately institutionalised capability rather than an ad hoc legacy practice.

2.3. Institutional Assets and Constraint Realism: What UNTSO Offers—and What it Cannot—After Resolution 2803

A credible “upgrade” argument requires distinguishing between, on the one hand, institutional assets that are demonstrably valuable and transferable and, on the other, constraints that cannot be bypassed through doctrinal ambition. The literature on older one-dimensional missions and recent UNTSO-focused assessments converge on three assets that remain operationally relevant, even under conditions of profound political distrust.

First, UNTSO’s embedded liaison function operates as a prevention instrument. Comparative work on one-dimensional peace operations underscores that liaison, quiet facilitation, and structured problem-solving can defuse tensions and manage incidents in the absence of formal dialogue, sometimes serving as a practical channel for communication when political interfaces are frozen (Novosseloff, 2022). In the UNTSO case, Hilding Norberg et al. document how liaison reduces misunderstandings and provides a conduit for messages during escalation windows, thereby lowering the probability that tactical friction will translate into uncontrolled escalation (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). This function is not ancillary: it is an operational capability that derives its value precisely from procedural predictability rather than political trust.

Second, UNTSO retains a standing capability base that sustains credibility through routine professionalisation. Hilding Norberg et al. report that, as of 17 May 2024, UNTSO comprised 152 military observers from 30 countries and 211 civilian staff, with 47 nationalities represented overall (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). Beyond numbers, the study emphasises the role of training, strategic analysis, and structured information exchange in reinforcing credibility and enabling UNTSO to support regional mission ecosystems, including through linkages with observers serving under UNIFIL and UNDOF (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). The implication is that UNTSO is a functioning institutional base capable of sustaining observer professionalism and interoperability at relatively low political and resource cost.

Third, UNTSO has demonstrated political durability under contested legitimacy, including in the Israeli case. Israeli scepticism toward the United Nations is not a peripheral variable but a defining feature of the operating environment for any UN mechanism in this arena. Hilding Norberg et al. report that Israel and its population are generally sceptical or critical of UNTSO, yet interviews with Israeli officials and think tanks indicated a preference for UNTSO to remain in place because it can provide a platform for international engagement when required; the open-ended regional mandate was viewed as particularly valuable for flexible implementation and adaptation (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024). This finding is analytically important for the feasibility critique: even where legitimacy is contested, some Israeli interlocutors still appear to assign functional value to UNTSO’s continued presence as a stabilising interface.

3. The Berlin Ministerial Framework and the Observer-Centric Model

3.1 The Berlin Moment: A Reform Benchmark

The 2025 United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial in Berlin was a policy signal that the “future of peacekeeping” agenda has moved from abstract reform talk into an operationally oriented programme of commitments and capability expectations. As Koops and Dal Dosso (2025) emphasise, “the future of peace operations is at a crucial inflexion point, facing a comprehensive set of challenges” (p. 1). To tackle this multidimensional challenge, the Ministerial brought together more than 130 Member States and international partners and concluded with a package of pledges explicitly oriented toward adaptability, technology, and performance under contemporary threat conditions (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2025).

To treat Berlin as a serious analytical framework rather than a rhetorical backdrop, this section triangulates three mutually reinforcing sources that, together, constitute the “state of the art” for peacekeeping’s present and future. First, Berlin’s Ministerial outcome narrative and pledge logic indicate the political ceiling and capability priorities that Member States are prepared to endorse (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2025). Second, the independent study commissioned by the UN Department of Peace Operations—The Future of Peacekeeping, New Models, and Related Capabilities—offers a structured typology of 30 modular deployment models and the enabling capabilities required to operationalise them (Wane et al., 2024). While this paper was published a year before the Ministerial, it is one of the analytical bedrocks on which policymakers discussed the future of peacekeeping in Berlin. Third, the Global Alliance for Peace Operations (GAPO) compendium—an edited collection of 19 short issue papers—provides targeted recommendations across core thematic areas while explicitly situating peace operations amid heightened conflict pressures, legitimacy contestation, and fiscal stress (Koops & Dal Dosso, 2025).

These outputs provide evaluative criteria for testing whether an upgrade to UNTSO is credible in design and feasible in practice. The novelty lies in applying the Ministerial’s most recent reform logic, and the analytical work that underpins it, to UNTSO’s institutional architecture in a systematic stress test of its capacity for modular adaptation (Koops & Dal Dosso, 2025; United Nations Peacekeeping; 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

3.2 Modularity as the Core Design Logic—and the Observer-Centric Baseline

Across the Berlin-linked reform literature, modularity functions as the central design answer to a world in which large multidimensional missions are increasingly difficult to authorise, finance, and sustain. Wane et al. define modular peacekeeping as designing flexible missions by combining different models, capability “packages,” and modalities, then adapting these as the context evolves (2024). Political realism should shape mission design at inception, from mandates, force composition, information systems, and exit strategy, rather than being treated as an ex post constraint once a mission is deployed.

Among the 30 models, several are directly relevant to UNTSO’s historic posture and plausible reform trajectory:

• Model 4: Ceasefire Monitoring and Observation—“the oldest UN peacekeeping model…to monitor a truce, cessation of hostilities, or ceasefire agreements” (p. 26).
• Model 5: Monitoring, Observation, and Reporting—expanding observation to include a wider set of peace and security issues (p. 27).
• Model 6: Verification—small, expert teams capable of investigating and verifying compliance with interim security arrangements, WMD, conventional weapons, and sanctions regimes (p. 27).

The Berlin framework does not recommend transforming observer missions into enforcement tools; rather, it treats verification, information integrity, and credible monitoring as politically feasible ways to maintain a stabilising UN presence amid fragmentation and distrust (Wane et al., 2024). In parallel, GAPO’s edited compendium frames the broader environment as one of rising conflict intensity and legitimacy pressures on peace operations, reinforcing the plausibility of “less intrusive, more credible, more targeted” mission forms (Koops & Dal Dosso, 2025). The implication is that the question is not whether UNTSO should become a multidimensional Gaza mission, but whether UNTSO can be repositioned as a modular verification-and-liaison platform consistent with the observer-centric models now being revitalised (Koops & Dal Dosso, 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

3.3 Capabilities: From Presence to Performance (Information Advantage, Training, Rapid Deployability)

Berlin’s reform logic is capability-forward. The Ministerial’s emphasis on technological and “data-driven approaches,” alongside pledges for training and specialised enabling functions, underscores a shift from symbolic presence to measurable operational performance (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2025). Wane et al. deepen this by treating capabilities—planning, personnel, leadership, data and information management, strategic communications, information integrity, and rapid deployment—as decisive for whether modular mission designs can work under real-world stress (Wane et al., 2024). The resulting benchmark is demanding: If observer missions are to be defended as strategically useful, they must generate a credible information picture, manage expectations, and sustain political support without expanding into politically untenable mandate areas.

Within the GAPO compendium, the issue paper by Hilding Norberg, Amstutz, Bardalai, Mood, and Phillips argues for institutionalising UNTSO’s historically ad hoc mission-support function by creating a Vanguard Rapid Deployment Capacity for military and civilian observers and other specialists, and for establishing a Centre of Excellence to consolidate advanced training, research, and knowledge-sharing (Hilding Norberg et al., 2025). The significance of this paper is twofold. First, it ties UNTSO to a forward-looking reform agenda rather than presenting it as an exceptional relic; the argument becomes that UNTSO’s platform characteristics can be formalised into a system-level capability for the UN, if designed and resourced accordingly (Hilding Norberg et al., 2025). Second, it clarifies what an “upgrade” must mean in operational terms: not merely adding equipment, but institutionalising training, analytics, and deployability routines that are recognisably aligned with the Berlin capability discourse (Hilding Norberg et al., 2025; United Nations Peacekeeping, 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

However, Berlin’s capability agenda also sharpens the constraint logic that later sections must address. Upgraded information systems and observer training do not automatically translate into operational effectiveness in environments defined by contested attribution, asymmetric tactics, and information operations—precisely the contexts that Wane et al. describe as shaping future threat landscapes (Wane et al., 2024). The analytical task, therefore, is to identify which capability upgrades reinforce UNTSO’s verification-and-liaison logic without pushing it beyond its political and doctrinal envelope. 

3.4 Exit, Sequencing, and Alternatives: Why “Observer Reform” Must be Designed as a Package

A final dimension of Berlin’s reform agenda is the design of exit and transition. The GAPO compendium includes an issue paper dedicated to planning safe-exit strategies, underscoring that missions designed as “temporary” often become prolonged presences in the absence of credible termination criteria and political scaffolding (Interpeace, 2025). In parallel, Wane et al. treat modularity as inherently linked to adaptation over time, implying that mission design must anticipate shifts in political conditions, resource availability, and risk tolerance (Wane et al., 2024). Taken together, the message is that observer missions can only remain credible if they are anchored to explicit political objectives, bounded timelines or benchmarks, and a feasible transition concept—even if that transition is only to a different modular configuration rather than a full withdrawal.

Berlin’s reform literature also confronts the reality that Security Council paralysis can produce non-UN stabilisation responses. GAPO includes a typology of deployment modalities for ad hoc coalitions (Karlsrud & Reykers, 2025), while also warning against conflating peacekeeping with peace enforcement as a default solution in the face of frustration and urgency (Street et al., 2025). For the UNTSO question, this matters because any post-2803 planning space will involve comparison with alternatives: coalitions, sequential arrangements, parallel deployments, and hybridised mechanisms. The strategic utility of a reformed UNTSO must therefore be defended not in isolation, but as a governance-and-credibility option within a crowded field of imperfect choices (Karlsrud & Reykers, 2025; Street et al., 2025).

The following sections apply this Berlin-derived framework to the specific problem of post-7 October rupture dynamics, the Gaza operational environment, and the institutional design requirements of any credible UNTSO repurposing after Resolution 2803.

4. Strategic Reality Check: Exclusion, Path-Dependency, and the Case for Reinvention

Viewed through this institutional lens, Resolution 2803 should not be interpreted as a verdict on UNTSO’s obsolescence, but rather as a policy inflexion point. The resolution makes visible the consequences of organisational inertia: missions that fail to adapt to evolving conflict environments risk being bypassed in favour of alternative models. UNTSO’s challenge is therefore twofold. First, it must identify operational niches where it can supplement the ISF without encroaching upon the political sensitivities or command prerogatives built into the new arrangement. Second, it must undertake internal reform to ensure that its mandate, doctrinal tools, and force structure remain relevant regardless of Gaza’s political trajectory. Modernisation cannot hinge on inclusion in the ISF; it must reflect the broader doctrinal trends highlighted at the Berlin Ministerial, which explicitly call for revitalising observer missions as modular, scalable, and politically realistic platforms (Wane et al., 2024).

4.1 Strategic supplementarity as the governing design principle

A feasible post–Resolution 2803 role for UNTSO turns on strategic supplementarity. The claim is that UNTSO can improve verification reliability and incident clarification at the margins, without becoming the primary implementing instrument of a Gaza security arrangement and without requiring a revised mandate. This approach aligns with the “proactive policy” of selective engagement that has characterised modern Israeli–UN relations (Salman, 2025) and with the Berlin reform logic that prioritises modularity over large, multidimensional templates (Wane et al., 2024).

Three supplementary packages follow directly from what older observer missions do well (Novosseloff, 2022) and what the 2025 Berlin Ministerial agenda identifies as scalable mission functions (Interpeace, 2025).

1. Regional liaison and escalation management. UNTSO’s liaison posture functions as a risk-reduction mechanism precisely when political trust is absent. Interlocutors, including Israeli stakeholders, value this standing platform for engagement even amidst institutional scepticism (Hilding Norberg et al., 2024).
2. Professional observation and reporting. UNTSO’s credibility rests on procedural discipline in recording and corroboration. The model relies on procedures that allow parties to contest conclusions within the method rather than reject outputs as political statements (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2001).
3. Structured dispute management. To preserve a shared factual baseline, UNTSO can adopt tripartite-style incident clarification formats that prevent technical functions from collapsing into politicised stalemate (Interpeace, 2025).

4.2 Systemic Modernisation and the Gaza Operational Test: Doctrinal, Technological, and Personnel Adaptation

If UNTSO's future depended solely on securing a formal role in Gaza, its strategic horizon would remain dangerously narrow. To remain relevant, UNTSO must modernise as a systemic necessity, irrespective of its level of engagement in any single theatre. Comparative research indicates that observer missions fail not because of their size, but because their mandates, tools, and personnel structures lose alignment with their operational environments (Blair et al., 2021; Shetler-Jones, 2008). This misalignment is particularly acute in Gaza, where the “verification vacuum” created by Resolution 2803 requires a sophisticated technical response that a legacy observer doctrine cannot provide.

The modernisation of UNTSO should be driven by three imperatives that align with the Berlin reform logic of transforming legacy missions into agile, deployable assets (Wane et al., 2024). First, UNTSO must retain a strictly delimited focus on verification, reporting, and liaison. Expanding into peacebuilding, human rights investigations, or political mediation introduces “role conflict” and dilutes technical credibility, a risk identified in critiques of integrated mission structures (Shetler-Jones, 2008). In the highly polarised context of Gaza, mandate narrowness is not a weakness but a strategic strength; it enables the technical neutrality and operational resilience required to survive political exclusion pressures. Second, Gaza’s operational environment, defined by dense urban terrain, subterranean infrastructure, and obscured movement, precludes the use of the classic “binocular” observation doctrine (United Nations Country Team, 2026; World Bank, European Union, & United Nations, 2025). For instance, visual confirmation requirements are often impossible in built-up areas like Shujaiyya, where attribution is contested, and lines of sight are blocked (United Nations Country Team, 2026). Modernisation, therefore, requires integrating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), and commercial satellite imagery (Findlay, 2001). These tools augment traditional observer capabilities, allowing for the documentation of violations in access-restricted or politically sensitive environments with a level of demonstrable accuracy that legacy methods lack.

Third—personnel diversification and regional legitimacy. While maintaining the core expertise of traditional contributors (e.g., Norway, Sweden, Canada, Austria) is vital for procedural continuity, the evolving diplomatic landscape necessitates engaging regional actors such as the UAE and Jordan. Personnel diversification enhances the mission’s political legitimacy and expands its operational talent pool (Myers & Dorn, 2022; Theobald, 2015). In a “Gaza-plus” scenario, the inclusion of regional observers provides a layer of political bedrock that can buffer the mission against local scepticism.

These modernisation imperatives imply that transferability to Gaza depends entirely on modality design. A Gaza-facing package must be a “technical add-on” rather than a “mission expansion.” By integrating the technological upgrades mentioned above with a disciplined evidentiary architecture, UNTSO can provide a verification layer that remains usable despite intermittent access and high contestation. This reform pathway transforms UNTSO from a legacy mechanism into a capability-forward instrument of “operational diplomacy,” fulfilling the Berlin Ministerial’s call for modular, data-driven peace operations (Wane et al., 2024; Interpeace, 2025).

4.3 Modality Life-Cycles: Exit Logic and Political Preconditions

Berlin’s emphasis on “safe-exit strategies” is relevant here only at the level of the Gaza-facing modality, not at the level of UNTSO as a Mission. Interpeace (2025) warns that deployments without defined transition criteria either drift into open-ended presence or terminate abruptly, both of which can undermine stability. The implication is therefore procedural: UNTSO's open-ended regional mandate remains unchanged (United Nations Security Council, 1948, 1949), while any Gaza-facing verification and liaison cell is designed as a time-bound add-on governed by explicit benchmarks that prevent mission creep.

Exit criteria apply to the modality. They should be defined ex ante and tied to verifiable indicators such as sustained reductions in verified incidents, improved liaison performance, or the establishment of routine deconfliction channels that reduce reliance on third-party clarification (Interpeace, 2025). Political preconditions function as operational scaffolding. Verification mechanisms cannot substitute for political accompaniment, and monitoring arrangements become fragile when consent, access, or compliance incentives collapse, as illustrated by UNIFIL’s experience under contested conditions (Wood, 2025). For that reason, the Gaza modality should be explicitly conditioned on minimum operating requirements, including access, liaison functionality, and a viable deconfliction framework.

Exit does not imply institutional withdrawal. Because UNTSO remains a standing regional platform, the Gaza-facing cell can sunset through redeployment and suspension of Gaza-specific SOPs, while retaining the option of reactivation if conditions deteriorate and consent is restored. This “redeploy–reactivate” logic lowers the political stakes of adoption and signals that the UN is not embedding an indefinite footprint in Gaza through functional expansion (Interpeace, 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

5. Trust Architecture—Managed Disagreement Protocols

A modernised UNTSO must rest on a clear understanding of how verification mechanisms function as stabilisers in hostile environments. The literature demonstrates that third-party verification is most effective not when political consensus exists, but when procedures can reliably shape behaviour in contexts of limited trust. This section elaborates on the theoretical foundation for a reformed UNTSO, the institutional risks that must be mitigated, and the mechanisms needed to preserve credibility amid structural political tension.

5.1 The Verification Mechanism as Conflict De-escalation Tool

Verification mechanisms reduce escalation risk primarily by limiting uncertainty and constraining opportunistic reinterpretation of events. The core effect is behavioural rather than relational. Procedures shape interaction by lowering information asymmetries, reducing miscalculation, and increasing the political cost of non-compliance when violations can be documented through a predictable and contestable method (Maekawa, 2024).

In the post–Resolution 2803 environment, UNTSO does not require political trust to add value. It requires predictable access modalities, disciplined evidentiary thresholds, and a dispute-processing routine that allows parties to contest conclusions within a bounded process. A Gaza-facing modality should therefore be structured around an incident life-cycle that is legible, auditable, and difficult to politicise through discretion:

1. Notification: Incident logged through designated liaison points.
2. Classification: Preliminary check against an agreed parameter set for what is verifiable.
3. Collection: Evidence collection limited to permitted sources and recorded in a standard case file.
4. Provisional Finding: Issued with an evidentiary checklist attached.
5. Contest Window: Parties may challenge the evidentiary basis or propose additional information.
6. Clarification: A meeting was convened on a fixed timeline for contested cases.
7. Closure: The case is either confirmed, revised, or recorded as a disagreement with explicit reasons.

This routine makes “disagreement” a normal output category rather than a crisis condition, preserving a shared procedural baseline even when political consensus is absent.

5.2 The Coherence Problem: Aligning Mandate, Culture, and Operations

Verification only works if the mission is internally coherent. Rietjens and Ruffa (2019) identify three forms of “fit” required for UN operations: strategic fit, cultural fit, and operational fit. Their analysis of the UN peace operation in Mali shows that misalignment produces friction, confusion, and degraded performance.

Applied to UNTSO, coherence requires

• Strategic fit: Keep the remit tightly bound to verification and liaison. Expansion into peacebuilding, mediation, or human rights monitoring invites role ambiguity and the mandate overreach dynamics highlighted by Shetler-Jones (2008).
• Cultural fit Train observers for hybrid roles as military professionals operating within UN administrative procedures while maintaining credibility with host counterparts in a context where perceptions of bias carry immediate costs.
• Operational fit Integrate UAS, OSINT, and satellite analysis as augmentation tools, not substitutes for liaison and observation. Technology should strengthen judgment and documentation, not displace them.

Without these three elements, UNTSO’s procedural credibility erodes. With them, UNTSO can function as a technically reliable and politically resilient stabilisation instrument.

5.3 The Intelligence Integration Problem: Avoiding Security Overreach

A modernised verification modality must draw a hard boundary between verification and intelligence. Shetler-Jones (2008) cautions that when intelligence structures dominate mission architecture, neutrality erodes and host-state trust collapses. The Gaza-facing modality requires an explicit intelligence firewall:

• Permitted Sources: Limited to direct observation, agreed sensor outputs, and corroborated public information.
• Prohibited Sources: Signals intelligence, human intelligence tasking, and non-public intelligence provided by a party where the chain of custody cannot be audited.
• Data Handling: Enforceable rules requiring time-stamped case files with access restricted to designated staff.
• Non-sharing Rules: Prohibiting the modality from acting as an intelligence conduit to external actors.

This firewall is essential for regional acceptability and ensures UNTSO’s advantage lies in disciplined verification rather than coercive functions.

A modernised UNTSO must therefore avoid replicating this model. Its role must be narrowly defined as a technical verification mechanism—not a regional intelligence hub and not a planning apparatus for broader UN strategy. This limited role is essential to avoid:

• Regional alienation, particularly from Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and Arab League states, which may occur due to the perception that an expanded UNTSO is encroaching on sensitive security prerogatives.
• Intra-UN tension, where humanitarian or development actors interpret an expanded intelligence role as mission creep.
• Credibility loss, since legitimacy derives from procedural neutrality and clear boundaries—not from consolidated intelligence functions.

Maintaining a strictly technical remit is thus not only doctrinally appropriate; it is strategically indispensable.

 5.4 Host-Country Consent as System Design: Protocols, Review Cycles, and Sovereignty-Sensitive Boundaries

The durability of any Gaza-facing UNTSO modality depends on sustaining host-country consent as an ongoing operational relationship rather than a one-off legal threshold. Consent is produced and maintained through design choices that make cooperation predictable, auditable, and reversible under stress (Gregory & Sharland, 2023). Under the constraint-realism logic established in Section 4, this requires an architecture that preserves UNTSO’s standing regional mandate while enabling a time-bound, task-specific verification and liaison package to operate without triggering a recognition trap or mandate-politics backlash.

First, consent should be anchored in parallel technical instruments rather than a single tripartite political agreement. A tripartite Memorandum of Understanding that bundles the UN, Israel, and Palestinian authorities into one document risks collapsing operational coordination into a recognition dispute. A more viable design is a set of bilateral, task-specific technical protocols or parallel exchanges of letters that authorise access, specify liaison points, and define the parameters of verifiable tasks without implying political endorsement or governance assumptions. These instruments should codify a narrow scope of activity limited to verification, liaison, and dispute-management functions and should avoid provisions that could be interpreted as enforcement, governance support, or political mediation (United Nations Security Council, 1948, 1949; Gregory & Sharland, 2023).

Second, consent should be structured through short, renewable review cycles that keep the modality “bankable” for a sceptical host-state security establishment. Instead of multi-year sunset clauses associated with conventional mission frameworks, the Gaza-facing modality should operate on a fixed operational period with automatic renewal contingent on continued access and liaison functionality. A 12-month renewable cycle, combined with a pre-agreed performance review, reduces the perceived risk of entrenchment and lowers the political stakes of initial acceptance. The review mechanism should focus on procedural compliance and operational performance rather than political outcomes, assessing whether evidentiary thresholds are consistently applied, whether case files remain auditable, and whether dispute-processing timelines are met. This makes consent contingent on method and performance, not on trust or political convergence (Gregory & Sharland, 2023; Interpeace, 2025).

Third, the design must embed sovereignty-sensitive boundaries that explicitly foreclose role expansion. The modality’s legitimacy depends on a disciplined interpretation of the mandate and a demonstrable avoidance of tasks likely to be perceived as encroaching on sovereign prerogatives. The protocol architecture should therefore specify exclusion zones for function, including investigations into the host’s broader use of force, civilian harm assessments beyond the verification parameters agreed in the protocols, or human rights documentation not directly linked to the modality’s ceasefire-related verification tasks. Clear boundaries protect operating space by preventing role inflation from converting technical monitoring into political contestation (Gregory & Sharland, 2023; United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2001).

Finally, consent must be supported by a managed-disagreement mechanism that treats divergence as routine rather than existential. When a host contests a finding, the modality should shift the locus of dispute from motives to method through a bounded contest window, transparent evidentiary checklists, and auditable case-file procedures.

This preserves cooperation even when political narratives diverge, allowing disagreements to be recorded and processed without paralysing the mechanism or triggering a legitimacy crisis. In this design, consent is stabilised through predictable procedures that incentivise continued engagement while retaining a credible exit option through non-renewal or suspension of Gaza-specific SOPs under the agreed review cycle (Interpeace, 2025; Maekawa, 2024).

Consent is therefore operationalised as a design outcome. Parallel technical instruments avoid recognition traps, short renewal cycles manage political risk, sovereignty-sensitive boundaries prevent role expansion, and managed-disagreement routines protect credibility under contestation. Together, these mechanisms provide a feasible cooperation architecture consistent with the modality logic in Section 4 and the procedural-neutrality requirements of a modernised UNTSO.

6. Failure Modes, Exit Strategies, and Realistic Limits

This section designs for failure at the level of the Gaza-facing verification and liaison modality. It does not propose an exit strategy for UNTSO as a mission. UNTSO remains a standing regional platform operating under its open-ended mandate. At the same time, the Gaza-facing modality is a time-bound, task-specific add-on governed by explicit operating requirements, measurable performance benchmarks, and procedural triggers for suspension, drawdown, and reactivation (Interpeace, 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

The analytical premise is that verification mechanisms stabilise behaviour by reducing uncertainty. Their principal effect is behavioural rather than relational. They do not require trust, but they do require predictable access, disciplined evidentiary thresholds, and a routinised process (Maekawa, 2024). When these conditions degrade, failure must be treated as a design variable rather than a residual category (Blair et al., 2021; Findlay, 2001).

6.1 Scope, objectives, and operating requirements

The Gaza-facing modality is designed to produce three narrow outputs: technical verification, liaison, and dispute-processing. To prevent mission creep, its operational viability is conditioned on minimum operating requirements that function as pre-commitments.

• Access baseline: Limited, escorted access to pre-identified verification points with a defined procedure for ad hoc requests.
• Liaison functionality: Designated points of contact capable of receiving, acknowledging, and routing incident notifications within defined timeframes.
• Deconfliction framework: A standing protocol for movement coordination and observer security assurances.
• Evidentiary discipline: A published evidentiary checklist and chain-of-custody requirements ensuring outputs remain contestable within method rather than rejected as political statements.
• Intelligence firewall: Strict prohibitions on signals intelligence and human intelligence tasking (Shetler-Jones, 2008).

6.2 Managed disagreement workflow and the incident life-cycle

The modality operationalises managed disagreement through a standard incident life-cycle. The goal is to make disagreement an administratively routine outcome rather than a crisis condition.

1. Notification: Incident logged with a time-stamped entry through designated liaison points.
2. Classification: Check against agreed parameters to determine whether the incident is verifiable, partially verifiable, or non-verifiable within the modality’s remit.
3. Collection: Evidence limited to permitted sources with chain-of-custody documentation in a standard case file.
4. Provisional finding: Issued with an evidentiary checklist specifying which thresholds are met and which are not.
5. Contest window: Parties may submit admissible additional information or challenge the evidentiary basis.
6. Technical case review: Convened through the Technical Case Review Mechanism to review evidence sufficiency and method compliance.
7. Closure: Case closed as confirmed, revised, or contested, with explicit reasons recorded for any evidentiary gap.

6.3 Failure tiers and procedural responses

Failure is treated as gradated. The thresholds below are illustrative design parameters to be negotiated in the technical protocols and adjusted after initial operating experience. The logic is fixed: disagreement is normal, strain requires mode-switching, and breakdown requires suspension.

Tier 1: Routine contestation

• Description: Disagreement occurs, but the mechanism meets benchmarks.
• Triggers: Contested-case rate remains below 30 percent. Mean time to close contested cases is ≤ 48 hours. At least 90 percent of incident alerts are acknowledged within 15 minutes.
• Response: Cases are closed as contested where necessary. Operations continue. Disagreements are tracked as data points rather than treated as legitimacy crises.

Tier 2: Systemic credibility strain (mode-switching)

• Description: A pattern of unresolved contestation or benchmark slippage emerges.
• Triggers sustained for 30 days: Contested-case rate exceeds 50 percent. Mean time to close contested cases exceeds 72 hours. Three or more denied access requests to pre-identified verification points occur without an agreed substitute arrangement. Documented deviations from the evidentiary checklist recur.
• Response: A structured mode-switch is initiated
  Parameter narrowing reduces verification to high-verifiability incidents only.
  Evidence tightening raises the bar for confirmation, increasing partially verifiable classifications. Independent audit initiates a time-bound external technical review of procedural compliance and data integrity (Interpeace, 2025).

Tier 3: Catastrophic breakdown (suspension and redeployment)

• Description: Conditions become incompatible with neutrality, safety, or integrity.
• Triggers: Attack on personnel. Sustained denial of access. Systemic breach of chain-of-custody requirements. Total collapse of liaison points.
• Response: Suspension of Gaza-specific standard operating procedures. Redeployment of observers to UNTSO regional tasks in a standby posture. Archive protection for all case files and audit logs. Suspension concerns the Gaza-facing modality only and does not affect UNTSO’s regional mandate or baseline activities.

6.4 Political accompaniment as operational requirement

Berlin-linked reform outputs are explicit that technical mechanisms cannot substitute for political accompaniment. As seen in UNIFIL’s experience, technical competence cannot offset a total collapse of political will or operating space (Wood, 2025). In this design, political accompaniment functions as scaffolding. It does not resolve the conflict, but it protects the technical space from immediate collapse by anchoring access, liaison functionality, and deconfliction as non-negotiable operating requirements.

The Gaza-facing modality functions as an escalation brake, not a guarantee of stability. Its value lies in imposing procedural friction through logging, evidentiary discipline, and auditable closure categories that slow decision cycles and reduce miscalculation. When that friction cannot be sustained, the modality exits through suspension and redeployment rather than improvisation, thereby protecting UNTSO’s standing regional role and the UN’s long-term technical credibility (Interpeace, 2025; Wane et al., 2024).

A modernised UNTSO must thus embrace its limits while maximising its unique value: delaying escalation, clarifying contested events, and ensuring that decisions are made with reference to verified information rather than conjecture. This is the essence of operational diplomacy: procedural friction that creates space for strategic restraint.

7. Conditional Engagement and Operational Diplomacy

UNTSO’s viability after Resolution 2803 depends on a cooperation model that accepts structural political estrangement while protecting independence and technical neutrality. The preceding sections establish two premises that govern Section 7. Israeli scepticism towards UN political mechanisms is a binding constraint rather than a variable to be overcome. Any Gaza-facing engagement is designed as a time-bound operational modality under UNTSO’s existing mandate, governed by explicit operating requirements, auditable procedures, and suspension and reactivation triggers. Section 7 translates these premises into an engagement logic that makes cooperation feasible without presuming political reconciliation.

The conceptual anchor is operational diplomacy as a mode of interaction organised around procedural credibility rather than normative convergence. Kreutzer (2014) frames operational diplomacy as sustained, pragmatic engagement that prioritises problem-solving, logistics, coordination, and methodological discipline. In the Israel–UN context, this aligns with a shift from dismissal to selective utilisation of UN mechanisms when they deliver verifiable practical value, even amid political hostility (Salman, 2025). The proposition is therefore narrow. Cooperation becomes sustainable when contestation is channelled into method and managed as routine, rather than expressed through delegitimisation of the mechanism itself.

7.1 Conditional utilisation as a managed consent process

Consent in this design is sustained through predictable procedures rather than symbolic agreement. Gregory and Sharland (2023) argue that host-state consent is stabilised when it is embedded into mission design through transparency, responsiveness, and incentives for continued cooperation. In the present setting, the design implication is to embed consent at the level of the modality rather than through broad political compacts that collapse distinct relationships into a single instrument and risk recognition traps.

Conditional utilisation is structured through two instruments.

1. Parallel technical protocols. Operational access and liaison are authorised through bilateral, task-specific exchanges rather than a tripartite agreement. This decouples cooperation from political symbolism while preserving a clear administrative basis for access, coordination, and performance review.
2. Sovereignty-sensitive safeguards. Cooperation is organised without subordination. While the modality negotiates access and process parameters with relevant authorities, it retains internal control over methods, evidentiary classification, and case-file integrity. Host-state concerns are addressed procedurally through the contest window and TCRM, not through veto authority over findings.

7.2 Information integrity and the intelligence firewall

A credible verification modality requires a hard boundary between verification and intelligence. When intelligence functions dominate, neutrality erodes, and host-state confidence collapses, particularly in environments characterised by contested attribution and information operations (Shetler-Jones, 2008). The Gaza-facing modality, therefore, depends on an explicit intelligence firewall as a condition of political feasibility and regional acceptability.

The firewall is operationalised through four constraints.

• Source discipline limited to direct observation where feasible, agreed sensor outputs, and corroborated public information with documented provenance.
• Chain-of-custody rules require time-stamped, auditable case files linked to the evidentiary checklist.
• Non-sharing rules prohibit the modality from acting as an intelligence conduit to external actors or accepting opaque, non-auditable inputs as substitutes for verifiable evidence.
• Purpose limitation: tying the collection strictly to the agreed verification parameter set.

These constraints are not add-ons. They are the basis of procedural credibility in a context where accusations of bias are structurally likely. 

7.3 Preventing weaponisation through procedural safeguards

Verification outputs in this arena carry a persistent risk of weaponisation through propaganda, legal manoeuvring, or selective public invocation. Weaponisation undermines cooperation and corrodes the mission’s standing as a neutral factual baseline. The mitigation strategy is procedural rather than rhetorical.

Three safeguards anchor this approach.

• Standardised case files that make the basis of findings transparent and auditable.
• A bounded contest window that channels disputes into method and reduces incentives to contest findings solely through public denunciations.
• External technical audit under credibility strain. Consistent with the Tier 2 mode-switching logic in Section 6, persistent benchmark slippage or integrity concerns trigger a time-bound external review of procedural compliance and data integrity, focused on method rather than adjudication of political claims (Gregory & Sharland, 2023).

Operational diplomacy, as expressed in this paper, is presented as a bounded coexistence model. It offers Israel a technical channel that can reduce miscalculation without demanding political trust or implying recognition. It offers the UN a capability-forward mechanism that is politically insulated and consistent with the modality discipline established in Sections 4–6. The claim is therefore reviewable and deliberately limited. Under binding political constraints, sustainable cooperation is possible only when organised around procedures that are contestable, auditable, and designed to treat disagreement as a routine operational outcome. This is the functional meaning of operational diplomacy in the post–Resolution 2803 setting.

8. Policy Implications and Next Steps: A Constraint-Realist Case for Modular Reform

The post-Resolution 2803 environment is not a neutral design space; it is a political battlefield shaped by power, sovereignty, and reputational risk. In this setting, UNTSO will not be “saved” by historical legacy or normative appeals to multilateralism. It will either prove narrow operational utility under hostile conditions or it will be bypassed by bespoke arrangements engineered to minimise UN political exposure. The central implication of this paper is therefore blunt: if the UN seeks a role in Gaza-adjacent security oversight, it must build a mechanism that survives deep mistrust, treats Israeli scepticism as a binding constraint, and avoids recognition traps. That mechanism is not a new mission. It is a mandate-stable, time-bound modality under UNTSO’s existing framework—designed to produce a neutral factual baseline through auditable procedure rather than political consensus.

The reform logic is intentionally modest. The goal is not to construct a comprehensive stabilisation architecture, but to establish a bankable verification-and-liaison layer that can operate even when legitimacy is contested, incentives diverge, and external sponsors change. In practice, this means operational diplomacy in its most stripped-down form: cooperation organised around method, not motives.

For Israel, cooperation with a modernised UNTSO modality is not a ‘concession’; it is a risk-management instrument. Israel’s core problem in a post-war environment is not the absence of international mechanisms—it is the absence of mechanisms it can tolerate without strategic or political cost. A constraint-realist modality offers a low-profile channel for incident clarification and de-confliction that does not demand political trust, does not require formal recognition of rival authorities, and does not convert Gaza into a permanent UN governance footprint. The Managed-Disagreement Protocol strengthens this proposition by ensuring that Israeli security assessments are not politically “defeated” in public; they are processed inside a bounded, auditable routine. Disagreement becomes an administratively managed output category, not a legitimacy crisis.

For the UN, the value proposition is institutional survival through performance. The “Berlin 2025” modular reform logic raises the bar: legacy missions remain viable only if they can deliver targeted capability under constraint and demonstrate measurable output without mandate overreach. A UNTSO modality—time-bound, technically disciplined, and designed for mode-switching and suspension—would be a credible proof of concept that the Secretariat can adapt an old mission to contemporary threat conditions without inflating its political profile. Just as importantly, it protects the UN from the reputational trap of promising what it cannot operationally deliver. The design is built around what is feasible, not what is rhetorically attractive.

8.1 From theory to field deployment: a realistic sequencing pathway. If this is to be more than conceptual architecture, it must be deployable without triggering the very political backlash it is designed to avoid. Operationalisation should proceed in three steps:

1. Technical Protocols First: Access points, liaison channels, and verification parameters should be established through bilateral technical protocols (or parallel exchanges of letters) rather than a tripartite MoU. This is the only viable way to decouple operational cooperation from recognition politics.
2. A Time-bound Pilot: The Gaza-facing cell should run as a 6–12 month pilot governed by the Minimum Operating Requirements (MORs), the intelligence firewall, and the incident life-cycle (including the TCRM). This is where bankability is earned: the modality is “on probation” by design, and its footprint is explicitly reversible.
3. Scheduled Performance Reviews: The point of the failure tiers is not to dramatise breakdown, but to prevent strategic entrapment. Mode-switching and suspension are not embarrassing outcomes—they are credibility-preserving mechanisms that protect personnel and UNTSO’s standing regional role.
   Success should be defined narrowly: not the achievement of a political settlement, but the maintenance of an auditable factual baseline that reduces miscalculation and slows escalation decision cycles.

The strategic value of bounded cooperation: UNTSO’s historic “quiet durability” is not inherently a virtue; in the current environment, it can easily become a synonym for strategic irrelevance. This paper argues that durability only becomes strategically valuable when paired with demonstrable, modular capability—precisely because the political conditions for expansive UN engagement are deteriorating. A constraint-realist modality is not a technocratic fix; it is a political adaptation to a hard reality: The actors with coercive capacity will default to arrangements they control, and the UN will be tolerated only where it is useful, limited, and procedurally credible.

The choice is straightforward. If the UN and Israel want UNTSO to transform into more than a legacy artefact, they must treat reform as a performance problem under constraint, not a mandate aspiration. Modernise UNTSO as a modular verification platform with managed disagreement at its core, and the UN retains a narrow but real role in one of the world’s most combustible theatres. Fail to do so, and UNTSO will persist institutionally while disappearing strategically—the worst outcome for an organisation that survives on relevance.

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[1] The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views of any institutions or employers with which the author is or has been affiliated.