As the world celebrates the International Day of Living Together in Peace, marked annually on 16 May, we are taking you back to the 1950s, when the UN deployed its first ever peacekeeping force to the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula to help bring an end to the Suez Canal crisis.
The crisis began when Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, and France and the United Kingdom protested. By October of that year, Israeli forces launched an attack on Egypt and occupied Sinai, with British and French troops landing soon after in the Suez Canal Zone.
The UN was unable to resolve the matter in the Security Council, which met for discussions on 31 October and failed to adopt a decision after France and the UK used their veto power, a privilege of the organ’s permanent members.
Those vetoes triggered provisions in the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, adopted by the General Assembly in 1950, which states that if the Council, “because of a lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of peace or action of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Member for collective measures”. […]
Though more than 100 peacekeepers were killed, the operation successfully oversaw the withdrawal of British, French and Israeli armed forces from Egypt.
Following the swift dispatch of UNEF to the area, the French and British forces left the Suez Canal Zone by 22 December 1956, and the withdrawal of the Israeli forces was completed by 8 March 1957. Läs artikel