United Nations Truce Supervision Organization

(UNTSO)

   The first United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operation established in the Middle East, it was originally constituted by UN Security Council Resolution 50 (29 May 1948) to provide advisory and observation support to the Jerusalem-based Palestine Truce Commission. In August 1949, the truce commission observers were reassigned formally as UNTSO by UN Security Council Resolution 73 and assigned the mission of supervising the separate armistice agreements signed at the end of the War of Independence (1948—49) between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. After each of the Arab-Israeli wars, the mission of UNTSO was slightly modified. Following the Sinai War (1956), its personnel patrolled the Sinai Peninsula even though the 1949 Israeli-Egyptian armistice agreement was declared null and void because of Egypt's support forfedayeen terror raids into Israel, and UNTSO peacekeepers supported the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) interposed between Israeli and Egyptian forces. After the Six-Day War (1967), UNTSO remained in place to supervise the cease-fires between Israel and its Arab interlocutors. After the Yom Kippur War (1973), UNTSO staffers were used as an experienced manpower pool for disengagement forces established in the Sinai Peninsula (UN Emergency Force II) and on the Golan Heights (UN Disengagement Observer Force).

   See also Arab-Israeli Conflict.