Modern civilians have probably never heard of the Canadian post to preserve the world in the gas sector, but as Old French dispatch He assured his readers, his name was “universally known.”
Ten years after the bloody foundation of 1948, Israel, who was born in the Montreal-Creed General. Edson Louis Millard (ELM) Burns, a veteran of both world wars, was a man whom the world trusted to stand between Israelis and Palestinians and keep a conflict in fear.
With US President Donald Trump The proposal is provided to read In order to put an end to the war in gas, conditionally accepted by both Israel and Hamas, and with countries considering whether they can contribute to military, humanitarian and administrative efforts – Burns experience indicates the sensitivity and problems forward.
Among them: coordination and caring for displaced Palestinians; provision of basic services; Botins who do not want to disarm; And potentially hostile confrontations with forces on both sides.
Much has changed since Berns became the first UN Extraordinary Power commander, the first in the history of a multinational peacekeeping operation to be entrusted in 1956 with the protection and management of a rural strip after the Israeli forces pulled out of the controlled Egyptians.
In books on History-Hamal Abdel Nasser, Israeli David Ben-Gurion from Egypt, and the former Secretary General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold, three cardinal points in the diplomatic labyrinth, which took place in their desire to prevent a return to the war.
The disappointed optimism is unchanged – the need for tireless work for the best result, while ready for the worst.
Or, as Berns wrote in his memoirs of 1962, “between Arabic and Israeli”: “Who can predict what will happen in the Middle East?”
“No means of peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue is visible, and there is always the possibility that the smoldering conflict breaks into the open flame of the war.”
Canada 'is ready'
Canadians can find the most sharp difference between the fact that and in the meantime, in order to be the fact that their country transferred to the problematic post -war world stage.
IN statement On Friday, he wrote that Canada welcomed the adoption of the post -war plan of Trump and now “strengthen his coordination with international partners to create a fair and long world.”
“We are ready to support the stable, unhindered and large -scale provision of humanitarian aid in gas and all over everything.”
For most of the current conflict, which began on October 7, 2023, Ottawa sang in a diplomatic choir, leaving more complex performances in global or regional powers, such as the United States, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or France.
Last week in the United NationsForeign Minister Anita Anand said that Canada “does not restrain himself from a global call … does not depart from service … (and) does not go from the construction and strengthening of the world.”
But experts say that Canada will experience difficulties with comparing these ambitions in Gaza, where the international administration of the transition proposed by Trump should be supported by military stabilization and strengthened the provision of assistance.
“One of the main needs is … shoes on earth, and we are stretched there,” said Jane Bowlden, a professor of political science at the Royal Military College.
According to Bowlden, the Karni government has taken on a huge increase in defense costs, but “getting results such as more people and more equipment,” Bowlden said.
Walter Dorn, a professor of defense research in the Canadian College of Troops and RMC, who also participated in numerous UN peacekeeping missions, said that Canada is also stretched by existing priorities, including the NATO mission, headed by Canada in Latvia, and pressure from Washington to establish a wider mark in the Arctic.
“For 40 years, about a thousand peacekeepers were deployed in our place, and it grew to 3300,” he said. “Right now, only 20 military personnel.”
'Exciting employment'
Compare that with Canada after the Second World War, which had a military force of more than 120,000 people, a recently expanded defensive budget and a dozen of the Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons patrolling the Heaven of the Cold War.
He also had a foreign minister, Leicester B. Parson, who will receive the 1957 Nobel Prize of the World of 1957 for his role in creating an emergency power of the UN (a feat that Trump would be glad to repeat).
General Berns was the right person in the right place at the right time to take command.
A few years ago, he worked in Ottawa as Deputy Minister for Veterans, when he found out that the UN Secretary General asked the Canadian to lead the organization for a truce in Palestine, a work that included a transfer between the Jewish state and its hostile Arab neighbors.
Canadian Lieutenant General. Eedson Louis Millard (ELM) Berns experience 70 years ago conducts lessons with the world -based plan for the deployment of an international transitional body and gas stabilization forces.
Library archive of Canada
Having raised the commands of the troops in Italy and the North -West Europe during the Second World War, and then ruled the Canadian Association of the United Nations, he was uniquely qualified that he considered “the continuation of my lifestyle as a servant, the first military, then civilian, from Canada.”
“I took the work that was supposed to be completed. The Canadian government wanted me to do this, ”he wrote about the initial annual task. “It seemed that it would be worthwhile and probably exciting employment next year.”
The work included diplomatic fire extinguishing, stamping of coals in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and a series of gas, which were often just a cross -border raid, the exchange of an arrow or a heavily formulated threat of fire.
'Our next and big task'
Not a restless world collapsed in 1956, when Israel invaded Egypt as part of an attempt to open the Suez Canal, joining the British and French troops. This war ended in the creation of the UN power and the Israeli agreement to leave the Egyptian territory, including the gas strip controlled by Cairo.
Speaking before UN Aquarius Session of the UN General Assembly Soon after sunset on November 4, 1956 – after the then Prime Minister Louis Saint Saint -Loran proposed Canadian troops for peacekeeping forces – Parson said that the urgent goal was to find the way “from our current tragic dilemma.”
Seventy years later, the constant settlement, which Parson called “our next and big task,” remains unfulfilled.
Berns was attached to the leading of the UN of 5,000 military personnel, including the Canadian infantry, engineers, pilots, doctors and supply personnel, as well as forces from Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia.
In a photograph published in his memoirs, he shows that under the command of Burns is welcomed in gas -City with a banner written in English and Arabic: “Welcome to the people of the world. Welcome to honorary guests. Speaken as peacekeepers, but not as rulers. ”
'Political traps
Mission report Captain I JJ Svetenham, the second on a business trip of the engineering company, headed by a Canadian, suggests that Berns accepted this message to heart.
Svittenham described the general as: “A gloomy, colorless person who seemed to have no much number in a sense of humor. He was very deliberate. He was impartially dealt with all the contingents, as he was stolen in the form of the UN, which, as he believed, was from his own plan, unlike the Canadian form. “
He added that, in his opinion, Berns was “the right person to command the power (which was) committed to an inactive role, and (was) hedged with political traps.”
The Palestinian boy carries a container with water near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the gas sector.
Eyad Baba AFP through Getty Images
They are one of the same sensitivity and fears that the modern stabilization force may encounter, provided for in the world plan of Trump in Gaza, including:
- How to hide, feed and treat According to estimates, 1.2 million displaced Palestinians: Gazan houses were destroyed, the population had little access to medical care and, according to the examination committee, according to the expert committee, Has existed in the conditions of hunger since AugustField
- How to demilitarize Hamas’s fighters: Burns wrote about his suspicion, but the inability to prove that “able -bodied, young people”, which he saw, traveling between the rural strip of gas and Egypt, were “Palestinian army members who went underground during the Israeli occupation.”
- How to establish legitimacy: Burns believed that his UN power would greet the Palestinians as a kind of liberation for the Israeli departure. Instead, he realized that the meetings that he considered “more or less spontaneous manifestations of joy” were actually demonstrations calling for the return of Egyptian rule in gas. Burns wrote down this by the fact that “there are no effective means for consulting with the wishes of people most injured”, but the special desires of Palestinians in Gaza, still today, is supposed, and not with confidence.
- How to make power: the search for troops from countries that were acceptable for both Israel and Egypt was a problem for burns. Britain and France were widely seen as “aggressors” in the Suez crisis. The Bedes in the Cold War of America and Russia were absent, as well as their close allies in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. This left “a relatively small number of member countries of limited military power,” Bernes wrote. This time, countries advertised as potential depositors due to gas stabilization include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates and Qatar, although any of them can be exposed to Israeli revival.
Prussian is not a world
Dorn, a professor of defense research, claims that Canada can still contribute largely to the future initiative in the field of peace and reconstruction in gas.
“We are a multicultural country with … officers who can speak in Arabic – some of them are my students. We have a positive international reputation without colonial baggage, ”he said.
Bowlden, his colleague in RMC, noted that Canada has a “long -standing tradition of providing the police from all types of police services between international operations.”
There is also a civil experience that will be required, from organizing and conducting elections for the new Palestinian leadership two decades after the latest democratic votes were involved in a huge need for humanitarian and reconstruction support.
But there is one last observation burns that should be listened.
This applies as much to the conflict as in 1957, when the Canadian general led his UN forces in Gas, as to what is raging today, with a peaceful deal, which can put an end to the war, but it is also easy to fall apart at the slightest violation or provocation.
The greatest forces in the world can oblige two warring parties to stop firing from weapons, he wrote, but (they) cannot attract them to the world. ”
