A new study from researchers at Monash University and Sciences Po has found that nearly two decades of United Nations peacekeeping meetings between Israeli and Lebanese military officials helped contain day-to-day tensions but could not substitute for a political process capable of addressing deeper grievances.
The findings offer a vital lesson for current Middle East diplomacy: getting adversaries into the same room is important, but it is not the same as resolving the political conditions that make renewed violence possible.
The study, Rituals without Rapprochement? Managing Hostility at the Tripartite Meetings in the United Nations Mission in Lebanon, examined a highly secretive series of meetings – called the Tripartite Meetings – that occurred from 2006 to 2023 between the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and representatives from the Israel Defense Force and the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Dr Vanessa F. Newby, from Monash University’s School of Social Sciences, said these meetings successfully reduced immediate border friction on a day-to-day basis, which helped maintain normalcy for civilians in the area of operation. However, this kind of technical deconfliction could not, on its own, resolve the deeper political conflict.
“In the absence of a wider political settlement, the meetings helped contain escalation at the tactical level, while the underlying conditions for future violence remained in place, at times allowing antagonistic emotions, including mutual blame, resentment and victimhood to fester,” Dr Newby said.
"For 18 years, the international community pointed to the Tripartite Meetings as proof that even arch enemies could engage in peace talks. But our research shows that the strict choreography and tactics used to keep the meetings going also limited the scope of discussion.”
Originating as an ad hoc arrangement on the exact day the UN ceasefire ended the 2006 Israel-Hizballah War, the Tripartite meetings occurred every four to six weeks for 18 years. The study found that the meetings built predictable habits that became a ritual.
Professor Chiara Ruffa from the Centre for International Research (CERI), Sciences Po, said that the priority became about keeping parties in the room rather than resolving the actual conflict, creating a false sense of progress towards peace.
“While UN peacekeepers believed that the mere act of sitting down together was slowly building an effective foundation of trust, the long period of calm along the border removed the immediate triggers for more conflict, giving both parties to the conflict – the Israel Defense Forces and Hizballah – a decades-long window to rebuild their military strength and recalibrate strategies for future war,” Professor Ruffa said.
“This finding should not be read as a simple failure of UNIFIL. In a highly constrained political environment, in which the governments of Lebanon and Israel were not speaking to one another, the Tripartite Meetings performed an important conflict-management function by preserving a channel of communication and reducing the risk of immediate escalation, even if they could not transform the conflict itself.”
The study does not attribute responsibility for renewed conflict to UNIFIL or the meetings themselves. Rather, it shows how limited diplomatic formats can help manage hostility, yet leaving deeper political and military dynamics unresolved.
The authors warn that simply “showing up” and creating safe spaces for dialogue is not enough. While the Tripartite Meetings kept a useful communication channel open for 18 years, the study concludes that this very longevity, sustained by the ritual itself, helped mask a lack of political progress.
“The lesson is not that dialogue should be abandoned, but that conflict-management mechanisms must be connected to a wider political process capable of addressing unresolved grievances, competing security claims, and the conditions that make renewed violence possible,” Dr Newby said.
“If the current US-led ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon focus entirely on short-term deconfliction without a parallel push for hard political solutions, they risk merely containing and reproducing hostilities rather than resolving them – proving that while containment can prevent immediate escalation, it cannot substitute for peace.”
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