 If you've spent any time in Israel, then you're probably familiar with the site of UN vehicles. These are typically white jeeps with black UN markings, and they're pretty hard to miss. By looking at their license plates, you can usually know which UN mission they are here with. But why is the UN on the ground in Israel and what do the various missions here actually attempt to do? Here's a quick breakdown of the alphabet soup. UNSO. Firstly, in Jerusalem, we have UNSO. UNSO is the United Nations Treaty Supervision UNSO is headquartered at Government House in Jerusalem, a historical location in the Armona Natsiv neighbourhood, which served as the seat of the British High Commissioner in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate. UNSO has the additional distinction of being the first ever peacekeeping mission established by the UN. UNSO serves as an overall command centre for the other UN peacekeeping missions operating in Israel, which we'll get to later. Besides Jerusalem, UNSO has offices in Beirut, Ismailia and Damascus. As of February 2023, UNSO had 380 personnel comprised of 232 civilians and 148 soldiers assigned to its mission. After Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway were the main contributors to the mission, with 12 soldiers from each deployed to assist in their objectives. UNDOF. Another UN peacekeeping mission active here in Israel is the UN Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF for short. UNDOF's remit is to maintain the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria, which was achieved in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. UNDOF operates in a regular border crossing between Israel and Syria near Alkunetra, which provides for exceptional passage of Druze residents between the two countries and some commercial goods. Israel and Syria are formally at a state of war, and this is the only crossing through the purple line. The name given to the ceasefire line agreed between the two countries, which now serves as the de facto border. UNDOF also maintains and patrols a demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria. This is called the area of separation and exists between the Alpha Line on Israel's site and the Bravo Line on the Syrian side. DMZ is 235 square kilometers in size, and UNDOF maintains 44 permanently manned stations and 11 observation posts within it. Although the UN is supposed to maintain this small tract of land as a demilitarized zone, clashes between Syrian government forces and rebel groups broke out within it during the Syrian Civil War. UNDOF is active on both monitoring the situation in the DMZ, as well as monitoring Israeli activity in the Golan Heights, which it considers to be illegally occupied from Syria. According to figures released in 2023, UNDOF has just over 1,000 troops at its disposal. UNIFIL. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon or UNIFIL is deployed in support of the UN resolutions which confirm Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Their job involves maintaining the integrity of the blue line, which now exists as the de facto border between the two countries, which, like in the case of Syria, are officially at a state of war. UNIFIL works in cooperation with both the IDF and the Lebanese Army, the LAF, to physically mark the blue line by placing conspicuous blue barrels along it. The work has to be carried out with centimetric precision. UNIFIL acts as a go-between between the Israeli Army, the IDF, and the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF. It is supposed to help the LAF to ensure that the area of southern Lebanon between the blue line and the Lattani River is not used for hostile activities. UNIFIL is a much bigger operation than the UNSO. According to a 2017 mission profile infographic posted on the UN website, it conducts 450 operational activities per day, is composed of troops from 41 countries, and is more than 10,000 peacekeepers at its disposal alongside a small fleet of ships, helicopters, and even hospitals. Unfortunately, the efficacy of UNIFIL has been called into question time and again. In 2018, the IDF discovered a far-reaching network of more than 10 tunnels dug by Hezbollah into southern Israel intended to provide logistical support for a mass invasion of Israel's border towns. The IDF's operation Northern Shield lasted 23 days and some of the tunnels it found dug by Hezbollah were 25 meters deep and 2 meters wide. Needless to say, all these tunnels were dug literally under the noses of the more than 10,000 UN peacekeepers whose mission is supposed to involve keeping this part of Lebanon demilitarized. UNRWA But that's not all the UN missions operating in Israel. Perhaps the hardest to pronounce, UNRWA is the United Nations Relief Works Agency and is specifically dedicated to supporting the human development needs of Palestinian refugees who were displaced during the 1948 conflict. UNRWA can be thought of as a more practical and humanitarian mission than those mentioned previously and is involved in providing schooling and food donations to those living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. TIPH In Hebron the UN formally operated yet another peacekeeping mission focused on Israel. This one was called the Temporary International Presence in Hebron or TIPH for short and I have no idea if there is any way to pronounce that as a word like TIFF. It was intended to monitor the situation in Hebron, ensure the separation between the Palestinian Authority controlled part of Hebron H1 and the Israeli controlled part of Hebron H2. TIPH was established in 1994 and was staffed predominantly by observers from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. In 2019 Israel decided to not renew the forces mandate which effectively closed it down. UNSCO Although it sounds very much like UNESCO which is another UN mission, UNSCO is in fact its own thing. It stands for United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process. UNSCO can be thought of as heading the UN diplomatic and political system with regard to its attempts to be of assistance in the UN-Palestinian conflict. UNSCO has offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza and is organized into four units. According to its website, its team of coordination officers, quote, maintain continuous engagement with a broad range of interlocutors including Palestinian and Israeli government officials, unquote. Currently Norwegian politician Tor Wenesland is the UN Special Coordinator and the head of its mission. OUNHCR Finally we have possibly the most cumbersome acronym of the lot, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. To give people any chance of being able to pronounce it in a conversation this is shortened to OHCHR. I would pronounce that OSIR although your guess is probably as good as mine. OSIR was established in 1996 and has field offices in East Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron and Ramallah. Those are all the admissions that I am aware of and if I forgot any please leave a link in the comments.