“This study investigates the research question: Can an international institution influence state behavior and thereby contribute to the peaceful resolution of a conflict? This research focuses on the series of interrelated peacekeeping efforts undertaken to help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to 1994, in an effort to determine the relative importance of institutions in a state-centric international system. 

A secondary purpose is to offer some conceptual clarity to the study of peacekeeping by describing and explaining the evolution of peacekeeping operations carried out during and immediately after the Cold War in the Middle East in terms of an international regime. The relevance of this approach to studying peacekeeping is becoming more obvious as the multiple peacekeeping missions conducted in the former Yugoslavia, Congo, Haiti, and East Timor, among others, demonstrate the interrelationship between the missions themselves and the overarching goal of restoring peace in those volatile regions. In complex conflicts involving multiple actors, a study of the relationship between sequential peacekeeping operations and the advancement of peace is likely to produce a richer and more comprehensive picture of the long-term effects of these operations on state behavior than can be derived from discrete case studies of individual missions. “