“No one expects that the force would fight Hamas,” a western diplomat told the Financial Times. They argued that the mere presence of the force would make it harder for either side to resume the conflict even if it did “absolutely nothing”.

There are reasons for scepticism about whether the ISF could reliably prevent either side from acting, as illustrated by a recent grenade attack by an Israeli drone near UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. There may be wider lessons from that deployment. You might have a model similarly mandated to patrol and report on ceasefire violations. But in southern Lebanon, they have been pretty toothless.