An editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz called on the Israeli government to immediately recognize Kosovo, arguing that "the struggle of the persecuted Kosovar people for independence is reminiscent of the struggles by other nations for the right of self-determination." Of course Haaretz was not talking about the Palestinians, but about the "State of Israel, which was established in the wake of the Jewish people’s struggle for self-determination" ("Recognize Kosovo," Haaretz, 18 February 2008).
By identifying
Haaretz’s desire to recognize Kosovo flows not merely from selfless concern for the oppressed, but is also explicitly opportunistic. First, doing so would please Washington (Israel’s main sponsor), and second it provides a "unique opportunity" to "prove that the Jewish state is not an enemy of the Muslims" — though Haaretz was careful to note that Albanians in Kosovo are "good" Muslims "who ha[ve] not identified with extremist Islamic tendencies and ha[ve] kept a distance from Israel’s opponents in the Arab world."
A radically different Israeli view by Haaretz columnist Israel Harel echoes the position expressed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 1999 when NATO forces bombed
For
Harel cites as evidence of this "separatism" the claim that "Arab intellectuals and public officials have compiled documents known as ‘The Vision,’ in which they reject
So far, the
Kosovo also presents dilemmas from a Palestinian perspective. John Whitbeck, an international lawyer and former legal advisor to Palestinian negotiators, pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of the Western justifications for recognizing Kosovo: "The American and EU impatience to sever a portion of a UN member state (universally recognized, even by them, to constitute a portion of that state’s sovereign territory), ostensibly because 90 percent of those living in that portion of the state’s territory support separation, contrasts starkly with the unlimited patience of the US and the EU when it comes to ending the 40-year-long belligerent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip" ("If Kosovo, Why not Palestine?" The
Whitbeck advocates that "the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership, accepted as such by the ‘international community’ because it is perceived as serving Israeli and American interests," seize the opportunity and declare independence for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza if "this leadership truly believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a decent ‘two-state solution’ is still possible." To give teeth to this initiative, Whitbeck suggests that Palestinian leaders make clear that if the world fails to recognize and support their state, they will dissolve the Palestinian Authority and seek a one-state solution in all of historic
Yaser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority, made international headlines by suggesting that if negotiations with Israel continued to go nowhere, "we have another option," which is to follow the example of Kosovo. "Kosovo is not better than
Abbas and his other chief lieutenants, Ahmed Qureia and Saeb Erekat quickly jumped on Abed Rabbo, assuring the world that they would do no such thing — they would instead stick to the very "negotiations" that have been going on for fifteen years and that they acknowledge have made no progress. This makes perfect sense. As Whitbeck noted, these leaders are merely clients of the
What they recognize — and were forcefully reminding Abed Rabbo — is that the only principle that applies in such cases is that you do what your sponsors say and it is they, not you who decide the law. The Albanian leaders in Kosovo only acted when their US-EU sponsors told them to, and Abbas and his cronies will do the same.
So what if anything can observers of the
Imposed partitions in Palestine, Ireland, India, Cyprus and — it is to be feared — Iraq have one thing in common: they are always justified by their advocates with the claim that though perhaps less than ideal, they at least have the advantage of finality and clarity, and once the initial unpleasantness passes, everything will settle down into a new normality. As
But in every case, such partitions have generated new conflict, injustice and ethnic cleansing and have reinforced nationalism and irredentism. What are the chances that
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
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