Kosovo and the question of Palestine

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 25 February 2008




Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence has produced a range of reactions among Israeli and Palestinian observers that reveal their anxieties about their respective situations.

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 Israel with the supposed underdog, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Haaretz implicitly recognizes that there are indeed some striking similarities though not ones it would acknowledge. Kosovo, like Israel, was illegally severed by force of arms from another country against the wishes of the majority population of the whole territory. Both entities came into being and can only survive with the sponsorship and support of the Great Powers of the day who sustain them in violation of international law because it suits their imperial interests. Furthermore, both entities are animated by a virulent ethno-nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy that they claim to have come into being to uphold. In this sense, Kosovo is the latest in a collection of Western-backed pseudo-states that also includes the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq.

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 not identified with extremist Islamic tendencies and ha 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 Serbia and then occupied Kosovo under the pretext of protecting ethnic Albanians in the province from abuses and ethnic cleansing by Yugoslav authorities. (These reports were greatly exaggerated to justify the war. By contrast massive ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Serbs by Albanians since 1999 and NATO inaction to stop it is well-documented.)

For Harel, Israel should identify with Serbia. "Muslims of Kosovo constitute an absolute majority of the population," Harel worries, "and the same is true for the Galilee Arabs," his dismissive term for Palestinian citizens of Israel living in their native towns and villages in the north of the country. Lamenting Israel's failure to "Judaize" the Galilee, he repeats right-wing claims that the Palestinians inside Israel are an ungrateful fifth column receiving too many resources from an over-generous and "impotent" Israeli state. Ignoring the decades of racial, legal and economic discrimination, land confiscation and forced displacement that Palestinian citizens of Israel have suffered and continue to endure, he charges that "Israeli governments have resigned themselves to the blatant, unconcealed separatist actions of the Galilee Arabs" ("Kosovo is already here," Haaretz, 21 February 2008).

read on...

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9328.shtml

[Englander]

1. Livni's real worry

By Akiva Eldar

On midday Wednesday, minutes after it was reported that Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo had threatened to follow Kosovo's example and unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state if the talks with Israel stalled, chief negotiator Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) was on the phone to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Abed Rabbo, he told her, was fantasizing, adding that an official denial was on the way. Livni did not seem concerned. What was worrying her was the possibility that her talks with Abu Ala might not lead to a Palestinian state.

In effect, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) long since declared an independent state conforming to the 1967 boundaries. This November will mark the 20th anniversary of the unborn state. The declaration was issued in 1988 at a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers, which also recognized a Jewish state existing alongside the Palestinian state. Now it appears that if, as Abed Rabbo warned, the negotiations will reach an impasse at the end of the year, that declaration will end up on the trash heap of history.

The talks with the Palestinians are being conducted in the shadow of growing fear in Jerusalem for the fate of the two-state solution. When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz at the Annapolis conference in November that if a two-state solution was not reached soon Israel would be "finished," he was not fantasizing. He and Livni know that if the "Annapolis process" goes the way of the "Camp David process," son of the "Oslo process," the Palestinian Authority will fall in their wake.
The 100,000 salaries of officials and policemen are the only fuel of the respirator that is keeping the PA alive. Jerusalem is well aware of the initiative of Adnan Abu Odeh, a Jordanian statesman of Palestinian origin who was King Hussein's court minister: for some months he has been calling openly for the PA to be dismantled and the keys to be returned to the Israeli military regime.


I heard similar comments this week from one of the most moderate of Fatah officials, a signatory to the Geneva Initiative. If the negotiations bog down at the end of the year, he said, he will demand that the territories be returned to the control of the IDF. "Instead of talking about occupation, we will recognize that we are living in an apartheid state," he said. "Instead of fighting for independence, we will fight for equal rights. We will not allow the PA to become a new version of the Village Leagues, the failed attempt by Israel in the 1980s to cultivate a local leadership in the hope of placing responsibility for day-to-day life in its hands."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/957168.html

[bemildred]

2. Very interesting.

What happens if the PNA votes to dissolve itself?

[Englander]

3. It's very likely we're going to find out, at this rate.

[pelsar]

4. opinions....

so should the "Kosovans have their own self determination in the "heart of serbian?.....

[Englander]

5. More gibberish? Lucky me.