Day: May 24, 2011
Own goal
Serbian President Boris Tadic is apparently prepared to skip a summit of Central and Southeastern European leaders in Warsaw Friday and Saturday because Kosovo’s president will be present and treated as an equal.
I of course understand Tadic’s domestic political problem. He doesn’t want to be seen acknowledging Kosovo’s sovereignty, which Belgrade continues to contest. He and Foreign Minister Jeremic seem almost in a competition to see who can move more aggressively in the nationalist direction. The Foreign Minister has come out strongly for withdrawal of the international community High Representative from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tadic was pleased the other day to tell Serb school children from Kosovo that Serbia is their country.
This despite the fact that Serbia’s delegation to the EU-hosted talks has met with the Kosovo delegation at a symmetrical table, where rumor has it they will soon be able to announce modest progress on issues like mutual recognition of documents and customs stamps. Tadic needs that, in order for Serbia to gain EU candidacy status for Serbia before calling elections. Kosovo in the meanwhile will try to gain entry into the visa waiver program, whose technical requirements it claims to have fulfilled.
So there appears to be at least some limited progress on practical issues, but Serbia is unwilling to take the next step. Atifete Jahjaga is the constitutionally elected president of Kosovo. Whatever Kosovo’s status, she is clearly its legitimate leader. Tadic needs to learn to make this distinction: between recognizing Kosovo as sovereign and independent, and accepting its leader as its legitimate representative. He should take the advice of Sonja Licht, president of the Foreign Policy Council at the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
I personally believe that the time has come that the policy of the Government is reconsidered in order that more creative solution is found. That solution has to respect the fact that the circumstances have changed in the meantime. We have started dialog with Kosovo and accepted it as a side in negotiations. More courageous and determined steps are necessary.
Tadic’s refusal to go to Warsaw is an own goal. The Americans will certainly want to think more than twice before inviting Tadic to Washington if he is unwilling to join President Obama for this group summit in Warsaw.
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Veh is mir!
The issue is not the 1967 border–President Obama did not ask the Israelis to accept it, but to use it as the basis for negotiation of territorial swaps that would result in a more secure and defensible Israeli border. There is nothing controversial about that. It is what all Israeli prime ministers before Netanyahu have accepted.
Nor did Netanyahu use his speech to Congress to pick at that scab. In fact, he was at pains to close ranks with President Obama as much as possible. But note that he did not talk about “swaps,” which imply equal exchanges of territory, only about generosity.
But he made it clear that he is asking much more than other Israeli prime ministers have been prepared to accept. He wants explicit recognition of Israel as a Jewish state (the existing PLO recognition of Israel tout court is not sufficient), he wants all of Jerusalem (which would presumably preclude part of it being the capital of Palestine), he wants Israeli troops along the Jordan river (not clear to me which way the guns will be pointing), he wants no return of Palestinian refugees to Israel (even though Israel would end up with the lion’s share of the land).
And he expects American support for these positions, which would wreck any near-term hope of a negotiated agreement. So does he really accept the two-state solution? I think not, despite his explicit reference to it as free, viable and independent.
The next big move in this diplomatic game will be at the General Assembly in the fall, when the Palestinians attempt to get a resolution that will “recognize” their state. This is a bit silly, since the GA doesn’t recognize states, and GA resolutions are cheaper by the dozen and often ignored. But Israeli and American opposition to the resolution has made it symbolically important. The GA does recommend states for UN membership, but President Obama has signaled clearly that the U.S. would veto that in the Security Council, which has the final say.
My grandmother would support Netanyahu. I say what she taught me: “oy, veh is mir.”
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Netanyahu channels Jefferson
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke last night at AIPAC. The speech was notable for three things:
- No vision of what peace with the Palestinians would look like–he promised that for today in Congress.
- His assertion that “Israel is America’s indispensable ally.” I thought it was the other way around.
- His welcoming of the Arab Spring, and his related claim that Arabs have equal rights in Israel.
On this last point, I’m glad Netanyahu took the line he did on the Arab Spring, but I’m afraid he was as insincere as the slave holder Thomas Jefferson, whose memorial he visited. Rather than debate complex issues, I’ll quote the State Department’s last human rights report:
Principal human rights problems were institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against Arab citizens…
In Israel proper, see the New Israel Fund. For the occupied territories, pay a visit to B’tselem. Prepare to not like what you read.
The question of whether Israel is indispensable to the U.S. or the U.S. is indispensable to Israel is an important one. The fact is that the U.S. is indispensable to Israel. The United States would survive without the Jewish state, but Israel would not survive without American support.
Like most Americans, I am glad for that support, which helps to ensure Israeli security. But when an Israeli prime minister gets the basic relationship backwards I’ve got to wonder what we are doing wrong.
The answer is too much support and not enough questioning. President Obama did well last week to make clearer what everyone (including Israeli prime ministers before Netanyahu) has always assumed: that a peace settlement would include 1967 borders with land swaps. Putting Netanyahu on the spot was far better than conspiring with him, as Aaron David Miller would have preferred.
I’ll be listening today for what Netanyahu has to say about his vision for a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. I hope it proves better than what I expect.
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