Kosovo’s declaration of independence has sparked concern in certain circles in Israel. The day may not be far off when the Arabs of Galilee start clamoring for political independence, too. In recent years, many of them have been cutting themselves off, psychologically and physically, from the Jewish-democratic State of Israel.
The Muslims of Kosovo constitute an absolute majority of the population, and the same is true for the Galilee Arabs. Quite a few Jews have been leaving the Galilee, especially since October 2000, and not many are joining the sparse Jewish population there, despite an array of financial incentives. The events in Kosovo have triggered memories of the thousands who took part in the violence in Wadi Ara in 2000, blocking major traffic arteries and cutting off access to Jewish communal settlements in an outbreak of rioting that coincided with Yasser Arafat’s war of terror.
Memories come rushing back on the use of live ammunition in some cases, and the operation of an underground and terror cells alongside the suicide bombers dispatched from Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
Demonstrations where the Palestinian flag is raised in protest – on the anniversary of Arafat’s death, for example – have become commonplace on campuses in Israel, especially at the University of Haifa. In the Galilee and Haifa, Arab intellectuals and public figures have compiled documents known as “The Vision,” in which they reject Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people.
Before the Annapolis summit, delegates of all the Israeli Arab organizations convened in Nazareth and reached a unanimous decision to call upon Mahmoud Abbas not to cooperate with Ehud Olmert and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. A delegation of Arab Knesset members was sent to meet with the Palestinian negotiators to ensure that the message had sunk in. If the Arab citizens of Israel vehemently oppose recognizing Israel as the Jewish homeland, said MK Ahmed Tibi to Abu Ala (Ahmed Qurei), how can you, the representatives of the Palestinian people, even consider such a thing?
Israeli governments have resigned themselves to the blatant, unconcealed separatist actions of the Galilee Arabs, and this only perpetuates the phenomenon. Shimon Peres, who was appointed by several governments to oversee measures ultimately aimed at increasing the Jewish presence in the Galilee, talked a lot but did little. Political correctness, such as halting the campaign to “Judaize Galilee,” was his guideline.
All the authorities, including those in charge of law enforcement, have resigned themselves to criminal acts (“juvenile delinquency,” the police chief of the Northern District calls the phenomenon of stones thrown at Jewish vehicles, especially near Hamovil Junction), such as encroaching on state land and illegal construction that has reached the scope of tens of thousands of buildings.
Kosovo is already here, even without a formal declaration of independence. Looking at the government’s mode of conduct in the periphery, and even its response to the Qassam rockets in the south, one realizes the futility of expecting it to wake up and fight against those who are challenging Israeli sovereignty in the Galilee.
The leaders of this separatist policy in the Israeli Arab community know very well that apathy and lack of self-confidence also characterize the approach of the agencies of the state – the police, the courts, the Israel Lands Administration, the tax authorities and the Ministry of the Interior – in their dealings with the Arab public. This only increases the motivation to gnaw further at Israeli authority and sovereignty.
Unlike the Kosovars in the Balkans, who are satisfied with their separatist province and do not claim ownership over all Serbian territory, the Arabs of the Galilee, and certainly the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, claim ownership – political and territorial – over all of Israel. The “salami method” pays off.
In the Negev, the Bedouins are taking over large stretches of land almost without hindrance, while Israel’s do-nothing government responds by establishing committees to “sort out” the land issues. The most recent of them is the committee chaired by Judge Eliezer Goldberg, which is now convening.
This inertia will probably continue, with the Zionist state financing, via education, health, national insurance and other state monies transferred to citizens, a population that is de facto establishing a Palestinian state within the sovereign State of Israel – separate, of course, from the Palestinian state that the Arabs are pushing for in Judea and Samaria.
Felix, I have read some on your guy Trotsky and some of his ideas and I must admit that given the ultimate choice between a benevolent Fascist Government and one of Trotsky’s guys I will choose fascism hands down actually ; both are not so dissimilar, Statism is Statism by any name , it just the globalism of Trotsky I hate the most.
I have a simple solution anybody wearing a green diaper on his head with Arabic script should be shot on sight!
The whole situation among the Serbs, Croats and Albanians is very confusing. During the military altercation, the Croats (were expained to me)are disguised as past and present Nazis, The Serbs as the past and current rulers and the Albanians (who nobody seems to know anything) were the others. If minorities throughout our present world decided that they are entitled to secede and form their own country, this world would be made up of many very small countries. Major nations like the US, Canadam France, Italy etc. would have their breakaways. It would seem that the only “safe” countries would be those who are ruled by dictators or worse. In those regimes, those who would secede would simply die agonizing deaths.
Who makes the super powers the arbiters of who runs other countries? Whether their system of government is of our liking should not matter and we should keep out of their internal affairs. Democracy in my opinion is the best system; however, the more I see the inaptitudes of our lame Congress and the lame system of the Knesset, the more I thing we need a semi-dictator to keep order and to defend our right to defend ourselves.
Just kidding of course, I think.
This is why Jews should vehemently oppose Kosovo independence. Instead, ignorant Jewish groups and politicians have inverted victim and aggressor and have perversely identified with the muslim albanians, comparing them to the Jews own plight, when it is the Serbs who Jews ought to be identifying with.
I am really confused – will someone please set me straight on US policy at this time? Is the US disconnecting the war on terrorism from the war on Islamic extremism? How is that done and what good could possibly come of it? Does the US now have a foreign policy that supports every group bent on separation or just Muslim groups bent on separation? Does the apparently new policy mean support for an independent country of Quebec? Would that mean a Basque homeland in Spain? Does that mean a separate state for Muslims within, say, Britain, France, Germany, and anywhere the Muslims feel uncomfortable within a pluralistic and democratic free society?
The war on terrorism has been turned on its head with the acceptance of the self-declaration of independence in Kosovo. I am wondering what the US reaction would be if the EU, Russia and China supported a breakaway US state because that state no longer shared the same values as the other states in the USA.
The whole scenario is perverted. We can no longer disconnect the war on terrorism with the war on Islamic extremism and we can no longer afford the kind of unjustifiable politics of opportunism and appeasement that the EU, the US and the UN practice with regard to terror groups who are being coddled and rewarded for unseating non-Muslims from their own countries.
The hypocrisy and stupidity is out of control.
Felix reads this article throught the prism of his own ideology. How could it be otherwise.
But I had an entirely different take.
Here we were thinking that the lesson of Serbia applied to the Judea and Samaria only and never once thought it applied to what the world recognizes as Israel, namely that part of it called the Galilee and the Negev.
Couple this article with the Observations of Sultan Knish regarding Balkanization.
What Hitler did with the Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans, across Eastern Europe, his former Muslim allies are doing across the world with Muslim populations. With the Volksdeutsche, before a single soldier of the Reich even set foot in a country, the Volksdeutsche would radicalize and foment unrest that would either carve up the target country or justify military intervention to “liberate” them. When the country was conquered, the Volksdeutsche would quickly become occupation forces.
Avidor Lieberman recognizes this and already wants to exchange the Galilee for the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. It is certainly better than the Saudi Plan.
Really excellent article.
This however is all wrong:
“Unlike the Kosovars in the Balkans, who are satisfied with their separatist province and do not claim ownership over all Serbian territory, the Arabs of the Galilee, and certainly the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, claim ownership – political and territorial – over all of Israel. The “salami method” pays off.”
Using the word Kosovar without placing in inverted commas portrays ignorance.
Also above displays ignorance as does Ann Applebaum of the issues in Yugoslavia as a whole.
No the “Kosovars” are not going to settle down into a happy family, because the very term is nonsense, these are Albanians and Kosovar nationalism is a nonsense.
Also ignorance of this:
The Serbs from the beginning faced essentially a Jihad against Yugoslavia.
This also had anti communist connotations. This was part of the common ground for the alliance of US and EU Imperialism with Islam in the Balkans and in Afghanistan.
Faced with this Jihad the old Serb leadership, reared as it was on the Stalinist convention of “multiculturalism” were very poorly equipped to face the Jihad, and were of course totally submerged by the power of the Media and the direct bombs of the US and EU, never mind the scandal of the Hague Kangaroo Court.
How to fight the Jihad, how to fight an Imperialism in its death agony? We are back really to the 30s and the issue of leadership, what kind of leadership actually can do this.
Fascism is a modern phenomenon arising out of the death agony of capitalism.
To understand leadership we have to return to Leon Trotsky and to no other source. This is nothing to do with hero worship which is an abhorrent concept but to do with understand a collective and objective experience. It was not accidental that Stalinism (with involvement from US imperialism) murdered him and decimated his cadre.