The reconstructed Bridge at the Old City of Mostar, Bosnia, a World Heritage site, is a symbol of reconciliation, international cooperation and the coexistence of diverse cultural, ethnic and religious communities.

 

Understanding the war in Bosnia

What did it take to end the war?

Could the process of ending the war be applied to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

When we Israelis look at the world around us, the one thing we really lack and yearn for is peace. The conflict with our Arab neighbors has dragged on for more than a century, and has become ever more intractable with the passage of time after multiple attempts at finding a solution.

It’s 20 years since the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and it is still in the news because of the war crimes trials in The Hague. The war constituted the worst violence on the European continent since World War II - 125,000 people lost their lives and two million were displaced in bitter inter-ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing between 1992 and 1995. The European powers found the conflict extremely difficult to contain. Nobody seemed to know who was fighting who and why, and it all dragged on and on. The press was full of the violence in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, and one read constantly about Mostar, Banya Luka and Tusla.

After years of ineffective diplomatic efforts by the European Union and the United Nations, the Clinton Administration finally took the initiative to send Richard Holbrooke to lead an all-out negotiating effort to end the war in Bosnia and to reverse the greatest collective failure of the West since the 1930s. His forceful style and personality were highly effective in forging a solution. Unfortunately he passed away in 2010. What would happen if a person of his stature, backed by powerful enforcement, was to try to settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians?

The Balkans consisted of six countries of the former Yugoslavia; namely Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. The whole region speaks a common language which is described as South Slavic, although there are strong regional differences. There are three distinct groups: Croats living in Croatia who are mainly Catholics whose writing is Latin script and whose capital is Zagreb; Serbs who live in Serbia and are mainly Orthodox (Eastern Orthodox Church) who use Cyrillic script and whose capital is Belgrade (now called Beograd); and Bosnia Herzegovina sandwiched in between, where the majority are Muslims (also called Bosniaks) and the script is both Latin and Cyrillic, and whose capital is Sarajevo. The problem is that all three groups are mixed up with each other in the different regions.

One strains to unravel the many wars and changes of regimes over the centuries but the key facts are that after the fall of the Roman Empire the area was populated by Slavs who came from Russia and Eastern Europe and it is this group who constitute most of the present day ethnic makeup. In the Middle Ages, the Western and Eastern churches attempted to influence the population. Islam had been rapidly spreading and by the end of the 14th century the region had fallen into Turkish hands and their rule was to last for four centuries with a large influx of Muslims who remain to this day. A major Turkish defeat by Austria signaled the end of Ottoman rule. The Napoleonic Wars intervened with the territory changing hands many times, but eventually in 1878 Austro–Hungarian rule prevailed which blocked Russian influence in the area.   

This rule ended when the young Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife on the streets of Sarajevo. This event not only signaled the end of Austro-Hungarian rule in the area, but also led to political tensions between the great powers that preceded the First World War and then led to the formation of the first Yugoslavia.

With the rise of a militant Germany, Yugoslavia was invaded in 1941 and was dismembered and divided among the Axis powers. The Croats tended to side with Germany under the Ustasa, especially as they saw it as a way of achieving independence from Serbian domination and they copied the Nazis in their genocidal policies. By the end of 1941, most Jews had been deported to concentration camps. Atrocities against the Serbs were widespread. The Serbs formed the Cetnik movement which was on the Allied side. Another Serbian resistance movement, the partisan movement of Josip Broz Tito, envisioned a communist victory over the Germans and a socialist revolution that would create a post-war communist state. Tito triumphed and to enforce his rule over 250,000 anti-communists, opponents and collaborators lost their lives. Croats were especially targeted, as well as the clergy. Muslims were severely punished and their culture suppressed.

After Tito’s death in 1980, the various constituent parts of Yugoslavia began to split up as they yearned for independence amid rising nationalism. Inflation was very severe, strikes and protests became commonplace and a new leader of the Serbian communists – Slobodan Milosevic - emerged. Milosevic entrenched his position and stirred a nationalist fury. With the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989, Croatia and Bosnia opted for independence, which incensed the Serbs.

The events that followed confused an increasingly bewildered Western public. Was it civil war or ancient ethnic hatreds? Who was fighting whom? The Serb paramilitary started a campaign to terrorize, loot and slaughter non-Serbs. For the Bosnian Serbs, the Serb invasion seemed to be a legitimate government of Yugoslavia defending its citizens. Bosnian Croats felt they were vastly underrepresented in all spheres of life and also threatened by the large Muslim population. The Bosnian Muslims were caught in the middle of these two nationalist sentiments and they did not have a reserve country to fall back on. They had only Sarajevo as their capital and it was surrounded and cut off from the outside world. They were literally stuck in the middle of a violent tug of war. The Serbs had the weapons of the former Yugoslav state, tanks and artillery and the other groups were virtually helpless. In the summer of 1992, reports of genocide and ethnic cleansing began to surface. By the end of the year, 70% of Bosnia was occupied by Serbia, and over a million Bosnian Croats and Muslims had fled the country. A massacre of 7000 Muslims took place in Srebrenica under the noses of UN personnel – the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The role of the UN in the Bosnian conflict continues to stir much debate and has been viewed, at best, ineffective and at worst, negligent and bordering on criminal. Western diplomats believed that ancient hatreds were the cause of the war and that all sides were equally responsible. This argument however concealed an extremely important truth: in Bosnia, the Serbs committed 90% of the atrocities – including ethnic cleansing, systematic rape of women and mass executions. UN troops were sent in, unarmed, to keep the peace where there was no peace to keep. An arms embargo and no-fly zones did little to help the situation and an unwillingness to act militarily resulted in abject failure. After years of failed diplomacy, the USA finally began to assert more pressure to end the conflict. Pinpoint air strikes severely damaged Serb supply routes and communications' networks, and bombed the Serbs to the negotiating table. Richard Holbrook, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, was designated as the person to bring a halt to the fighting and negotiate a peace deal.

The parties met at Dayton air force base in Ohio. The Serbs were represented by Milosevic, the Croats by Tudjman, and the Muslims by Izetbegovic. The negotiations lasted three weeks ending in a signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in Paris in December 1995.

The Dayton Accords were a very special negotiating process, carefully crafted and carefully prepared as proximity talks. The press was excluded with only one spokesman authorized to release press reports.

The aims of the discussions were firstly to bring an end to an intractable war, secondly to obtain the release and safe withdrawal of UN peacekeepers who were being held hostage, and thirdly to properly divide Bosnia in such a way that would not lead to its partition and would discourage further conflict. Allied with this was the psychological barrier of a bitter conflict leading to extremely low levels of trust between the negotiating parties. An additional barrier was a military stalemate where no party could win through the application of force. In the end Holbrooke convinced each leader to concede portions of land for the sake of ending the war and obtaining peace in the region.

Holbrooke described the negotiations as “a high wire act without a safety net”.  Nothing had prepared him for the pressure he encountered. His personal style was important. He was incredibly determined and was more of a gladiator than a negotiator.

There are important lessons to be learned from the negotiations.  The parties must have a unified view of the goals to be achieved. Mediation is impossible without a credible threat of force and a certain level of ability to control events on the ground.

The Dayton accords were successful in ending the physical conflict and keeping Bosnia as one entity. It was, however, imperfect “and the best anyone could do”.

Although there has been peace for nearly 20 years and everyone nowadays can go about their business without the threat of violence, the conflict has not yet been entirely resolved. Bosnia is severely divided into a meshwork of city states and cantons. The Bosnians also paid for peace by being forced to write a constitution that enshrined ethnic segregation into law. As a result Bosnia has been left in the hands of entrenched ethnic party chieftains. These have proved to be hurdles that have caused Bosnia to fall behind the other states in their quest to join the European mainstream. Attempts to change the constitution are now before the European Court.

What significance has this story for us Israelis?

 Is there anything in this text to provide a solution – a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Rabin’s assassination came at the same time as the Dayton Accords were being hammered out. Rabin was murdered because he was willing to make compromises for peace. The reaction of the Balkans presidents to this at Dayton was cold-blooded and self-centered; each said separately to Holbrooke that he was taking personal risks for peace.  

Holbrooke spoke many times about the lessons of Bosnia for the Middle East. He was of the opinion that UN Security Council Resolution 242 was the best known resolution which provided a basis for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has appeared in the preamble of almost every Arab-Israeli peace initiative, as it became the only agreed upon starting point for reaching a political settlement. He thought it was the first building block in the “peace process”. This is something of an oxymoron as there is no real peace process and there is no one to negotiate with since the Palestinian Authority is essentially in conflict with itself, and Hamas and Hezbollah seek the destruction of Israel and are backed by the most dangerous nation in the region and perhaps the world – Iran.

He also believed in an enforcement mechanism. Finally, he believed that the war that broke out in Bosnia was not the result of “ancient hatreds” between the people of the Balkans, but rather resulted from a deliberate policy of incitement by the Serbs, on Belgrade television. He said of the Palestinians that if there was incitement in their media, in their educational system and in the constant glorification of violence – there could not be one environment at the peace table and another in the streets. Demonizing one’s opponents is one of the strongest elements to promote violence and a return to war.

Holbrooke might have become US Secretary of State. He was certainly one of the most accomplished diplomats of the 20th century. He would not have tolerated Palestinian incitement. He would have pressured Israel but he nonetheless understood our red lines and the limits of what was achievable.

In our region, concrete issues like the settlement of refugees, borders, water rights, compensation and the status of Jerusalem can be hammered out around the conference table, but this is not going to happen while there is no recognition of Israel’s right to exist and with constant incitement against it. There will never be a peace, no matter what Israel does, until there is a change of heart among the Palestinians.

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About the author

Michael Adler

Michael Adler is a retired Orthopaedic Surgeon who specialised in spinal surgery. His interests now include technology and he has been running a travel group for the last five years. He likes playing ...
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