Frontiers and Ghettos "ss1.04"

COMPARING SERBIA AND ISRAEL

For some, the Serbia-Israel comparison may stretch credulity, given their apparently radical differences. Upon closer examination, however, there are some intriguing similarities. First, while the population of both states is multinational, the state apparatus has been captured by one national or ethnic group. As a result, each country's bureaucracy engages in overt and tacit discrimination, prioritizing the interests of one national community over others. Serbs and Jews enjoy more state protection, official respect, and privileges than non-Serbs or non-Jews.

Second, both Serbian and Jewish nationalists claim territories lying beyond their internationally recognized boundaries. In today's world, globally recognized borders are hard to change, but influential Serbian and Israeli nationalists feel strongly that adjacent lands belong only to them.^[6] Political scientist Ian Lustick calls Israel an "unsettled state" because of its ambiguous relationship to territory and borders, and this term applies to Serbia in the 1990s as well.^[7] Third, the two countries' political discourses share some important themes, with Serbia's concern for its historical roots in Kosovo resembling the attachment many Jews feel toward Judea and Samaria, the biblical term for the West Bank. In both Serbia and Israel, moreover, prominent nationalists have discussed the option of expelling unwanted populations to ensure demographic and military superiority. Without forced population transfer, they say, Serbia

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and Israel will always face acute demographic and security crises. Although normatively repugnant, this policy recommendation flows logically, but not inevitably, from Serbia's and Israel's founding principles. Once a state energetically prioritizes one community's rights over others, the notion of ethnic cleansing is bound to arise in one form or another.^[8]

Conventional wisdom suggests that Serbia and Israel are not comparable because their methods of repression in Bosnia and the West Bank/Gaza were so radically different. When we examine variations within the Serbian and Israeli cases, however, these sharp distinctions begin to fade. Serbian violence in ethnically mixed areas within Serbia was more restrained than in Bosnia, while Israeli actions in Lebanon were more destructive than in the West Bank/Gaza. Both states, in other words, employed diverse tactics in different arenas, with some overlap. Some Serbian actions within Serbia resemble Israeli ethnic policing efforts in Palestine, while some Israeli methods in Lebanon resemble Serbian actions in Bosnia. Israel was not guilty of genocide in Lebanon, and its soldiers did not engage in mass rape and other war crimes of the sort committed by some Serbian fighters in Bosnia. At the same time, Israel did resort to expulsions and dangerously indiscriminate shelling in Lebanon, and its secret services did work closely with Lebanese paramilitaries guilty of Bosnia-like atrocities. Lebanon and Bosnia are similar in some respects, but they are not parallel cases.

One clear difference between Israel and Serbia is the way in which Western powers and international organizations have responded to each country's territorial and military ambitions. Serbian interventions in Bosnia and elsewhere were harshly condemned by Western powers, who convinced the UN Security Council and NATO to deploy sanctions and, eventually, military force to punish Serbian transgressions. Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon, on the other hand, has attracted more muted forms of international criticism. Largely due to America's special relationship with Israel, Western powers and the UN Security Council have regarded Israel's actions with greater understanding than Serbia's, with important and unanticipated consequences. In Bosnia, Western sanctions drove Serbian intervention underground, promoting the use of private paramilitaries and underworld thugs, and facilitating Serbia's resort to ethnic cleansing. Israel's control over the West Bank and Gaza, conversely, was done quite openly, relying on Israel's regular security forces, and this resulted in a subtler regime of domination. Different international attitudes, in other words, dramatically shaped each state's coercive style. Greater Western pressure on Serbia provoked more openly destructive Serbian

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methods, while greater Western permissiveness led to less acute methods of Israeli control. Contemporary human rights norms being what they are, the West's tolerance for Israel's West Bank/Gaza occupation came attached with some important strings, pushing Israel toward a policing strategy in the occupied lands during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Serbia-Israel comparison is bound to be controversial, and many readers will remain skeptical. I can only ask that you bear with me, reading as much as you can of the material presented below. If my interpretations push you to think differently about Serbia, Israel, and state violence, I will be content.