The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel. Part I

 

by Dan Diker

 

1^st part on 3

• Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.
• Senior Palestinian officials note that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. European and U.S. support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration has led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, despite that fact that leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.
• The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.
• The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" includes a campaign of delegitimization of Israel, seeking to isolate Israel as a pariah state, while driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The unilateral Palestinian bid for sovereignty will also likely turn the Palestinians into the leading petitioner against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court. Although the PA is not a state and therefore should have no legal standing before the court, the petition it submitted to the court after the Gaza war was not rejected by the ICC.
• Finally, a unilateral Palestinian quest for the 1947 lines may well continue even if the 1967 lines are endorsed by the United Nations. The PLO's 1988 declaration of independence was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognizes the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, not the 1967 lines, as the basis for the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state.

 

Have the Palestinians Abandoned a Negotiated Settlement?

Washington's intensive shuttle diplomacy as well as Arab pressure may convince Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table with Israel. However, Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.¹

Senior Palestinian officials have also noted that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.² European and U.S. support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration, plus Palestinian confidence in its own international case, appears to have led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, with the 1967 lines as its future borders.³

This assertive Palestinian shift to unilateralism has also been bolstered by a changing balance of power between the Palestinian Authority that was established at Oslo, and its "parent," the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has embraced a unilateral approach to statehood since its 1988 unilateral declaration of independence but has not operationalized it. However, on December 15-16, 2009, the PLO Central Council convened in Ramallah where it unilaterally assumed the PA's legislative authority, resolved to extend Abbas' term indefinitely, and even voted to replace the PA Legislative Council that had been established as part of the internationally-sanctioned Oslo peace accords.⁴

The PLO Central Council meeting and its far-reaching resolutions provide another illustration of unilateral intentions that are rooted in former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1988 PLO statehood declaration. However, despite Palestinian determination and a largely sympathetic international community, it's unlikely that the Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" will end the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, it may signal the final unraveling of the Middle East peace process.

 

Palestinians Invoke Kosovo's Unilateral Statehood Model

Since February 2008, when the Albanian Muslim majority government in Kosovo unilaterally declared independence and secession from Christian Serbia, winning U.S. and European support, the Palestinian leadership has publicly invoked Kosovo as a model for a prospective Palestinian state. Yasser Abed Rabbo, senior advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, told Agence France Presse immediately following the Kosovo declaration, "Our people have the right to proclaim independence even before Kosovo. And we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."⁵

In late 2008, the collapse of the Annapolis peace negotiations between Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who, as Abbas acknowledged publicly, had made unprecedented concessions,⁶ further motivated the Palestinians to embrace a unilateral approach to statehood as a default option. Abed Rabo confirmed at the time that, "we have another option. Kosovo is not better than Palestine."⁷

The Palestinians strengthened their bid for unilaterally-declared statehood in late 2009 and into 2010 while lobbying Europe, South America, and the UN for support, and simultaneously setting unprecedented preconditions for restarting negotiations with Israel.⁸ In November 2009, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat threatened to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, arguing that "the EU recognized the state" of Kosovo before other official channels supported its claim for independence. However, U.S. and European opposition to the move would force Erekat to deny his intentions. Instead, he insisted that the Palestinian Authority merely sought UN Security Council endorsement of a Palestinian state, which also mirrors Kosovo's quest for a UN Security Council resolution proposing independence.⁹

Two leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.¹⁰ However, from a Palestinian point of view, it seems that legal and historical context are less important than the sympathetic political perceptions that can be created in the international community by promoting what appear to be some external similarities.¹¹ The Palestinians liken themselves to Kosovo's profile in the West as a besieged, indigenous population seeking freedom and independence from its brutal Serbian sovereign overlord, which in the Palestinian analogy is the State of Israel's "occupation" of the disputed West Bank.¹²

True, both Palestinians and Muslim Kosovars enjoy international support for their respective bids for independence.¹³ Both have established internationally-sanctioned, self-governing authorities, receive European security backing and UN financial support, and work with UN-appointed special envoys, while each has penned a constitution. However, Kosovo enjoys a NATO security presence, which Palestinian negotiators have failed to introduce into the West Bank despite several attempts to do so in past peace negotiations with Israel.¹⁴

Another point of similarity between Kosovars and the Palestinians involves territory. The Kosovo model did not require a territorial compromise on the part of the Albanian Muslim Kosavar government to take into account areas where concentrations of Serbian Christian population remained.¹⁵ Similarly, the Palestinian leadership has been reluctant to compromise with Israel over Israeli population centers and vital security requirements in the West Bank.

Politically, many in the Palestinian leadership assesses that adopting a unilateral "Kosovo strategy" and seeking international legitimacy to impose the 1967 borders on Israel is their best option, which, in their view, would automatically solve the issues of Jewish settlements and the status of Jerusalem without having to negotiate with Israel, while leaving the refugee issue to be decided according to the "agreed-upon solution" specified in the Arab peace initiative.¹⁶

 

Israel as the Palestinians' "Serbian" War Criminal

Palestinian efforts to delegitimize Israel in the international community play a key role in their unilateral quest for independence. Mindful of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was indicted by the Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, the Palestinian leadership has aggressively pursued a diplomatic intifada against Israel as a tool of "resistance" to criminalize and isolate the Jewish state in international circles, while simultanously "leveraging up" the PA's case for statehood.¹⁷ For example, Palestinian leaders have for years charged Israel with being an "illegal occupier" of Palestinian lands, and of building an "apartheid wall" - Israel's security fence - in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has also promoted internationally its denial of any Israeli historical connection to Jerusalem.¹⁸

In January 2009, following the Gaza war with Hamas, Palestinian Justice Minster Ali Khashan petitioned the International Criminal Court to charge Israel with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.¹⁹ Israel's Foreign Ministry noted that the PA was also a driving force behind the establishment of the Goldstone mission by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and led the campaign in the HRC and the UN General Assembly to implement its conclusions.²⁰ Pro-Palestinian groups have filed scores of war crimes petitions in London and in other European courts, using the Rome Statute and laws of universal jurisdiction to seek the arrest of senior Israeli leaders.²¹

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has also advanced the notion of a "popular intifada" and has overseen the organization of committees for non-violent popular resistance against Israel that are expressed in the weekly, high-profile, Palestinian-led protests at Bil'in, Maasara, Ni'ilin, and more recently in Sheikh Jarah in Jerusalem.²² In December 2009, Fayyad characterized PA diplomacy as launching an "international intifada against Israel."²³

 

The Influence of Fayyad's Unilateral Statehood Plan

The Palestinian leadership's numerous references to Kosovo's unilateral statehood quest, in the context of public threats by Abbas and Erekat in November 2009 to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood, must be seen against the backdrop of the August 2009 publication of Prime Minister Fayyad's unilateral two-year statehood plan.

Western policymakers and observers have embraced the Fayyad plan as a positive development - a unilateral, "bottom up," state-building plan whose main goal is to build the infrastructure for eventual Palestinian independence.²⁴ Some Israeli officials and legal experts have also praised aspects of the plan. However, its firm two-year deadline, and its massive state-building projects slated for Area C of the West Bank - which is under full Israeli control and includes the strategically vital Jordan Valley and its protective 3,000-foot hilltops overlooking Israel's main airport and cities - renders the plan more of a pretext to unilaterally declare statehood.²⁵ In fact, Fayyad has provided clear indications that after two years, the establishment of a de facto Palestinian state will occur with or without Israel's agreement.²⁶

In January 2010, Fayyad said, "Our people are determined to expunge all the distorted definitions described as Areas A, B, and C," and that "Palestinian markets should burn products coming out of Jewish settlements."²⁷ This would seem to suggest that Fayyad advocates sidelining the principle of a negotiated agreement that was enshrined and agreed upon in the Oslo accords, even to the point of resisting such previous agreements on the ground.

 

Dan Diker

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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