International

Niall Crowley sought three alternative perspectives on the future for a better European Union 

[October 2011] In the current economic climate, the Commission’s progress report needed to deliver good news to avoid ‘enlargement fatigue’, writes Garret Tankosić-Kelly On the 12th of October the European Commission flashed a green light at two of the possible six Balkan candidate countries hoping to become our newest EU neighbours. It may have passed the Irish by (Ireland has no embassies in these states) but, as the Presidential candidates slugged it out again on TV, the results of the ‘Progress Reports’ for the aspiring EU member-states were announced in Brussels. For the remaining countries of Former Yugoslavia, plus Albania, these Progress Reports are the equivalent of the school report for the year gone by. Slovenia is already in, as part of the last round of candidate countries, and Croatia just got approval. This year’s ‘winners’ were Serbia and Montenegro, the former being recommended for Candidate Status – without a date for opening of negotiations – and the latter being recommended for a date to actually open the Negotiations; the penultimate step to Accession. Drive-by: Belgrade graffiti of former Bosnian-Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, saluting For Serbia the political heavy-lifting that was required to deliver wanted war criminals Mladić and Hadžić to the Hague Tribunal all but guaranteed a shoo in. Never mind that in the intervening period there has been open conflict, leading to deaths, on the Kosovo border. Or that Serbian politicians including the President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs – who was recently given a much-deserved grilling by an Oireachtas Committee – have regularly been active in the Majority Serb part of Bosnia, in a manner which is at best unhelpful, if not actually destabilising for the very survival of the Bosnian state. Or that in mid September President Boris Tadić said that a Gay Pride parade was being prohibited in Belgrade “to protect LGBT persons” -though one had been held and well protected last year, when Serbia was badly in need of some political gesture to burnish its ‘European values’ in the absence of the hotly-demanded arrests of Messrs Mladić and Hadžić. Montenegro was, less than a year ago, given a check-list of seven criteria which had to be met, High on the agenda were rooting out high-level corruption; freedom of expression; and independence of the media. The current Progress report for Montenegro almost glows about the advances that have been achieved, but surprisingly fails to mention a video tape which recently surfaced showing a state official from the national intelligence agency and the ex-Prime-Minister Milo Đukanović’s head of security, fraternising at a wedding with some of the most notorious drug mafia figures from the region. Or the continuing low-level state intimidation of NGO watchdogs, or the on going – and unsolved – attacks against journalists and media. Perhaps most significantly of all the Progress report lauds the arrest of a Montenegrin Municipal Mayor and his colleagues for charges of “High Level” corruption, without making any reference to the fact that ‘every dog on the street’ down Montenegro way knows that this case had more to do with former Prime minister Đukanović neutralising an internal political rival than with a new-found thirst for tackling high-level corruption. But the Commission is a funny old beast and the very title of its yearly review “Progress Report” has a quasi-communistic “Five-year plan” feel about it. Having lumbered themselves with a reporting mechanism that always looks on the bright side of life, this year’s report necessarily – in the current dire climate – needed to deliver some good news somewhere on the European radar to avoid “enlargement fatigue” if nothing else. The problem for the EC bureaucrats was that amongst the ranks of those who might “Progress” we had Macedonia hampered by an almost certain Greek veto over a name dispute; Albania, whose opposition had the temerity to question election results and boycott Parliament; Bosnia, whose political system is in a terminal spiral as the EU has taken its eye off the ball and Kosovo…well that’s another story. This has left Serbia and Montenegro as the only possible candidates for progress. No doubt realpolitik drives much of this but what message is the Commission sending to countries in the Balkans when Serbia – the architect of ethnic cleansing in the region, and Montenegro – arguably one of the most corrupt countries in the region, alone are moving forward in the EU accession stakes? Garret Tankosić-Kelly lives in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has worked in the region for 15 years.

Democracy poses a threat to Israeli governments. By Kevin Barrington The theocratic nature of Israel has for too long been concealed behind the empty slogan ‘the Middle East’s only democracy’. The idea of a Jewish state is tolerated and defended by the same ‘progressives’ who shiver at the mention of an Islamic one. And while the US railed against the brute nature of the Taliban’s Islamic state it rallies in defence of the anti-democratic idea of a Jewish one. Worldwide indignation was aroused by the insult to modernity that was the Taliban’s use of the chador. Yet somehow the world is supposed to find acceptable Israel’s use of that appalling medieval phenomenon: the siege. Afghani woman were ‘imprisoned’ inside the chador. A whole Palestinian people is imprisoned inside Gaza. Like all religious states, Israel’s true anti-cosmopolitan nature has rarely been debated. Ironically, it’s the secular, democratic desires of the Arab Spring’s protests that have thrown an unforgiving spotlight on both the Jewish State’s backwardness and its fears of change to the region’s retrogressive status quo. ‘New historian’ Israeli Benny Morris believes that an ethnically-cleansed religious state was Israel’s aim from the very outset. When global awareness started to render unacceptable the policy of ‘transfer,’ a more subtle, but equally evil, policy of ‘politicide’ was adopted. Politicide is an attack on any of the constructs that define people as a nation. Its aim is to deprive people of hope and to encourage emigration through despair. The leak of the Palestine Papers – diplomatic correspondence about the Arab-Israeli peace talks from 1999-2010 – further undermined Israel’s pretence at being the rational peace-seeker faced with a delinquent, intransigent partner. Predictably, the bulk of the media supported this pretence. Most coverage told us how a corrupt Palestinian Authority was prepared to sell its people’s aspirations short while the leaders lusted for the perks of power. But what the leaked papers really revealed was the flip side of this tale of treachery and greed: the fact that the Palestinians were prepared to bend over backwards for a peace deal. Yet still they got nothing. And the world was spun the fallacious rehash of the Palestinians “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. Neither the democratic challenge of the Arab Spring nor the truths revealed by the Palestine Papers has curbed Israel’s backward ambitions. Instead the world witnessed Benjamin Netanyahu getting 29 Congressional standing ovations whilst bluntly rejecting Obama’s call for a ‘1967’ based peace deal – a plan which Israel’s continuing policy of creating facts on the ground has rendered nearly redundant. Like a true zealot, Netanyahu treated us to a paean to old-fashioned greed and territorial expansionism which if uttered by an ayatollah would have made many a young Iranian blush. But Netanyahu can’t even hear the supposed ‘sense’ of the Israeli left as they currently proclaim that a ‘1967’ based plan is the best deal modernity will offer to that ultimately offensive and outdated concept: the religious state. A democratic deficit, to put it mildly, is the hallmark of all of Israel’s Arab neighbours. But, despite oppression, it’s the citizens of those countries who are out on the streets bravely demanding that they be granted the decency of a modern democracy. The Arabs leaders may now quake at their peoples’ demands. But they are not alone in their fear of democracy. “More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against ‘occupation,’ in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state.” Thus spoke the former vice-prime-minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, Ehud Olmert, talking to the Israeli paper Haaretz in 2003. Olmert was recommending Israel impose a unilateral solution to safeguard the Jewish state and protect its religious status from the fatal threat of one-man one-vote. Olmert shows us that many in Israel, safeguarded by nuclear weaponry, see0 its real existential threat not in Arab armalites but in the ballot box. Olmert told Haaretz that his “formula for the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximise the number of Jews; to minimise the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem”. The newspaper noted that Olmert’s language was that of “long ago” adding that the former vice prime- minister hankered “unabashedly for those more hopeful times.” It seems those more “hopeful times” were back when the ethnic cleansing implicit in ‘minimising’ Palestinians was a more acceptable pursuit. Olmert’s language does indeed hark back to “long ago”. Because in the 21st century, when it comes down to a choice of religion over democracy, the answer must be quite simple. And when religion involves the complete abnegation of democracy, the question ceases even to be legitimate.