The Concept of "National Liberation" After Kosovo

Two weeks after NATO stopped bombing Serbia, Israel pounded Beirut. This came after Hizballah - in retaliation for a shooting incident - had fired barrages of Katyusha rockets on Israel's northern towns, killing two people. Unable to target the guerrilla organization, Israel responded with a massive bombing of Lebanese power stations, telecommunication centers and bridges. It was by no means the first time it had struck Beirut, but on this occasion, fresh from their Serbian adventure, the US, Britain, Germany, and France could hardly issue a condemnation. As for the target: Lebanon, admittedly, has little control over Hizballah. The controller is Syria. Israel's action against the Lebanese "whipping boy" served as a message to Damascus, as if to say: "You saw what happened in Kosovo. Remember who's got the air superiority in this region. And remember who's got the nukes." The NATO-style forays, though billed as a response to the Katyushas, looked rather toward a future arrangement with Syria, in which the latter is to rein in Hizballah after Israel withdraws from its current occupation of (and entrapment in) southern Lebanon.
The war in the Balkans was undertaken, ostensibly, for the sake of the Albanian Kosovars. Yet its outcome offers little hope to oppressed peoples elsewhere - for example, the Palestinians. In one respect the cases are similar: Serbia seeks to prevent self-determination for the Kosovars, while Israel - first through direct occupation and more recently through the Oslo agreement - has managed so far to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Unlike Serbia, however, Israel enjoys unqualified American support, because of its crucial role as a dependable beachhead near the sources of Middle Eastern oil. The Palestinians, for their part, have a legitimate case for self-determination. Unlike the Albanian Kosovars, however, they cannot expect America to back them.

The Serb regime admires Israel. In justifying its hold on Kosovo, it likes to compare its historical and religious roots there with Israel's in East Jerusalem. Four years ago, during the Dayton talks that led to the partition of Bosnia, Milosevic appeared to envision a role for Serbia in which his country would serve American interests in the Balkans just as Israel does in the Middle East. The role did not materialize. The US refused to give him favored status. It would not treat Serbia as the chief regional power. Washington attempted, instead, to station NATO troops on Serbian soil - and Milosevic balked. He shifted toward the Russians, thinking they would help him resist the US. There was method in this: Russia has been striving, on the basis of its nuclear might, to regain its position as a superpower, albeit capitalist. Yet the needy Russians were not willing or able to back Milosevic all the way. His gamble came to nothing. Under the bombs of NATO, he yielded.

Some are quick to equate the fate of Serbia with that of Iraq. Yet there is a basic difference. As a former Socialist country, Serbia was not a colony - it is not today, therefore, like Iraq, an underdeveloped third-world country. That is one of the reasons why Serbia did not arouse the sympathy of the Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. The latter did see a threat, nonetheless, in the readiness of the big powers to use missiles to impose their will on weaker peoples.
The leaders of the Albanian Kosovars supplied the imperialist powers with a pretext for continuing to dismember the former Socialist bloc, forestalling Russian expansionism. The lesson is clear: If you belong to a small, oppressed people in the world of today, you can only hope for freedom when your oppressor is in conflict with the United States. But watch out! You are likely to become a batterable, barterable pawn in America's drive toward world domination.

In our region, following the Gulf War, Yasser Arafat understood that the UN had lost its power to resolve international conflicts. That body is irrelevant in a unipolar world. After World War II, indeed, it had served as a mechanism by which the two superpowers could check and balance each other. Within it the weaker peoples sometimes benefited from Soviet might. With the Soviet Union gone, however, the PLO chief saw that the UN had lost its function. He decided to gamble on the US alone. The result was the Oslo Agreement. Circumventing UN Resolutions 242 and 338, Oslo amounts to a regionally specific version of America's New World Order.
Many Palestinians today hark back with nostalgia to the glory days of the UN, which proclaimed the "international legitimacy" of their cause. Some even want to dust off the UN Partition Resolution of 1947. Such dreaming leads nowhere. There is no going back. It was no surprise in the Balkan war - rather a reflection of current reality - when NATO headquarters in Brussels replaced UN headquarters in New York.
The world has become unipolar - for the present. The US assigns to each nation or people its status. Both Serbia and the Albanian Kosovars have learned this, each in its bitter way. The Palestinians are learning it too. When the Oslo accords were signed, they were told there was no other choice - this was the best they could get. In such a situation, it does not help to cry, "But what about 'international legitimacy'? What about the Security Council resolutions?" The mechanism that might have carried them out no longer exists.
But the world is unipolar for the present only. As the US deals to each country or people its status in accordance with its own selfish interests, it sharpens inequalities and deepens conflicts. This is just what it has done, for example, between Israel and the Palestinians. In accepting Oslo, one is not accepting peace. One is accepting, rather, the suppression of legitimate Palestinian aspirations, which will seethe beneath the surface, again to burst forth in the future. In accepting Oslo, one is yielding to a unipolar international order whose long-term result, worldwide, will be catastrophic.

The Palestinians are not the only people who have failed to achieve their national rights. In the "sans-Soviet" era, many are shunted aside, held hostage to a global economy that is backed, in turn, by the ultimate threat of nuclear might. For the present, the few rich nations march forward and flourish, yet the global economy is beset with difficulties. The internal contradictions of the capitalist system did not disappear with the Soviet Union. You can only patch the balloon so many times.
In its need for new markets, Capitalism feeds on war and national strife. Either we shall have to go through catastrophe, or we shall have to create an alternative global system based on equality. In such a system, the Palestinians and all other oppressed peoples will be able to gain their rights. The hope for an enduring peace is bound up with humanity's ability to find its way to Socialism.