Troops Will Slow, Not End, Hatreds

The new map of Bosnia is much like the map drawn in 1947 when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.

Both contain unworkable boundaries. Both relied on a perceived coexistence. When people hate each other, it is not possible to rearrange their lives through cartography.

The accord in Dayton, Ohio last week was reached under pressure by the United States. It is merely a document and, quite likely, it will not hold up. If the ethnically diverse warring parties did not detest each other before the collapse of Yugoslavia (but they did), they most certainly do even more now after the genocidal course of a four-year war.

If Congress stalls President Clinton’s promise of U.S. troops to maintain the peace, the warring sides could be back murdering each other within days.

The best the Clinton initiative can provide is a tentative truce, one that holds as long as U.S. troops are positioned between the antagonists.

Eventually, whether it is under fire from guns or from Congress, and unless the futility of chronic hatred strikes the parties involved, the U.S. mission will end in Bosnia. When it does, expect the cannons and tanks to resume their firing.

However, what makes the Bosnia accord a tad more achievable than the Palestine partition is that when the U.N. voted to divide Palestine, it did not provide a force to keep the two sides apart as Clinton is offering in Bosnia. The British quickly pulled up stakes and left the two to confront each other. Arab armies charged through the territory, grabbing land by force, redrafting what the U.N. had done on paper.

In 1967, the Israelis returned the favor.

Like Bosnia, what was Palestine was carved into unworkable segments. What was drawn by the U.N. in 1947 to be the Jewish state was distributed as three separate partitions. To go from one to the other to the third meant having to cross hostile Arab territory each time.

Just looking at it, you knew it wouldn’t work.

In the Bosnian partition, there are so-called corridors that supposedly would allow Bosnian Muslims to cross from Gorazde through Serbian territory to Sarajevo. There is another corridor from Orasje.

How long will those narrow lifelines last? As long as U.S. troops are there.

How ethnic coexistence can occur in Sarajevo is a question that will be answered in due time, and I fear the news will be bad. The U.N. had planned Jerusalem to be a united city - under its aegis - but even when the Israelis conquered and annexed the entire city, it was obvious to anyone that eonlong contenders for the same property needed to be kept from each other rather than together.

In Bosnia the United States would be buying some time for the competing sides to come to their senses, somewhat like practically-minded Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs are now doing.

If not tactically astute, it is at least humane.

Had the U.N. or the British done the same in Palestine in 1947 - sent in a force to keep the sides apart - perhaps there would be have less bloodshed there, and perhaps time to perfect a decades-earlier thrust at peace, rather than the nearly half-century of warfare and terrorism, of the revival of the Biblical eye for an eye.

Should we give the Bosnian accord a chance to work?

Of course; who wouldn’t want to give peace a chance?

Is it critical that military troops of a neutral country be placed between them in the beginning, until hatreds mellow enough for at least a tense coexistence, further negotiations and more pragmatic boundaries?

I believe so.

Is the United States the one to do it? Who else?

What are the odds of complete success?

Keep your money in your pocket.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Howard Kleinberg Cox News Service