Illusion and Reality

I have never liked deceiving myself, either about personal or political matters. This has not meant that I have been without illusions. It is just that when illusion finally meets reality — facts on the ground as it were — I prefer to surrender the former.

I will spare you the personal here, and concentrate on the political, which seems all engulfing today. First of course is Israel, which holds its election Monday May 17. (We will have a pre-election series of reports in next week’s issue.) You may not have noticed, but May 4th has come and gone. May 4 was the day that Yasir Arafat was going to make it official and declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. That was the official date set up under the Oslo peace accords, at which point all the issues between Israel and the PLO were to have been resolved peacefully. Speaking of illusions.

It is not necessary here to detail where and how negotiations have gone awry, or even to assign blame. There is enough to go around for everyone.

We know that the final peace talks have scarcely started, indeed have stalled until the Israeli elections are over.

We know that Arafat has yielded symbol and illusion to reality and has made no unilateral declaration, undoubtedly under pressure from President Clinton, and probably with some very real and tangible benefits awaiting him.

And we know that Prime Minister Netanyahu, apparently boxed in by a tight political race, is opting for rhetoric and illusion as he claims credit for the PLO’s “backing off” from any claim to statehood.

In this instance, I would say Arafat has a tighter grip on reality.

The fact is, the Palestinian state looks like it exists in every way but name only. The PLO controls very specific territory. They have an elected political leader as well as elected representatives, not unlike Israel. And as Yossi Sarid, leader of the Meretz Party in Israel has pointed out, “They have an anthem, a flag, a symbol and relations with more than 100 countries. High-ranking visitors come and go. They have an army that is called a police force.” What more do they need for legitimacy?

Mr. Arafat seemed to confirm all this at a press conference last Monday. “Whether they like it or not, our state is already established,” he told an international group of reporters.

Closer to home, in a manner of speaking, is the political reality of Kosovo. Illusions aside, we (the U.S. and NATO) apparently have lost the initial war with Serbia. That war was fought to prevent the ethnic cleansing that has already taken place.

Now we are into phase two, or a different war, with different goals. These appear at times to conflate illusion and reality.

First we want to bomb Yugoslavia into submission, so that the Albanian Kosovars can return to their homes under NATO supervision of an armed international force. This may eventually occur, though military leaders have repeated that wars cannot be won by bombing alone; and the act of bombing Yugoslavia has united the Serbian population behind its leader, Slobodan Milosevic. Illusion would appear to have overtaken us.

Second, we seem determined to return at least 600,000 Kosovars (actually a figure closer to 900,000) to a landscape that looks scarred beyond recognition. Moreover many of these families and individuals now lack all resources — money, automobiles, farm equipment, homes, even identity papers that legitimize their claims — which suggests that a massive and expensive rebuilding program will be required. One should never underestimate the power of money, but even with an open bank account, and the best will in the world, time and some kind of separation between Serbs and Albanians will be required here. Given our stated aims — resettling large numbers of a displaced population — reality will have an uphill struggle here.

Finally, a third goal seems to be one of punishment… and of setting an example for other dictators who might embark on a program of ethnic cleansing. (Tied into this in an indirect way is the symbolic necessity to save face for NATO.) The uncomfortable part of this solution is that in realistic terms it is the Serbian people who are being punished, not Milosevic .

At times our perception of reality is altered radically; in effect, new facts force us to reexamine our assumptions no less than our illusions. That is suggested in a recent, and disturbing, story which appeared in the May 11 issue of New Republic magazine. The account, written by Ms. Stacy Sullivan, a consultant at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who also covered the Balkans for Newsweek magazine, makes the case that NATO might indeed have a quarrel with the Serbian people, one that justified punishing them for the destruction and deaths in Kosovo.

The large majority of Serbs hate the Albanians and bear responsibility for dehumanizing and murdering them, she asserts. She writes: “Whatever else we do in Kosovo, we must face the fact that, for all intents and purposes, many ordinary Serbs are — to paraphrase Daniel Jonah Goldhagen — Milosevic’s willing executioners.” Her report documents that statement in one incident after another. These pictures of reality imply that the evil men do (and are capable of) has not changed significantly through the ages. Even if her descriptions of Serbs are the norm, though, I find myself unwilling to sanction the death of civilians by air warfare,especially when our goals seem so unrealistic. No wonder we cling to illusions.

—Gene Lichtenstein.