Why Incitement is Ignored

Dore Gold
dore-gold.com
22 August '10

Richard Holbrooke is probably the most accomplished and experienced US diplomat that served in recent years in the US Department of State, and therefore his ideas should be seriously considered. He is responsible for the greatest achievement of the Clinton administration in foreign policy--the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War. Before that, he had served as the US ambassador to Germany, assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and then assistant secretary of state for European affairs. He also became the US ambassador to the UN and was regarded as the leading candidate to be Secretary of State, had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2008.

In his book on his role in achieving the Dayton Accords, Holbrooke considers why the war in Bosnia erupted. He raises the theory that was widely cited in intellectual circles in the 1990's that the war in the Balkans was due to "ancient hatreds" between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. But then he dismisses this theory completely and argues instead that the hatred that fed the conflict had been deliberately inflamed. He writes that there was a deliberate policy of incitement by the Serbian leadership through Belgrade Television, which spread ethnic hatred "like an epidemic." In short, incitement was not a symptom of the Balkan Wars but rather, according to Holbrooke, it was a root cause.



In the Arab-Israeli conflict, incitement has not been taken as seriously. Formally, there are many clauses on incitement throughout the Oslo Agreements, especially the 1995 Interim Agreement. The parties are legally bound to abstain from incitement and hostile propaganda. They were supposed to foster "mutual understanding and tolerance." The first phase of the 2003 Roadmap calls on "all Palestinian institutions to end incitement against Israel." But in practice many of these clauses were dormant. Israeli governments put the greatest attention to the most politically explosive issues like borders and security. The most senior officials in the Prime Minister's office were involved in those committees and not in the incitement committee. There were those who undoubtedly felt that if Israel complained about incitement, it would be perceived that it was looking for an excuse to get out of the peace process and not make any concessions.

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