When details of the Gaza peace plan were made clear in recent days, it was difficult not to see the parallels with the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina 30 years ago.
The Gaza plan promises an end to attacks, but it institutionalises endless external control. The designers of this plan promise Palestinians governance based on the “best international standards”. Bosnians have been hearing this phrase for the past three decades. To this day, we still do not know what these standards actually are.
What we do know is that after the implantation of our foreign-negotiated peace plan, Bosnia became a semi-protectorate, a territory governed from the outside in the name of stability and without democratic sovereignty in which those who hold decision-making power cannot be held accountable.
The Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian War, were negotiated at a US military base, mediated by foreign diplomats and agreed upon by leaders of the warring parties, including representatives of neighbouring states that had supported the war. Ordinary Bosnian citizens were excluded from the process. The same logic underpins the Gaza plan: peace negotiated about a people, not with them.
The peace agreement reached without us legitimised wartime territorial divisions and created the basis for a highly fragmented political system resembling a confederation: two entities (Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a weak central state with limited authority alongside a separate district (Brcko).
Nominally, power is exercised by a Council of Ministers and a rotating Presidency composed of three members, each from one of the three dominant ethnic groups. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitution, which should be the basis of governance, was not written by its citizens. It was drafted in English by the same international mediators that brokered the peace and was included in the accords as an annex. Until today, there is no official translation of the document into the local languages.
The Council of Ministers and the Presidency do not hold real power. The international community does. It controls state decision-making through two bodies: the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Peace Implementation Council (PIC).
The high representative, which per the rule has to be a European politician, has the authority to impose or annul laws and sack elected officials without them having legal recourse. To this day, Bosnians still do not know what qualifications are required to appoint someone to this position and give them ultimate authority with no accountability.
The PIC, which is made up of 55 representatives of various governments and international organisations, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO and the European Union, probably resembles the Gaza Strip’s Board of Peace the most. It oversees the work of the high representative, whose appointments it approves through a process that the citizens of Bosnia still do not really know. Decisions the body makes are driven by the interests of its individual members and communicated to the public through media statements. Nobody has the opportunity to question these decisions and journalists cannot discuss them with PIC members.
The governing bodies being set up for Gaza are similarly detached from accountability. There is the Board of Peace, headed by United States President Donald Trump, where states can buy membership for $1bn. Then there are two executive boards, one composed of US officials and businessmen and another composed of Western and regional officials. They are to supervise local governance, operating above domestic authority while claiming neutrality and expertise. And finally, there is a technocratic administration composed of “qualified Palestinians and international experts” to govern the Strip.
In Bosnia, the system of foreign control is built upon not just the domination of foreign powers but also upon the compliance of local elites. The international community has consistently relied on political actors willing to preserve the status quo in exchange for access to power. This arrangement rewards stagnation and punishes systemic change. It produces a donor-dependent civil society – one that is active and visible, but ultimately manageable from the outside.
It is no wonder that criticism of the international community in Bosnia and its bodies has been framed as a threat to peace. In the past, the OHR has gone as far as silencing certain media organisations that have been openly critical. In 1997, for example, NATO forces were asked to intervene against the public broadcaster of Republika Srpska and cut off its broadcast. The justification was that the OHR wanted to ensure “international norms of professional media conduct” were observed.
This logic persists today. In a video address in December marking the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, the current high representative, Christian Schmidt of Germany, warned that “some today point the finger at the international community and its representatives, refusing to remember that without international intervention, as late as it came, Bosnia and Herzegovina would have descended into chaos and despair.”
He described Dayton as “the basis for the future” although “not the future itself” and concluded with a vague call for “action” rather than “complaining” without clarifying who should act or how.
Yet Bosnia has not fully succumbed to complacency. There has also been resistance. In 2014, public discontent poured into the streets across the country, beginning in Tuzla and spreading to more than 20 cities within days. Workers led the demonstrations. Citizens occupied public spaces, organised open assemblies and articulated political demands. For a brief moment, people experienced democracy outside the imposed foreign-controlled framework.
The response was repression, silence and disregard. The international community observed but did not engage. When the protests collapsed under political pressure and exhaustion, no institutional change followed.
The protests ceased, but visible traces of them remained in the form of graffiti on government buildings. Probably the most well-known one appears on the facade of the Sarajevo Canton building, and it reads: “Those who sow hunger reap wrath.”
What followed was a mass exodus. Close to 500,000 people have left the country since 2014. Many others are waiting for a chance to go. Meanwhile, nationalism, once a wartime ideology, has become a governing tool – used by local elites and tolerated, even stabilised, by the international community.
As feminist authors from Sarajevo Gorana Mlinarević and Nela Porobić wrote in their publication Peace That Is Not, peace “neither starts nor ends with the signing of a peace agreement”. They argued that the imposed peace in Bosnia has burdened its political, economic and social life for decades. The same burden now looms over Gaza.
If asked whether the Bosnian peace agreement was a success, most people in Bosnia would answer that it put an end to the war. That is true. But peace that merely stops violence without enabling freedom and dignity is not peace.
Peace imposed from above creates stability without justice and governance without democracy. The Bosnian semi-protectorate stands as a warning, not a model. Peace and democracy cannot exist without the participation of the people or if their will is ignored. Yet this is precisely what the “best international standards” continue to do.
Bosnia cannot be undone. Gaza has to be approached differently and can be if its people and other Palestinians are involved in the process and have the power to decide.
