Last week, the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina approved the participation of Bosnian troops in the international stabilization mission in Gaza. The decision was a rare example of ethnic consensus that had been ostensibly lacking since the end of the Bosnian war in the 1990s.
The mission was authorized by a UN Security Council resolution adopted on November 17 under US President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to end the genocidal war in Gaza. The resolution authorizes the deployment of international troops to oversee demilitarization and the destruction of military infrastructure and to help legitimize the enclave’s interim governance agreement.
It is clear that this plan favors Israel and is intended to help it further consolidate its occupation of Palestinian territory. The question is why a country that has experienced genocide itself and where protests condemning the atrocities in Gaza are regularly held, would decide to take part in such a mission.
Popular solidarity against Gaza
Few European societies empathize as instinctively with the suffering of the Palestinians as Bosnian society. In a December 2023 survey, 61% of respondents said Bosnia should support Palestine. Among Bosniaks, the percentage who felt solidarity with the Palestinian cause was even higher. Croats and Serbs were divided over whether they supported Israel and Palestine or were neutral.
In Sarajevo, support for Gaza is clear. Over the past two years, thousands of people have taken to the streets of the capital in regular protests condemning Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. International brands such as ZARA and US fast food chains such as KFC, Burger King and Coca-Cola were also boycotted.
Every week, people gather near the Eternal Flame Memorial in Sarajevo to read aloud the names of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. This is a quiet and shocking memorial service.
In October, around 6,000 people marched under the banner Bosnia and Herzegovina for a Free Palestine, starting at the memorial to the murdered children of besieged Sarajevo and ending near the National Museum. Demonstrators held Palestinian flags and banners reading “Stop the massacre” and “Stop the killing of children.” The message was clear. Societies that survived the siege and genocide believe they have a moral obligation to stand by Gaza.
The most striking aspect of this display of solidarity is who took part in it. The most sustained and visible support for Gaza comes not from Bosnia’s Islamic religious groups or mainstream political parties, but from civic-minded, often left-wing intellectuals, artists, students, and grassroots activists.
In fact, the Islamic community of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not organize large-scale marches or nationwide mobilizations, nor do Bosniak Muslim political parties. Instead, the streets are filled with ordinary citizens, many secular, many young, who are driven less by formal religious affiliation than by ethical reflexes shaped by lived experiences of siege, forced displacement, and mass violence.
What has become equally clear is that no group clearly frames its identity around religious solidarity. Although Bosnia’s Salafi community frequently speaks out on issues of ritual observance and doctrinal purity, it has little involvement in public mobilization in Gaza. Their involvement rarely extends beyond sermons, online statements, and symbolic gestures.
In the case of Bosnia, solidarity with Gaza emerged not as an expression of organized religiosity, but as a bottom-up citizen response rooted in memory, empathy, and a widely shared sense of justice.
So why did a three-party president agree to join a mission meant to support Israel, when the Bosnian people have overwhelmingly shown solidarity with the Palestinians?
dysfunction and dependence
To understand Bosnia’s politics, it is important to focus on the source of its dysfunction: an overly complex system of governance based on ethnic identity established by the 1995 Dayton Accords.
Bosnia has a tripartite presidential system, with a Bosniak, a Serb, and a Croat rotating every eight months. Each member is elected by a plurality rather than a majority from within the ethnic group, reinforcing zero-sum ethnic politics rather than consensus. The Bosnian parliament also has ethnic quotas.
Decisions are supposed to be made by consensus, but consensus is almost always lacking, leading to deadlocks. As a result, this overly complex system often cannot make decisions as simple as approving the national budget. So how did we reach an agreement on a peacekeeping deployment to Gaza?
It is also important to point out that Bosnia has participated in international peacekeeping operations before. Since the mid-2000s, the country has regularly sent troops, military police, medical personnel, and staff to NATO, United Nations, and European Union-led missions abroad, particularly in Afghanistan, but also Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Sudan, and Cyprus.
These deployments, promoted by influential international organizations based in Sarajevo (UN, EU, NATO), have served as a symbolic gesture to signal Bosnia’s purported transition from internet consumer to internet security provider. At the same time, these organizations served as a convenient vehicle for presenting ostensibly successful stories of nation-building to international donors.
In the case of the Gaza peace mission, Bosnia’s ethnic elite leaders may consider participation as a way to curry Washington’s favor for their own purposes. Bosniak leaders still see the United States as the ultimate guarantor of Bosnia’s territorial integrity, while Croat elites see American support as leverage in dealings with the EU. Despite their anti-Western rhetoric, Serbian leaders have invested heavily in U.S. lobbying firms to attract President Trump’s attention and press for the removal of top Serbian figures from U.S. sanctions lists.
This dependency emphasizes the constraints on Bosnia’s sovereignty, where foreign policy often signals loyalty abroad rather than a coherent national strategy at home.
But for many Bosnians, Gaza is not an abstract security issue. It is a moral mirror, a reflection of their own unresolved trauma.
Although national sentiment is driven by empathy and solidarity, leaders of all three camps approach Gaza primarily through the prism of political expediency. The result is a familiar pattern in Bosnian politics. Policies reflect the interests of narrow elites rather than the will of the people.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
