My Rock of Gibraltar
(Not Yours)
Sure, Britain should give the rock back to the
Spanish. But why stop there?
Francis Drake setting
sail from Plymouth to fight the Spanish Armada it was not. Yet on Monday the
British press ran heavy with images of the helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious
leaving Portsmouth Naval Base, destination Gibraltar. Madrid is kicking up a
fuss, again, over the Rock they have coveted ever since ceding it to Britain
"for ever" in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. And London, says the Times
of London, "is drawing up plans to take unprecedented legal action against
Spain for imposing additional checks at the Gibraltar border."
I'm sympathetic to the
Spanish claim. Rather than waste time and money on a fruitless diplomatic
brawl, Prime Minister David Cameron should say he's prepared to relinquish
Gibraltar to Spain—on just one condition.
That would be a declaration by the Spanish government that it will
renounce its own claims to the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which lie opposite
Gibraltar on the northern coast of Africa. Morocco has long claimed these
Spanish enclaves for itself, and in July 2002 it even sent troops to seize an
uninhabited Spanish islet near Ceuta. Madrid responded a week later by
deploying its navy, air force and special forces to bloodlessly retake the
island, but tensions still simmer.
Spaniards might object
to returning the two cities on the grounds that local inhabitants overwhelmingly
consider themselves Spanish and wish to remain a part of Spain. Then again, the
last time Gibraltarians took a vote on their sovereignty, 99% of them wished to
remain British.
Of course, Madrid couldn't just turn over Ceuta and Melilla without
asking Morocco to readjust its own territorial claims. Since 1975, Rabat has
occupied the Western Sahara—a territory larger than the U.K.—though no other
country recognizes Moroccan sovereignty. The Moroccan position is contested by
an Algerian-backed group called the Polisario Front, which administers a
"country" called the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
But the leadership in
Rabat could hardly be asked to deliver such a political prize to its
arch-rivals in Algiers without expecting some commensurate sacrifice.
It's been more than 50
years since Algerian independence led to the exodus of nearly one million
pieds-noirs and the seizure of their properties by Ben Bella's government. And
though the French government did pay some small indemnities to their displaced
kinsmen, the Algerian government has never recognized, much less atoned for,
the injustice it did to an indigenous community that had considered itself
Algerian for generations.
If Algiers were to
compensate each pied-noir (or a descendent) to the tune of $10,000, in 1962
dollars, for the emotional pain and economic loss of losing a homeland, it
would cost Algeria about $74 billion, which is the equivalent of a year's worth
of its export earnings from oil and gas. It's a small price to pay, morally
speaking, for the sake of the pieds-noirs and the glorious independence of
Western Sahara.
Now it would be Paris's
turn to make good. Independence for the Pacific outpost of New Caledonia,
perhaps, or the South American one of French Guiana? Restoration of the Port of
Calais to the English crown?
The possibilities are intriguing, but what clearly makes the most
sense is to restore Alsace, and maybe Lorraine too, to Germany.
There are several good
reasons for this: Most of the territory was German-speaking before World War I,
after which it was seized by France as part of the Carthaginian Peace of
Versailles. The European Union has dissolved national borders anyway, so return
of the territories would symbolically signal the overcoming of past nationalist
rivalries.
And, let's face it, the
French will need a bailout from Berlin eventually, so they may as well make a
down payment now. I'm betting the typical Frenchman these days cares more about
the security of his pension than he does about the language on the label for
his Muscat d'Alsace.
As for the Germans, it
won't do to point out that they've paid into every Holocaust reparation fund,
or that they're carrying Greek civil servants, Portuguese pensioners and
Spanish bankers on their financial backs. There is still the Schleswig-Holstein
Question! Just because the world has forgotten what the question was doesn't
mean we've forgotten that there was a question. Or that Schleswig-Holstein used
to belong to Denmark until Bismarck seized it in 1864.
Yes, it's time to give
it back—and pay it forward. Only then will the Danes be able to restore full
sovereignty to Greenland. And only when Greenland is truly free will it be able
to atone for Björk. Or is she from Iceland? Whatever. Greenland must have been guilty
of something at some time, and they will pay. Somewhere down this line, Orange
County secedes from California, English becomes the sole official language of
Quebec, the Byzantines are restored to Constantinople, and Al Gore wins the
Florida recount.
Alternatively, maybe
Gibraltar should just remain British.
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