Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is opposing the NATO air strikes - even as his country sends aid to Albanian refugees, and even though Israel's most crucial ally, the United States, is leading the assault. Mr Sharon apparently fears that the international community might one day, similarly, try to use force to support autonomy for Israel's Arab minority.
While Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has backed the NATO action, Mr Sharon has pointedly refused to echo that position or to explicitly condemn the Serbs, although he did support yesterday's delivery of a planeload of medical supplies, warm clothing and other aid to Albanian refugees. He said the airlift was "our moral responsibility as Jews".
In part, Mr Sharon's position appears to stem from a certain historical sympathy for the Serbs, who opposed the Nazis during the second World War. But according to a report in yesterday's Yediot Ahronot daily, the foreign minister also sees a worrying precedent in NATO's intervention.
In a closed meeting earlier this week, Mr Sharon is said to have fretted that Israel "might be the next victim" of such an effort to impose regional solutions.
Specifically, Mr Sharon is apparently concerned that Israel's 800,000 Arab citizens (about 15 per cent of the population) might seek to emulate the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by breaking away. By legitimising NATO's actions in Yugoslavia, the foreign minister worried, Israel might be legitimising similar US-led action closer to home. Israel had "to look to the future," he said, and so could not support the kind of military intervention being carried out by NATO.
A spokesman for Mr Sharon said yesterday that the newspaper's report was incorrect, but refused to elaborate. Israel's opposition parties, in contrast, have unequivocally condemned the Serbs. Labour leader, Mr Ehud Barak, told the Yugoslav ambassador here that, "I regard as extremely serious what appears to be systematic murder of innocent people."