Analysts say nationalistic tensions remain high as Macedonia has been struggling to find its own identity since becoming an independent nation in 1991, following the break up of Yugoslavia.
VOA: standard.2009.03.22
As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic "Palestinian" identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism.