Opinion | Columnists
Nursing illusions
Israel-Syria peace deal will never see the light without US determination.
- By Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:59 April 28, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Luis Vazquez/Gulf News
The announcement that Israel is willing to give up the entire Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria, was not new to the Syrians. This talk has been in the air since 2005. So has been talk of an upcoming war between Syria and Israel. Average Syrians are confused.
One day they get every indicator in the world, that war is in the immediate horizon. War sirens go off on a specific date at a specific hour every month - a war drill unheard of since 1973.
In April 2008, the Israeli Defence Forces begin the largest manoeuvres in history on its border with Syria. The Syrian army calls in its reserves.
Less than one month later, however, Expatriate Minister Buthaina Shaaban tells the world that Ehud Olmert is willing to return the Golan fully in exchange for peace with Damascus, thanks to Turkish mediation. Two days later, Recep Tayyip Erdogan shows up in Damascus.
Last year, while people were buying loads of canned products - fearing for a hot summer with the Israelis - Olmert came out on Al Arabiyya and said, "Bashar Al Assad, you know that I am ready for direct talks with you. I am ready to sit with you and talk about peace, not war." He added, "I will be happy if I could make peace with Syria. I do not want to wage war against Syria."
This was echoed by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who withdrew troops from the Golan, so that a "miscalculation" does not arise on the Syrian-Israeli border. After having sent off its promising signals, Israel ordered four warplanes into Syria on September 6, 2007.
If anything this proved that the Israelis are not to be trusted. For his part, Olmert spoke to Channel 10 in Israel, saying, "Very clearly we want peace with the Syrians and we are taking all manners of actions to this end."
Last week, former US president Jimmy Carter visited Syria and noted that "about 85 per cent of the differences between Israel and Syria have already been resolved, including borders, water rights, the establishment of a security zone, and on the presence of international forces. It was just a "matter of reconvening the talks and concluding an agreement".
To many this seemed like the romantic exchange of goodwill gestures between Israel and Anwar Sadat on the eve of his historical visit to occupied Jerusalem in 1977.
Bashar after all, wants to restore the Golan, just like Sadat had his eyes set on Sinai. The Syrian president has a lot of difficult luggage to carry, bearing the weight of Arab nationalism. He is leader of the only Arab country that has not signed peace with Israel, or given in to American pressure, making him very popular in the Arab street, which remains Nasserist to the bone.
Peace would mean a de facto break between Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and probably Iran. The Iranians were not pleased when Syria went to Annapolis in 2007 and when earlier, it received US Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Damascus, who came carrying a message from Olmert.
For Sadat, peace meant losing the entire Arab World that he had inherited from his predecessor Jamal Abdul Nasser, which looked up to "Big Sister Egypt" as the godmother of Arab nationalism. What made it easier for Sadat is that at the time, Likud was in power, headed by the reliable Menachem Begin.
Although one of the Arabs' worst enemies, whose name graced the massacre of Deir Yassin in 1948, Begin was a leader. The Israelis knew that he was patriotic to the bone and would not question his intentions in peace with Egypt. He was not flirting with Sadat because he wanted peace.
On the contrary, he wanted to drown the efforts of the then recently elected US president Jimmy Carter to broker peace between Israel and Yasser Arafat.
Sending messages
Begin would have dealt with the devil rather than the Palestine Liberation Organisation. He took the initiative, sending messages to Sadat, via Romania, Iran and Morocco, calling for a bilateral peace that would drown all of Carter's ambitions for the Middle East.
At the end of the day, however, there was also a reliable president in Washington DC, who although not informed on the talks, immediately supported them.
Olmert is not Begin and George W. Bush is not Carter. Begin could do things and get away with them - like relinquish the Sinai Peninsula. Now, however, even before talks started, Israeli MPs were outraged with their defeated prime minister making a move towards Syria.
Yuval Steinitz of Likud was quoted in Haaretz saying, "Olmert's readiness to withdraw from the Golan represents an unprecedented political and national abandon."
Additionally, the Turks are not the United States and they cannot deliver peace in the Middle East. They can however, play the role of a mediator. If any real deal were to materialise, it would need American blessing.
At this stage, and in what remains of the Bush administration, the Americans are simply un-interested in a Syrian-Israeli peace. They believe that the Syrians are interested in a 'peace process' rather than a 'peace deal' to end the US-led isolation imposed on Syria since 2003.
Bush made it clear, five years ago, when he said "Syria just has to wait" before it sits down to talk peace with the Israelis. That changed when progress on the Palestinian-Israeli track started going nowhere after Annapolis.
Olmert, desperate for some kind of a success story to wash out his 2006 adventure in Lebanon, might have decided to switch tracks between Mahmoud Abbas and Syria. Although the Americans do not endorse such a move, they have repeatedly affirmed that they will not oppose it.
American neutrality is equal to American passiveness. This simply can never see the light without a determined US administration.
Meaning all tack about a peace deal between Syria and Israel - before Bush leaves the White House - would be to nurse a big illusion. The Erdogan Initiative is for later. It's for John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama.
Dr Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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