Will the Syrian peace overture be the last hope before the war with Israel? By Salim Nazzal

Will the Syrian peace overture be the last hope before the war with Israel?

By Salim Nazzal

Al-Jazeerah, December 27, 2006

In an interview with the Washington post, the foreign minister of Syria declared his country willingness to return to the negotiation table “without preconditions.” This step seems to contradict earlier Syrian position insisted on resuming peace talk with Israel from the point reached at earlier negotiations. Yet it is apparent that the Syrian proposal seems to be sending a signal to the international community that Syria is interested in investing more efforts to evade the region more wars provided that Israel ends its occupation to the Syrian land. In previous negotiations Isaac Rabin showed some willingness to withdraw from most of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967, and annexed by the likud government in 1981. But after his assassination in 1994 on the hand of a Jewish extremist, no Israeli leader was willing to negotiate the withdrawal from the Syrian land. This position is obvious in the current Israeli inconsiderate response to the Syrian overture.

The right wing politician, Netanyahu, rejects any talk with Syria about the Golan Heights. In his view, if Israel negotiates with Syria, the withdrawal from the Golan Heights must not be taken into the negotiation table. This naturally raises the question, why Syrians would negotiate if their occupied land is not the topic of the negotiation? Prime Minister Olemurt immediately rejected the Syrian step and was not ready to pay it any serious thought. Olemurt repeated the Israeli symphony that Syria is arming the Lebanese resistance movement. In his view Israel would go into negotiation with Syria only if Syria breaks with its allies. This statement sounds odd because Olemurt asks Syria to go away from its allies in order to go into negotiation no body knows where it will end. Past experience with Israel shows that it withdraws from the land it occupies only under the fire of resistance. The Lebanese resistance had to fight 22 years to force Israel to withdraw from the south of Lebanon following the UN resolution 225 which Israel ignored all these years. The Palestinian and the Syrian bitter experiences with Israel in negotiations must have taught Syria that Israel is not the state which puts peace on the list of its priorities. The evidence is that Fourty year passed since the Israeli occupation to the Syrian Golan Heights and no sign from Israel that it intends to withdraw from the whole occupied area.

The Israeli argument which justifies the Israeli rejection on the ground that the Syrian overture aims to decrease the American pressure on Syria does not seem to match up with later developments. The Syrian proposal occurs in a period the aggressive policy of the Neo Cons is in retreat. In Iraq where the US puts all its strength, it has become almost clear that the US has lost the war. The prime aim of the Hamilton /Baker report is to provide the US administration with an exit to keep the face of the current administration. To achieve this goal the report has recommended opening dialogue with Syria to help the US in Iraq. The same report observed that reaching peaceful solutions in the Arab Israeli conflict would help the US in consolidating its deteriorating position in the Middle East. It was not by accident that the Syrian president made it clear that he is ready to dialogue with the US but not to get its orders. The western political movements towards Damascus have increased in the past few weeks confirmed that Syria is not in an isolated position as the Israeli politicians like to expose. Syria was visited by a number of Europian officials and American congressmen which is a clear signal that the policy of isolating Syria has been unsuccessful. Though it is early to judge the outcome of these political activities, which its results do not appear at once, it is difficult to overlook its importance.

In the view of a political analyst these movements can be interrupted in two ways. Firstly, it could be a beginning of western review in the policy towards Syria after it has been evident that the policy of ignoring Syria as a major player has failed.

Secondly, it could mean that the west seeks to explore the situation in Syria in the hope to attract Syria to break its alliance with Iran. Indeed, the Irani / Syrian alliance has demonstrated that it owns the enough strength which appears in its support to the resistance movements in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

After 40 years of the Israeli reluctance to withdraw from the Syrian occupied land, and the failure of the UN to force Israel to implement the international law, it would not be an unnatural thing that Syria seeks to empower its army to face the well equipped Israeli army which the US provides with great generosity. This political analyst compares the Syrian peace proposal with Al Sadat proposal in 1972 to open the Suez Canal which Israel rejected and led as known to the 1973 war.

Actually, Syria never give up the idea of empowering it self to liberate its occupied land. Since the neutralization of Egypt in the Arab Israeli conflict in 1977, Syria tried to substitute the loss of Egypt by restoring the role of what was known as the eastern front. But the Syrian Iraqi difference in 1979 was perhaps the major reason which prevented this front to come true. In the 1980s, Hafez Al Assad of Syria sought to establish what he called a strategic balance with Israel which was disturbed when the Soviet Union, the major source for Syrian arms was dissolved.

The July war in Lebanon has demonstrated that future wars in the Middle East will put all the Israeli settlements under the Syrian fire. In the view of this political analyst, Israel can not bomb the place it wants any longer without expecting retaliation.

The Israeli Blitz Kreig belong to history: modern ballistic rockets have made modern wars much more complicated than ever: the formula of Tel aviv for Damascus is a fact which Israel can not overlook. But it seems that Israeli leaders deny observing that things are changing on the ground. The traditional definition of terms like victory and defeat does not seem to apply on modern warfare. The evidence is that after the huge military success which Israel achieved in 1948 and 1967 wars, it did not break the will of the Palestinians who are still fighting for their freedom despite the huge power difference with Israel.

If a graph is drawn to show the direction of the wars since 1973 to 1982 to the Intifada and until the July war in 2006, it clearly shows that the Israeli army is in decline and gradually demoralized. In the military field the Palestinian and the Lebanese freedom fighters challenged the Israeli military and captured soldiers from their military bases. In the July war in Lebanon the Israeli leadership was unable to provide its soldiers in Lebanon with food a minor logistic problem which did not trouble Ghankiz khan one thousand years ago. On the behavioural level it has become not uncommon that the Israeli soldiers deliberately kill wounded Palestinian resistance fighters, and it has become common that Israeli soldiers steal from Palestinian houses which they raid. These are not mere discipline problems.

For the Israeli society based on the doctrine of militarization, the demoralization of the army is a reflector to the crisis of the whole Zionist project. In the view of a Palestinian specialist in the Israeli affairs the violence of the Israeli soldiers against innocent Palestinians is overturned to the Israeli society it self. This explains in his view the greater than ever number of social problems such as rapes, crimes, narcotics and corruption. According to him the number of Israelis who think that the Zionist project is leading them from war to war is increasing as never before. In his perspective the crisis is not happening because of a corrupted politician or general, but rather the outcome of a racist ideology which seeks to survive by means of force and violence. He believes that the Israeli rejection to the Syrian overture towards resuming peace talks might be the biggest mistake which Israel commit. The year 2007 might witness a war which Israel has no hope to win, no prospect to predict where it will lead, no perspective how it will end, and no insurance that it will not be the last war. The Syrian peace overture might be the last peace initiative before the Syrian Israeli war, which has almost become Inevitable.

More importantly; this war will likely raise serious questions inside and outside Israel about the purpose of the whole Zionist project in the Middle East. The Israeli rejection to the Syrian peace initiative means that Israel is still captive to the old thinking which assumes that Israel is powerful and thusly can keep the occupied areas. If the Syrian peace message did not find listening ears in Israel, the question which many Arabs asks, why the international community should expect that the storage of patience in Syria is without limits.

Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian historian. He has written extensively on social and political issues in the Middle East .Can be contacted at: gibran44@hotmail.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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