Syrian Eyes See Peace As A Mirage

By Sami Moubayed
September 18, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

DAMASCUS - United States President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell landed in Damascus on Thursday for his fourth visit since mid-2009. He came to brief President Bashar al-Assad about ongoing talks between Palestinians and Israelis, which he has called "impressive", arranged by the Obama administration. He assured officials that the Syrian track was still a high priority on the White House's Middle East agenda.

Syrian-Israeli peace would complement rather than obstruct Israeli peace with the Palestinians, Mitchell was quoted as saying. On the same day Mitchell was in Syria, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that peace between Israel and both Syria and Lebanon was possible.

Syria says it remains committed to peace talks agreed to at the Madrid Peace Conference 20 years ago, based on United Nations resolutions, land-for-peace, and the complete restoration of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel after the 1967 war.

It never misses an opportunity to promote the Golan issue within the international community - notably at the Annapolis peace conference of 2007 - which failed to make any breakthrough. The Syrians went to Annapolis to make the point that whereas they were still ready for peace, Israel was not, largely because the US administration was unwilling. Now, with Obama in the White House, America is seemingly ready for peace, but the Israelis are unwilling.

Obama's good intentions for Middle East are appreciated by Arabs of different stripes and colors, even hardliners like Hamas, but all of them say - with one voice - that good intentions are not enough in the complex web of Middle East politics.

Mitchell will have heard from the Syrians the same line they have been taking since indirect Syrian-Israeli talks were called off in late 2008 in response to the Israeli war on Gaza. Namely, that no peace is possible as long as Palestinian reconciliation between the Gaza-based Hamas movement and President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah is unfinished business.

Peace talks need to be approved by a majority of the Palestinians and one can no longer ignore the paramount influence of Hamas, which curtly refuses any direct talks with Israel, as long as the siege of Gaza remains.

Once that happens, clear terms of reference need to be agreed on before returning to the peace talks, vis-a-vis the status of Jerusalem, the right of return of refugees, and that has to go hand-in-hand with a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

A wobbly freeze currently stands, as the current moratorium on new construction in the West Bank expires at midnight on September 26, 2010. There has been plenty of talk of US pressure on both sides to achieve tangible results before then, along with speculation that the freeze might be extended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There is also speculation that Netanyahu, who announced this summer intentions to construct 1,600 new settlements in the Palestinian Territories, might alter his settlements plan to focus it on building in lands currently taken by Israelis. If new settlement happens, as far as the Syrians are concerned, it would spell certain collapse of any peace momentum in the Middle East.

This is where Obama's diplomacy - or should we say soft power - needs to come into play: to convince the Israelis, through political pressure, of the need to end its settler policy and lift the siege of Gaza.

When it comes to the Syrian front, Obama needs to get Israel to accept Turkey's mediating role in the talks. Turkish mediation was called off in 2008 when the talks collapsed between Syria and Israel, and Damascus has repeated time and again that no talks are possible without the Turks.

Other parties, like the French or the Russians, can interfere to maintain a momentum, but only the Americans and the Turks can deliver a peace treaty because they have the complete trust of both the Israelis and Syrians.

For two years, Turkey's President Abdullah Gul has repeated his country's willingness to sponsor indirect talks, but Israel still refuses, especially after its relationship with Ankara hit rock bottom as a result of the row between President Shimon Peres and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Switzerland in January 2009, and more recently during the Freedom Flotilla incident in May.

Obama would need to materialize promises made to the Palestinians during his Cairo speech in the summer of 2009, about statehood, justice and an end to colonies in the West Bank. This has become all the more difficult with a radical government in Israel that refuses to budge when it comes to concessions to the Palestinians.

From an Arab perspective, Israeli's decision to construct 1,600 settlements in the West Bank - famously made during US Vice President Joe Biden's last visit to Israel - and the slump in Turkish-Israeli relations are grand testimony that Israel is not interested in peace, at least not with Netanyahu in power.

With no u-turn on Gaza, no halt to settlements in the West Bank, and no Turks onboard the peace process, a comprehensive and sustainable Middle East peace - as far as the Syrians are concerned - is nothing but a grand illusion.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

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