For the past several weeks the Israeli press has featured numerous reports on Syrian peace feelers and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that these overtures are neither sincere nor worth pursuing (see, for example, Roni Sofer's recent Ynet article, and the analysis by Shmuel Rosner and Aluf Benn in Haaretz). As is invariably the case with informal diplomatic tremors of this kind in the Middle East, the real intentions behind the statements emanating from both sides remain shrouded in equivocation and unclarity. It may well be true that even if President Bashar Assad is genuinely seeking a renewal of negotiations with Israel, he may not be prepared to reach an agreement on terms that Israel can afford. It is, however, remarkable that Olmert has chosen simply to dismiss Assad's public announcements as not deserving of consideration.
The Syrian offer is the subject of intense debate within political and intelligence circles in Israel. While the Mossad has come out in support of Olmert's view, Brigadier General Yossi Baidetz, head of the Military Intelligence research division of the army, testified before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on December 25, 2006 that the Syrian initiative represented a serious attempt to enter into a political process (see the Haaretz report on Baidetz's evidence to the Knesset Committee).
Olmert's handling of a possible Syrian opening is deeply disturbing. It is glaringly obvious that Israel has a major strategic interest in a political agreement with Syria. Such an agreement would offer the prospect for constraining Hizbollah and stabilizing Lebanon. It would seriously undermine Iran's influence in the area by voiding Syria's role as a conduit for routing Iranian arms and political influence into Lebanon. It would also render negotiations with the Palestinians more tractable by removing Syrian support for Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas's political bureau in Damascus. The Syrians have used Mashal as an effective instrument for promoting terrorism and blocking any constructive agreements between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.
A settlement with the Syrians would remove Syria from its alliance with Iran and place it within the coalition of Sunni Arab states, who are now seriously threatened by Iran's push for political and military hegemony in the region. Given the acute danger that the current extremist regime in Iran poses for Israel, achieving such a realignment within the Arab world should be one of Israel's primary objectives. It is also a major strategic interest of Europe and the United States.
Assad is a weak leader who lacks the political authority and respect of the army that his father enjoyed. If he cannot achieve success in a diplomatic process with Israel, he will be forced to strengthen his ties with Iran and Hizbollah. He may also be drawn into a military adventure, either in Lebanon or on the Golan Heights. It is certainly the case that, as the Americans and the French have emphasized, Assad is a brutal and repressive leader in the classic Baathist mode. His interventions in Lebanon have prevented the emergence of a promising cross-communal democratic government and intensified Hizbollah's grip on the country. Unfortunately, the alternative to his secular nationalist (minority Alawite) regime would likely be an Islamist government associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Attempts to engineer a 'regime change' for Syria would greatly compound the disaster that the American invasion of Iraq has already produced. The likely result would be an extremist Sunni government (or large scale insurgency) supportive of the Sunni Islamists in Iraq, as well as in Egypt and Jordan.
Considering what is at stake, Olmert's apparent refusal to take up the Syrian option, even if its chances of success appear remote at this point, is at best puzzling. Various explanations have been offered for his conduct, none of them fully convincing. It has been suggested that he is bowing to Bush's opposition to engagement with Syria. This seems unlikely. In the past Israel has not hesitated to pursue its own political course, even against American wishes, when it saw a vital national interest in doing so. It engaged in secret diplomacy with Arafat in order to produce the Oslo Agreements in 1993 at a time when the Americans opposed recognition of the PLO. It is also far from obvious that the United States is, in fact, hostile to an Israeli-Syrian political process, given the clear strategic advantages that it stands to gain from such a process.
On another view, Olmert is acting out of loyalty to his right-wing nationalist background, avoiding negotiations that would require territorial concessions as a condition for their success. This view is entirely implausible. Olmert has already departed from his previous ideological commitments by proposing unilateral withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank, after supporting Sharon's disengagement from Gaza. Moreover, Yitzchak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak each in turn established an unofficial Israeli policy precedent by agreeing to give up the Golan in exchange for full peace, in secret negotiations with Hafez Assad throughout the 1990s (see Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2004, for a detailed account of these negotiations).
Olmert's cavalier attitude to Syria's overtures has been compared to Golda Meir's rejection of Sadat's proposal for a settlement in exchange for withdrawal from the Sinai in the years immediately preceding the 1973 war, and to Ariel Sharon's complete lack of interest in the Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab Summit in Beirut in March 2002. Both analogies are misplaced. Meir's reaction to Sadat was conditioned by the triumphalism that determined Israeli policy in the period following its victory in the 1967 war. This attitude assumed that Israeli military superiority would allow it to sustain the status quo indefinitely, until it could achieve a political settlement on its own terms. Sharon ignored the Saudi peace initiative at a high point in the violence of the second intifada because he was determined to crush the Palestinian uprising militarily and then impose final borders through unilateral action. Both leaders enjoyed broad public support for their policies. In contrast, Olmert has been politically crippled by a failed and unnecessary war in Lebanon. He is regarded as weak and ineffective across the Israeli political spectrum. The programme of partial unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank on which he was elected has been discredited by his failures in both Lebanon and Gaza.
A more plausible account of Olmert's current behaviour is that he is acting out of acute political weakness. It seems that he fears strong right-wing opposition if he were to raise the possibility of a full withdrawal from the Golan after acquitting himself so badly in Lebanon over the summer. His continuing inability to deliver security from kassam missiles to Sderot and its surroundings, despite large scale military incursions into Gaza, subsequent withdrawals and unsuccessful ceasefires, has further undermined his position. He appears to have opted for sustaining the status quo as the safest way of insuring his own political survival.
It is also difficult to avoid the impression that Olmert's recent meeting with Mahmoud Abbas and the set of largely symbolic gestures that he promised the Palestinian President are motivated, at least in part, by his concern to generate the appearance of diplomatic activity on the Palestinian front in order to distract public attention from his unwillingness to respond seriously to the Syrians.
However, the status quo is not stable, and disregarding the Syrian overture risks damaging Israel's basic strategic interests, as well as the peace of the region. This will certainly not be the first time that a leader has sacrificed the long term needs of his country to immediate political expedience. A significant part of Israeli public opinion sees the problem clearly, and it is deeply dismayed by Olmert's actions. Unfortunately, it has yet to find effective political expression. Anyone committed to the well-being of Israel and the Middle East at large must hope that this element of the Israeli electorate manages to pressure Olmert into changing course sooner rather than later. Much depends on its success. (Shalom Lappin, King's College London)
