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Golan elephant and the Lebanese
crisis
By Ashraf Fahim
At
the center of the ongoing crisis surrounding the
Syrian presence in Lebanon, a 38-year-old elephant
has been loitering almost unnoticed. While the
world scrutinizes Syria's promised withdrawal,
gawks as the Lebanese opposition and Hezbollah
flood the streets of Beirut in their war of
demonstrations, and debates whether the Bush
administration deserves credit for 
inspiring the "cedar revolution", little
attention has been given to a principal factor
binding this Levantine Gordian knot - the Israeli
occupation of the Syrian Golan heights.
Though not as glamorous as the more
polarizing Israeli occupations in the West Bank
and Gaza, Golan is of immense importance because
it is the last tangible redoubt of Syrian-Israeli
enmity and the physical embodiment of their
57-year ideological and territorial conflict. With
Golan quiet since the armistice agreement of 1974
(established after the 1973 "October" War),
Lebanon has long been the proving ground for the
Levant's principal antagonists.
History's
arc can easily be traced from June 4, 1967, when
Israel conquered the strategically valuable Golan
plateau from Syria, across the gory horizons of
the Lebanese civil war, in which Syrian and
Israeli intervention would eventually contribute
to the instabilities that produced the Valentine's
Day assassination of former Lebanese prime
minister Rafik Hariri and the present imbroglio.
The Lebanese pawn may soon be liberated
from the stratagems of the surrounding horsemen,
however, stripping the Levantine chess board to
its bare essentials: Syria and Israel left
glowering at each other across the armistice line
that divides the mountainous Golan from the road
to Damascus.
The problem for Syria is that
even if the new reality ends up spotlighting the
Golan occupation, it will come at the cost of its
suzerainty over Beirut. Syria's Hezbollah ally in
south Lebanon has been an invaluable stick to prod
Israel into negotiations, and, along with Syria's
troop complement, the Shi'ite militia serves as a
buffer to westward Israeli invasion. Thus
weakened, Syria's chances of retrieving the entire
Golan from hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon may then be about as likely as an elephant
walking through the eye of a needle.
The apples of Golan
When six
trucks laden with Golan apples grown by Syrian
Druze farmers passed through the Syrian city of
Quneitra this month, it was a minor commercial
transaction of immense historical symbolism. The
ongoing shipments of 200 tons of Golan apples is
the first trade of any kind between Israel and
Syria, a momentous step given that Damascus still
houses the Central Office of the Arab Boycott of
Israel. There is also considerable irony in the
fact that the apples are transiting through
Quneitra, which vengeful Israeli forces razed
before they handed it back to Syria in 1973, an
act that did much to reify Syrian enmity toward
Israel.
Damascus has insisted the apple
trade is a onetime deal only meant to help the
beleaguered Golan farmers, who had requested that
Syria buy this year's surplus. But the Syrian
Ba'ath have made a fetish of the symbolism of
petty defiance, and it is unlikely the decision
was made lightly. In fact, it is precisely the kind
of gesture toward "normalizing" relations with
Israel that Syria so doggedly resists, believing
it to be the last valuable incentive the Arabs
have to barter.
Syrian opposition was
critical to the failure of Jordan's proposal at
the Arab Summit last week in Algiers to begin
"normalization" prior to retrieving occupied land.
At the summit, though, Syrian President Bashar
Assad did take the unusual step of giving an
interview to an Israeli reporter.
Rather than a humanitarian gesture, the case of the
Golan apples was likely intended to send a
timely, relatively cost-free message to Israel and the
US at a time when Syria is desperate to get a
buy-in to the roadmap "peace process", and relieve
US-led international pressure on a number of
issues. Washington has ignored the Syrian-Israeli
track of the "peace process" throughout Assad's
five-year tenure.
And
there is every indication that the administration
of US President George W Bush is
settling into the dogmatic belief that peace can
only be made between democracies - a belief now
reinforced by right-wing Israeli politician and
former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, whose
book The Case for Democracy: The Power of
Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
holds a hypnotic power over Bush. The
so-called "democratic peace" thesis has become
Bush's guidestar on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict.
It is difficult to see how
Bush could resolve the ideological contradiction
of demanding root and branch
Palestinian democratization, while also pressuring Israel
to negotiate with Assad's Allawite
dictatorship. Assad has moved at a tortoise's pace on
democratic reform, partly as a result of conspicuous
US pressure and the threatening US presence in
Iraq, but also because real reform would likely
mean reforming the Ba'ath regime right out of
power.
Assad desperately needs to recover
the Golan if he is to revive the Syrian economy
and shore up his legitimacy. But with Lebanon
making him look fragile, the US and Israel have
little interest in gifting him the Golan
lifesaver. So reluctant is the US that even when
Israel has shown signs of bending to prodigious
Syrian peace feelers, the administration has
pressured the Sharon government not to respond. A
report in The Forward on December 15 cited senior
US and Israeli sources and noted, "Washington has
refrained from publicly endorsing the resumption
of Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, and has
quietly told Israeli leaders that this would be a
bad time to resume talks with Syria."
Israel has joined the chorus preaching
Syria compliance with the dictates of United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1559, even as it neglects
the council's more numerous resolutions demanding
it relinquish the Golan and revoke its
1981 annexation (resolutions 242, 338 and 497).
Free from US compulsion, Sharon's office has made
it clear that negotiations with Syria are not on
the agenda. "Syrian President Bashar Assad still
hasn't proven his reliability," said Sharon
spokesmen Avi Panzer on March 13. "And so long as
this continues, Israel will not start negotiations
on the future of the Golan Heights." Panzer cited
the hitherto compliant Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas as a role model for Assad.
There are obvious reasons why Israel
is in no hurry give back the
resource-rich, strategic Golan plateau. Most Israeli analysts
do believe the Golan, even the commanding heights
of Mount Hermon, has lost its military significance because
of Israel's vast military superiority and advances in
the technology of surveillance. But this must be
weighed against the Israeli body politic's
traditionally obsessive prudence on matters of
national security. And the historically
discredited Israeli narrative that Syria used to
bomb Israeli settlements unprovoked from Golan
before 1967 still holds currency among the Israeli
public. For them, the Golan is not only a
convenient ski resort, a source of decent wine,
produce, and one third of their fresh water, but a
comforting chunk of territory separating them from
legions of unfriendly Damascenes.
Golan is
also home to 20,000 illegal Jewish settlers, whose
lobbyists wield disproportionate political
influence in Israel. Upwards of 130,000 Arabs were
driven off the Golan during the 1967 and 1973
wars, leaving a native population of just 17,000
Druze Arabs.
Since peace talks between Israel
and Syria broke down in 2000, a consistent majority
of Israelis has rejected returning the Golan
to Syria. A poll in Maariv in January 2004 revealed
that 56% of respondents wouldn't give it back,
while 36% would. There are, of course, powerful
voices speaking out in favor of negotiations
with Syria, especially given Damascus'
present vulnerability. They include Israeli
President Moshe Katsav and heavyweights in the
military and defense establishments, such as
former defense minister Moshe Ya'alon. But the man
in the middle, Sharon, remains typically
unsentimental about the idea.
The
lackadaisical, thoroughly ensconced Israelis, ever
flush with an embarrassment of military riches,
are a stark contrast to the enfeebled Syrians. The
military and diplomatic leverage garnered by Hafiz
Assad during his 30-year reign has turned to dust
in Bashar's hands. That outcome is mostly the
result of dramatically unfavorable international
conditions, but Bashar possesses little of the
preternatural strategic acumen of his late father.
And even more important, he is without a
superpower benefactor.
Hafiz Assad secured
Syria's interests through artful alliance
formation, even when they contradicted Syria's
pan-Arab orientation (such as its alliance with
Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s) and
through the cultivation of proxies such as Hezbollah
and the rejectionist Palestinian groups. Assad
curtailed Israeli influence in the Levant by
playing kingmaker in Lebanon, and he then helped
Hezbollah to bleed Israel during its 18-year
occupation. His most impressive sleight of hand,
however, was to join the US-led Gulf War coalition
against Iraq in 1991, just as his Soviet
benefactor imploded, for which Syria was rewarded
with a starring role in the US-sponsored "peace
process".
Throughout the process, Syria
advocated a "comprehensive" peace that would, at
the very least, unite Lebanon and Syria in their
negotiations with Israel, even as the Palestinian
Liberation Organization and then Jordan undermined
this strategy by concluding separate peace
agreements with Israel.
Destiny has given
Bashar times as interesting (in John F Kennedy's
Chinese sense) as his father's, but a dramatically
weakened strategic environment in which to
navigate them. The Syrian economy is a joke, its
military is obsolete, and it is hemmed in by US
allies. What little strategic depth Assad
cultivated by reconciling with Saddam Hussein's
Iraq quickly morphed into a hostile US presence on
Syria's southeastern border. Assad's recent
success in securing military aid from Russia,
Syria's solid relations with Turkey, and the
reinvigorated alliance with Iran are the few
consolations left in an otherwise bare pantry.
Even Syria's attempts to reach out to Europe have
had only modest success.
The view from
Damascus was rather melodramatically portrayed in
the March issue of Souria.com's web magazine. The
pro-Syrian site's cover graphic featured a map of
the Middle East with Syria covered in the Syrian
flag and its immediate Arab neighbors, including
Lebanon, swathed in an Israeli flag. The
accompanying text reads: "It is happening ...
faster than anyone has ever expected. Who would
have ever expected to find Syria surrounded by so
much Zionist hostility. Our only condolence is
that we have been there before and we managed to
pull through, and with us united and with God on
our side we will hopefully prevail again."
Bashar's ability to employ proxies, a
key element in the elder Assad's repertoire, has
also become hazardous. The cost of sheltering
such groups as Hamas and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has become
extraordinarily high in the context of
Washington's "war on terror". Israel is
increasingly blaming Damascus for acts of
Palestinian terrorist groups, and the US has grown
indulgent of Tel Aviv's retaliatory strikes on
Syrian targets, such as the one on the Ain Saheb
camp outside Damascus in October 2003. The issue
of the rejectionist Palestinian groups has also
been a stumbling block in Syria's relations to
Europe.
But it is the waning Syrian
influence in Lebanon that provides Bashar's
greatest challenge. Ever since the unilateral
Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah has needled
Israel though the dispute over the Shabaa farms
area in south Lebanon, which Syria and the
pro-Syrian Lebanese government claim is Lebanese
territory, while the UN says it belongs to the
Syrian Golan. Either way it doesn't belong to
Israel. Syria responded to Israeli strikes on its
troops manning a radar station in Lebanon in 2001
through Hezbollah, for example. But as the Syrian
umbrella is withdrawn, Hezbollah may begin to feel
considerably more exposed than it has in the past.
When the "cedar revolution" has run its course
in Lebanon, it is an open question as to whether
the new government will tolerate the risks of
an escalation in the south. Opposition leaders such
as Walid Jumblatt, the mercurial Druze
parliamentarian, have indicated that Lebanon will
not "jump" before Syria and sign a peace agreement
with Israel, preserving at least one component of
Syrian grand strategy. But Jumblatt did tell
al-Arabiya television on March 15 that Lebanon had
no claim to the Shabaa Farms, an unprecedented
statement for a Lebanese leader.
Without
Shabaa to leverage, it is possible that the
armistice agreement that has been so assiduously
observed on Golan since 1974 could falter. Syria
could be tempted to open a new front, as Foreign
Minister Faruk Shara hinted in 2003. "Don't forget
there are many Israeli settlements in the Golan,"
he told the Sunday Telegraph cryptically.
The thief and the elephant
If
the Sharon government actually did want to
conclude an agreement with Syria, it would find
that most of the heavy lifting had been done in
the 2000 negotiations. Mutual security guarantees
and a framework for "normalization" were in
essence agreed, leaving only the question of a
final border unresolved. Israel cited the 1923
international boundary between Mandate Palestine
and Syria, while Syria relied on the 1948
armistice line that held at the outbreak of war on
June 4, 1967. The Syrian map would have given it a
crucial toehold on Lake Tiberias. Two previous
Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon
Peres, had promised former US president Bill
Clinton that they could live with the June 4,
1967, line, but when it came to the crunch, Ehud
Barak backed away from their commitments.
Sharon wouldn't be anywhere near as
forthcoming as Barak. Even though Assad has gone
the extra rhetorical mile by accepting the Israeli
view that talks begin "without preconditions"
(Syria had previously insisted they begin "where
they left off"), Sharon hasn't taken the bait.
Here, Israel's actions in the West Bank, where
facts on the ground are predetermining the border,
may give some guidance to his future strategy on
Golan. Sharon may eventually offer to give some
land back, but the Syrians will be wary of an
adage once told by Gore Vidal. There had never
been, in all the history of anecdote, claimed
Vidal, a story of a thief who broke into a house
and then kicked the ladder down before he could
escape.
Ashraf Fahim is a
freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based
in New York and London. His writing can be found
at www.storminateacup.org.uk.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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