ETERNAL VIGILANCE

Golan elephant and the Lebanese crisis

By Ashraf Fahim
March 31, 2005, Asia Times


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 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

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Editor's comment: We see in this piece from Asia Times that the Israeli intransigence over the Golan Heights will, in all probability, remain as it has since the end of peace negotiations between Syria and Israel in 2000. A major problem is the geopolitics of water.

Turkey has been closely aligned with Israel since 1996, and has had tense relations with Syria in the last several years over presumed Syrian backing of Kurdish militia. It has also been revealed, much to the discomfort of the Turks, that Israel has been training the Kurds in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003.

This is well within the parameters of the Zionist agenda outlined by the neocons to use Turkey and Jordan against the Syrians and also to use the Kurds in their plans for regional hegemony against the Iranians and the Shi'ites.

And then there is Bush's new brain (sorry Karl Rove), who, it seems, has had an impact by reinforcing the fallacies of democracy that are reinforced by the Zionist dominated mass media.

It is of particular historical note what the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, said in 1952, "We fight Israel not because it is Jewish. We fight it because it has a government in which the law of man replaces the law of God in the name of democracy." This coincides with the views of the founders of the United States, in particular, Fisher Ames, who believed we should have "a constitution rooted in the principles of the Bible," and on the Word of God.

It has already come to pass with the assassination of Rafik Hariri that the Zionists have gained a part of their objective of further isolating the Syrians, and cauing Hezbollah to be exposed more than ever with the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.

Hezbollah will continue to press for the Israeli withdawal from the Shabaa Farms area of south Lebanon, which has been shown in 2002 to have been originally a part of Lebanon by an Israeli researcher who went to Paris and uncovered documents that show there was a mistake made by French officers when they drew the boundary line, and failed to make the necessary correction when they discovered their error.

That the Golan is still in Israeli hands, and the Zionist camp clearly in control with its 20,000 radical settlers in place, bodes ill for a negotiated settlement any time soon. In the meantime, the Zionists will go on with their purges of Palestinians in the West Bank and continue unabated their policies of regional hegemony.