is the third installment of my write-up of the interview I conducted
with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem in Damascus on February
28. The first two installments appeared in these two earlier JWN
posts: 1, and 2. ~HC.
So, I had been asking Mr. Mouallem about the fate of the many settlers
whom Israel has implanted into the occupied Palestinian and Syrian
territories since 1967, and he had been saying, “To make peace you need
a political decision. The issue is not one of settlers, but their
presence there is used as an excuse
for the lack of political will in Israel”…
I asked again about the question of the settlers, and whether the
presence, now, of nearly 500,000 of them inside the occupied West Bank
(including East Jerusalem) might not make the political question, for
any Israeli government, of effecting a total withdrawal from that
occupied area much more difficult to resolve?
He replied,
but what about the four million Palestinian refugees? How can the
international community be happy with that dispersal of the
Palestinians from their homes but say it cannot easily think about
relocating 500,000 settlers? The existence of the settlements
there doesn’t in any way affect the requirements of international law.
Regarding the negotiations over Golan, the issue of the Israeli
settlements there was raised during our negotiations with Israel. The Israeli
negotiators agreed to remove all those settlers and asked for
compensation for the costs of pulling them out and relocating them.
Whom did they ask this of? I asked.
He replied, “Those who were watching the negotiation”– a clear
reference to the Americans, who were the sole outside
mediators/facilitators of all the bilateral peace negotiations that
Israel held, in parallel, with the Syrians, Palestinians, and
Jordanians in the 1990s.
“If the Israelis had asked us,” Mouallem
added, “we would have countered that request with our own request for
compensation for all the many monetary losses our people suffered as a
result of the occupation of our land.”
However, he noted that that principle of compensation from an outside
party for the costs of relocating Israeli settlers from occupied
territories– a principle that has earlier been applied with respect
both to the settlers Israel withdrew from Sinai in 1982, or from Gaza
in late 2005– could also be applied to settlers being relocated out of
the West Bank in the context of a final Palestinian-Israeli peace.
If a comprehensive peace process is resumed within the coming period, I
asked, did he expect that the Syrians would be able to coordinate more
effectively with the Palestinian negotiators than they had in the
1990s, when Yasser Arafat presided over all aspects of the
Palestinians’ dipliomacy?
Mouallem replied, “I can’t tell, because the Syrian issue is much
easier to resolve than the Palestinian issue. Between 1991 and
2000 we built the structure of the peace agreement on our trac, and we
achieved about 85 percent of the final agreement.”
What about the recent press reports that, between 2004 and summer
2006, a Syrian-American business executive called Ibrahim Soleiman had
conducted some “track two” diplomacy with a group of well-connected
Israeli private citizens, and had passed a number of significant
messages between the governmental authorities in Israel and Syria in an
attempt to exoplore the possibility of a resumption of the negotiations?
“It was a personal issue,” he told me. “Ibrahim Soleiman is an
individual who is keen to see peace between Syria and Israel. But
I have no knowledge of any contacts between him and the Syrian
government.”
Did he have any fears that, if there is a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace negotiation, this might make problemns between his
government and Iran?
He replied,
with Israel from 1991 through 2000, and we continued to have good
relations with Iran throughout those years. Of course, it’s
possible the Iranians were convinced that the Israelis would never
complete the negotiation– that Prime Minister Shamir had been serious
when he later revealed that his intention, when he participated in the
Madrid conference, was simply to tie the Arab side
up in negotiations for a further ten years without arriving at any
final settlement.
I asked how he saw the position of the present Olmert government in
Israel. He had said earlier he saw it as “weak”– so what did
that portend for the chance of successful negotiations?
individuals but at the movements of public opinion. The Israelis
lack any leadership that is dedicated to creating a peace culture
inside their society and to preparing public opinion for the era of
peace. Now, instead, we see a leadership that plants fear in public opinion, and
prepares the public there for another military confrontation.
But had the Syrian leadership, for its part, done much to create a
culture of peace, I asked?
He said,
negotiations, and especially during the summit between President Hafez
al-Asad and President Bill Clinton in Geneva in 1994, President Asad
said clearly that ‘Peace is our strategic option’, and spoke about ‘the
peace of the brave.’ Until now, President Bashar al-Asad
considers this to be a fact.
Addressing another aspect of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, I asked how he
saw the more activist role the Saudi monarchy recently started playing
regarding several aspects of regional diplomacy including the negotiation of the Mecca
Agreement concluded in mid-February between Fateh and Hamas. I
asked whether he considered the Saudis had gone significantly further
in this diplomacy than Washington might have been happy with.
He said merely,
Saudis having a dialogue with the representatives of [Lebanese]
Hizbullah, and hosting Hamas and Fateh in Mecca. We’re happy to
see His Majesty the King supporting the Mecca Agreement, which we are
happy with. We’re happy, too, to see them hosting an Arab summit
in Riyadh in the near future. This is the role we should see
Saudi Arabia play, in contributing to increase the stability in the
region.
We’re also happy to see them undertaking a dialogue with Iran.
At the beginning of our meeting– before he told me “So now, you can
ask me anything you like!”– Mouallem had made a quick introductory
statement summing up how he saw his country’s present position.
“We have passed the period of imposed isolation,” he said, with evident
relief. “Why it was imposed on us, I still don’t know.”
He continued,
the Israelis always try to resolve issues by force, and this has led to
the absence of peace for many decades. We see that the US policy
has also, similarly, involved a reliance on force– in Iraq, in
Afghanistan, and in this current mobilization against Iran.
We believe that without a political regime in the region [by which I
understood him to mean a coordinated political-diplomatic approach to problem
solving], you can’t resolve issues or find stability. This has
been demonstrated clearly– in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and
Palestine. You even need a political regime in the ‘War on
Terror’.
Without a political dialogue with the relevant parties in this region,
the Middle East won’t ever see stability.
Is the current instability seving America’s interrests or the region’s
interests? It is surely not.
They tried to tell us about some projects they had, like the Greater
Middle East, or the ‘New’ Middle East, or the alliance among ‘moderate’
countries in the Middle East. But what is their definition of
‘moderate’? Is it a country that supports an ignorant American
policy on regional issues?
You find many questions along these lines being asked in the streets in
the whole of this region. Why has the American reputation reached
such an unprecedentedly low level in so many countries in and beyond
the Middle East?
No-one in the administration has yet answered this.
Toward the end of the interview, I returned to the question of the
United States’ current position in the Middle East, including the
status of the campaign it pursued in 2004 and 2005 for democratization
throughout the region; and I asked how he saw Washington’s position now.
He replied,
world is against democracy. But still, the people of the region
have our own priorities– and the first priority for us is to
liberate the Golan Heights and end the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Because this on its own would have profound political, economic, and
social consequences on Syrian life.
We want to see the Middle East stable and secure. We want to see
Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine all stand up! This, for any Syrian,
is a priority. And this will lead to other priorities, like
democratization.
I asked his reaction to reports I had heard that some
officials in the Bush administration, including Deputy National
Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, had indicated that they gave such a
high priority to democratization and regime change in Syria that they
had argued that the present, Baath Party-dominated government in Syria should not be “rewarded”
by being engaged in a peace process that would almost certainly lead to
the return of Golan to Syrian control.
He said,
means that in his lifetime he hates to see peace.
When Israel conquered the Golan, did it do so on behalf of peace and
democratization– or on behalf of conquering and expansion?
You should ask Mr. Abrams if what’s happening in Iraq is
democratization. The average number of people killed every day in
Iraq is 60 to 70 people. So many Iraqis are now obliged to choose
between being killed and leaving their country. And this is
democratization?
People like Mr. Abrams damaged the cause of democratization more than
any others. Because democracy is an important way to govern a
country– but only if you respect each country’s priorities and needs.
We finished the meeting with some small talk. He and
his key media advisor Bushra Kanafani talked a little about the
dangers they faced during the trip the two of them– and one other
Foreign Ministry official, Ahmed Arnous– had made to Baghdad last
November.
Throughout our whole meeting, Mouallem projected a clear sense of
relief that, in his view, the president whom he serves and the
government of which he is a part had successfully survived a period of
some danger and political uncertainty, and was now prepared to be
somewhat gracious and understanding in the way it deals with the United
States and other western and pro-western powers in the period ahead.
I gathered this same impression of a government and regime that feels a
new (if still not yet complete) sense of self-confidence from
all the other contacts I had during my three-day visit to
Damascus. Those included contacts with a number of members of the
country’s liberal political opposition. Indeed, I was struck by
how similar some of the key the arguments– and even the language– I
heard from them was to that I heard from Mouallem. But I shall
write more about that, later.
Thanks for an insightful interview, I wish our leaders were as articulate. I just read an article in The Future of Freedom Foundation regarding the Syrians torture of Arar. Bush says we do not talk to Syria but obviously somebody in the administration did. The article asks the question of why no one in the media brings up this point.
Gordon Reed
I too thank you Helena for the interview with Syria’s Minister of Foreign affairs. Mr. Reed in the previous comment wished that “our leaders were as articulate” as Mr. Mouallem. My comment on that is; they are, however.
Our leaders prefer deception and outright lies over sincerity and truth. That is what gets us into quagmires in practically every far away corner of the globe.
Greetings, Helena!
Have you written about the Sabian Mandean people of Iraq? I am trying to organize a forum about their severe circumstances in Iraq. From the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6412453.stm
Thanks, as always Helena!
KDJ