Author: Helena

Netanyahu: Tactical withdrawal from one disposable position?

As widely predicted, in his speech at Bar-Ilan University this evening, Bibi Netanyahu cautiously abandoned one of the many outer defenses he had thrown out around his core project to preserve the ability of Jewish Israelis to settle in and control all of Jerusalem and as much of the West Bank as possible.
That’s my reading of the speech, in which for the first time he gave very guarded support to the proposal to establish a Palestinian state.
A completely demilitarized Palestinian state, that is, and moreover one in which Israel’s control over all of Jerusalem will apparently be undiluted.
These excerpts from the reuters web-page above:

    The territory in Palestinian hands must be demilitarised — in other words, without an army, without control of airspace, and with effective security safeguards …
    A fundamental condition for ending the conflict is a public, binding, and honest Palestinian recognition of the state of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
    …Israel needs defensible borders and Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, will remain united.

I believe it is excellent that this man has now expressed his support for a Palestinian state. So there is now a goal for the immediate next round of robust peacemaking to focus on.
Haaretz has a page of live-blogging of the speech, in English. It’s a little confusing since (as with most live-blogging) you have to read it from the bottom.
At 20:15 the blogger, Benjamin Hartman, notes this: “Three mentions of Iran in first two minutes.”
At 20:19: “He calls for an immediate start to peace talks (uncomfortable shifting in seats heard) with no preconditions.”
The audience, remember, is a toughly religio-nationalistic one. Bar Ilan is a university for religiously observant Jewish Israelis and was the alma mater of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.
(Which reminds me of a comment I heard from a pro-peace American-Jewish friend the other day. He said, “It’s actually good that Obama didn’t go to make a speech at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It could have been really dangerous for him… Don’t forget, 30% of Israelis now routinely say that Amir should be pardoned.”)
Oh, I just saw the BBC’s collection of text excerpts from the speech. It is a slightly different collection. (Why hasn’t Israel’s allegedly tech-savvy government made the whole text available in English already?)
The BBC text has these important provisions:

    The Palestinian territory will be without arms, will not control airspace, will not be able to have arms.
    I call on you, our Palestinian neighbours, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority – Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions. Israel is committed to international agreements and expects all the other parties to fulfil their obligations as well.
    We have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating land for new settlements. But there is a need to allow settlers to lead normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like all families around the world. [The ‘natural growth’ canard there.]
    The refugee problem must be solved outside of Israeli borders. Their return goes against the principle of Israel as a Jewish state. I believe that with goodwill, and international investment, this humanitarian problem can be solved once and for all.

This is, of course, only this Israeli leader’s opening position in what I hope will be a speedy and successful negotiation. It is one that keeps his hard-line coalition intact and pays a nod to Washington on the two-state question, while Bibi is continuing to dig his heels in hard on the settlement issue.
By the way, on settlements, Dan Kurtzer, who was the US ambassador to Israel 2001-2005, gave the definitive version of what was agreed and what was not agreed between Israel and the Bush administration on settlement building, in this piece in the WaPo today.
Bottom line there: in the absence of a Palestinian-Israeli agreement on the matter and in the absence of Israel providing firm and fixed demarcations for either the outer or the “built-up” areas of the settlements, there was no agreement with Washington on where additional settlement construction might be “okay”.
That, in response to Krauthammer’s claims there was an agreement.
But back to Bibi. His concession on a Palestinian “state” is still extremely paltry. Worth giving a small welcome to, I suppose. But let us never forget that Bophuthatswana and its like were also, back in the day, described by Pretoria (and significantly also by Israel), as “states.”
The term means nothing unless the state has real powers to determine its own policies. Some constraints on the level of militarization of a Palestinian state have always been on the table–though there should be some element of reciprocity involved, and with Israeli drones still hovering low over Gaze 24/7 the idea the Palestinians should have no control over their own airspace would be a hard one to sell.
So now we’ve gotten Bibi to say the S-word, Obama should push as fast as possible to secure a final-status peace in which the issues of Jerusalem, final borders, and refugees are all finally resolved. This S-word– like S-for-settlements S-word– is only a very preliminary step on the way.

The results of free and fair elections

All this commentating in the American media about whether the Iranian powers-that-be have negated the results of the election held there yesterday prompts me to ask about the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 2006.
How many Americans have ever protested the negating of those certifiedly free and fair elections, that was carried our by our government in coalition with the government of Israel?
… Or, protested other acts like the assassination attempts made by Israel against the political leaders duly elected in Palestine in 2006… or, Israel’s imprisonment without trial of around 40 of the legislators elected in those elections… or, the damaging, collective-punishment siege that Israel imposed on 1.5 million Gazans, and continue to maintain in harsh form until today, in order to “punish” them for the way they voted in 2006… or, the US government project to arm and train an insurgent force tasked to overthrow the results of the elections by force… or, the full-scale military assault Israel launched in December to try to overthrow the results of the 2006 elections with the application of huge amounts of brute force… or, the numerous other moves made to negate the results of those elections and to punish or kill their victors… ?
Just asking.
It strikes me that having a single standard to apply in response to the results of elections in other countries would be a mighty handy thing for a country that aspires to be a worldwide “beacon of democracy” to have.
Actually, if I heard even one peep of protest from the US government or from any MSM commentators here about Israel’s lengthy continuing imprisonment without trial of scores of elected Palestinians legislators, that would already make me just a little bit happy.
Otherwise, all the bloviating about whatever it is that’s going on in Iran these days (and who, actually, knows at this point?) has all the air of hypocritical and decidedly partisan point-scoring.

Syrian negotiations with Israel: the short version

So presidential envoy George Mitchell has now had his meeting with Pres. Bashar al-Asad in Damascus.
Afterwards he said, “”We are well aware of the many difficulties … yet we share an obligation to create conditions for negotiations to begin promptly and end successfully.”
Intriguingly, that Reuters report also tells us that Mitchell’s meeting with Asad,

    was preceded by talks between U.S. and Syrian security officials in Damascus on Friday that included discussions on Iraq, sources in the Syrian capital said.
    A U.S. embassy official said the meeting was between a “military-led” U.S. team and a Syrian delegation.

Alert readers here may have noted that in the piece I published at IPS Wednesday, that reported and analyzed my June 4 interview with Syrian FM Walid Moualem, I drew attention to the fact that, in talking about his recent phone conversation with Secretary Clinton,

    he mentioned the two countries’ shared concerns in Iraq before the Arab-Israeli peace process… [and that] tracked with what a number of other well-connected individuals in Syria have recently been saying.

In that piece I also characterized what I see as the precise nature of the two countries’ shared concerns regarding Iraq.
If you haven’t read that piece– or the longer collection of excerpts from the interview that I published at ForeignPolicy.com (and also here)– then you should do so.
Also, go read Peter Harling’s excellent recent article “Stable Iraq Key to U.S.-Syria Dialogue.”
I would add at this point that during the six days I was in Syria, several well-connected private citizens there talked about how Syria’s interests in Iraq diverge from those of its longtime ally Iran in some significant ways.
Basically, while Syria and Iran (and the US) all want to strengthen the Maliki government in Baghdad and help him crack down hard on the anti-Baghdad insurgents, Damascus and Tehran differ on the kind of regime they want to see emerging over the long haul in Baghdad. Damascus wants to see one that is determinedly Arab and secular, while Tehran wants to see one that mirrors its own Shi-ite-Islamist character much more closely and might not be particularly closely integrated into the rest of the Arab world.
Yes, this is a difference, and an intriguing one. Several Syrians have also noted how relieved they are to have built good relations over the past few years with their northern neighbor Turkey, a NATO member that has a determinedly secular constitution (even though it is currently ruled by an Islamist party.)
No-one should ever expect, though, that Damascus will simply turn on a dime and– as the childish US parlance has it– “flip” rapidly or completely against Tehran. The Islamic Republic has been an essential regional bulwark for the Asads through many years in which they have faced extremely dangerous threats (especially the early 1980s and the GWB years.)
—
Anyway, the original intention of this post was to note that, though most Americans have paid ittle attention to the Syrian track of the Arab-Israeli negotiations over the past two decades, in fact this has been a fascinating story.
Damascus has negotiated with every Israeli premier from Yitzhak Shamir through Ehud Olmert, with the exception of Ariel Sharon. You can see the book I wrote about the very fruitful first five years of these negotiations, here. Good news, it is now apparently back in print.
Here’s the short version of all the negotiations since 1991:
With Yitzhak Shamir.
Syria decided to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference of October 1991, after Sec. of State Baker pre-negotiated between Shamir and Asad the agreed basis on which the conference would be held. The encounter at Madrid was not itself productive. Syrian FM Farouq Sharaa used his time there to hold up old 1940s-era posters published by the British in which Shamir was (rightly) described as a “Wanted criminal.”
But still, an official Syrian envoy had participated in a public negotiating forum with an Israeli leader for the first time ever; and Pres. Hafez al-Asad assured everyone at home and abroad that securing a negotiated peace was Syria’s “strategic option”, and not just a mere tactic.
Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin succeeded Shamir in 1992, and engaged in negotiations with both Syria and, as it turned out, the PLO. After the PLO concluded the bilateral Oslo Agreement with Rabin in September 1993, Syrian oficials said that though previously they had been committed to negotiating jointly with all the other Arab parties, now they felt prepared to negotiate the best deal they could for Syria even if the Palestinians were not yet ready to conclude a final peace.
Moualem and other officials reiterated that position to me during my recent stay in Damascus– though they all still said that a “comprehensive peace”, that is, an all-track peace, is their preferred outcome.
Rabin engaged more seriously with Damascus than any other Israeli PM before or since. In summer 1994 he handed the US intermediaries what has since been called the “Rabin deposit”, which was a commitment to– in the context of getting satisfaction from Damascus on a range of other issues in the security, economic, and diplomatic fields– withdraw Israel completely back to the lines of June 4 , 1967.
That deposit was never handed over to the Syrians. But Washington’s assurance to Damascus that the deposit was indeed “in Washington’s pocket” was sufficient to allow negotiations on the associated range of other issues to proceed. Including, the chiefs of staff of the two country’s military’s engaged in discussions of a post-peace security regime.
Opposition to the idea of withdrawing from Golan grew up inside Israel, however. (Most of the 20,000 or so Israeli settlers there were put there by Labour, and are still, basically secular-type people, since Golan has almost none of the hot-button “religious”-type sites that are important to the religious-extremist settlers in the West Bank.) Then in November 1995, Rabin was assassinated.
Shimon Peres.
Peres inherited the Syria policy from Rabin. (He had to be informed of the nature of the Rabin deposit while he was actually at Rabin’s funeral. That, though he had been Rabin’s foreign minister. Go figure what that says about the integrity of the process for strategic decisionmaking at the top of Israel’s leadership structure.)
Peres faced imminent elections. He didn’t want to push on with the always-tough Palestinian negotiations. But he did want some kind of an “achievement” of his own to take into the elections, so he moved rapidly into accelerating the negotiations on the Syrian track. Asad was eager to do that, too. In January 1996 the two sides went to the Wye Plantation in Maryland and held very intense negotiations over all the fine details of a final peace agreement. With help from actively involved US mediators there, they nailed down many of its these details.
In February and March 1996, Hamas and other Palestinian militants angry with the the ever-deteriorating situation inside Paltustan as the settlements continued to grow there, launched a devastating series of suicide bombs against civilian targets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Peres called the elections immediately and ordered his negotiators to return from Wye to Israel. He also launched a nasty little war (as an election-related ploy, as so often in Israel.) That war was against Hizbullah in Lebanon, which as it happened he lost. He also lost the election.
Bibi Netanyahu.
He came in in late spring 1996 on a strong platform of opposing Oslo and not doing anything further on the Palestinian track. But when he came under some (not enormous) pressure from Washington to do “something” peace-wise, he tossed a few grudging and inconsequential crumbs to the Palestinians while engaging in a ploy that Likud people have often resorted to: dealing with Syria as an alternative to dealing seriously with the Palestinians.
That, at least, is my reading of the episode in which Netanyahu went along with a plan proposed by the pro-Likud US-American businessman Ron Lauder that he, Lauder, fly to Damascus and try to conclude a quick deal with Asad. (By the way, if I used cosmetics I would definitely boycott those from Lauder’s Estee Lauder brand.)
On this occasion, though, Lauder still had not finally satisfied Asad that Bibi was committed to the June 4, 1967 line before news of Lauder’s activities was prematurely leaked to the media– by, according to Moualem, Sharon, acting in cahoots with Daniel Pipes. Bibi abruptly ended the intiative.
(One casualty of the Lauder affair was, for a few years thereafter, present FM Walid Moualem, who as Asad’s ambassador in Washington in the 1990s had been a full participant in the Rabin and Peres-era talks and had helped facilitate the Lauder mission. After it bombed he was recalled abruptly to Damascus and sent to the woodshed for a few years. We should all be glad he’s back from there.)
Ehud Barak.
Barak came to power in 1999 on a platform of achieving a final Palestinian-Israeli peace “within six to nine months”. But when that proved harder than this intensely arrogant man had understood, he abruptly switched to the Syrian track. He instructed Clinton to convene peace talks with Syrians at Shepherdstown in West Virginia; and then as a follow-up to that, in mid-2000, to organize a summit meeting with Asad in Geneva.
Okay, maybe he didn’t actually, directly, “instruct” Clinton to take these steps… But it was almost like that, given Clinton’s slavering admiration of anyone (Rabin, Barak) who had actually not only served in the military but also had been a renowned leader in the IDF.
Asad was intrigued by the invitation to Geneva and very much hoped that when he met Clinton face to face there Clinton would assure him that Barak had finally reaffirmed his adherence to the terms of the 1994 Rabin deposit. There was some very last-minute sleight of hand involved there– in which Dennis Ross was extremely deeply involved– and when the two presidents met in Geneva Clinton was unable to give Asad the assurance he sought. The meeting broke off very badly. Asad returned to Damascus and a month later died of some combination of long pre-existing conditions and a broken heart.
Dennis, by the way, was the only person taking notes in Geneva. And nine years later the Syrians say he still has not made good on his promise to hand a copy of those notes over to them. Memo to any negotiators: Take your own note-taker with you.
So Pres. Hafez al-Asad died and was succeeded by– what an amazing coincidence!– Pres. Bashar al-Asad. As for Barak, he was still useless at the coalition-guarding task that’s a sine qua non of political survival in Israel. Plus Sharon was stirring things up against him, deciding to go visit the Haram al-Sharif plaza in Jerusalem, and things were going downhill fast in Paltustan… So Barak’s coalition fell apart and he had to call an election in early 2001. He lost to Sharon.
Who as far as I can recall never did anything significant on the Syrian negotiating track. (Maybe I’ve forgotten something. I’m writing this fast.) But anyway, for the new and in some ways accidental Pres. Asad, that meant he had a few years to consolidate his hold on power before he needed to engage in the perils of peace diplomacy with an extremely erratic and ever-changing cast of leadership characters in Israel. He did, however, reiterate at every possible opportunity the commitment that a negotiated peace with Israel was Syria’s “strategic decision.”
Sharon was the PM from 2001 through January 2006, when he was felled by a stroke and was succeeded by his long-time protege…
Ehud Olmert.
In 2007, Turkey’s AKP prime minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan started sending a high-level adviser, the foreign-policy intellectual Ahmet Davutoglu, shuttling between Israel and Syria to explore the possibility of re-opening the peace negotiations on this track with the help of Ankara. These feelers resulted, in May 2008, in Turkey convening a first round of proximity talks between Syrian and Israeli officials in, I think, Istanbul. In the proximity talks, each delegation had rooms in a separate hotel, and Davutoglu and his team carried messages between them.
Olmert continued participating in this initiative until December 2008 even though Bush’s top Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams very strongly disapproved of it. I guess we could call that evidence of a modicum of courage and vision on Olmert’s behalf? H’mmm… Maybe…
(Clarification, morning of June 14: Though Abrams opposed Olmert’s involvement, Olmert reportedly checked in with Bush himself who gave him a go-ahead of some sort. So Olmert’s “courage” is not necessarily proven by this episode.)
Once again, the members of the Syrian team in Turkey sought assurance from this new leadership in Israel of commitment to the 1994 Rabin deposit. They also sought assurance that, when referring to “the June 4, 1967 line”, everyone was actually still talking about the same exact spot on the map. So demarcating that line because an issue.
On around Christmas Day last year, Olmert himself went to Ankara to give his Turkish hosts his version of where the six key GPS points on the demarcation line were. If Davutoglu, Erdogan, and Asad had determined that this concurred with the Syrian view of where the line was, then Moualem was reportedly ready to fly to Istanbul at a moment’s notice to engage in the first direct face-to-face talks any Syrian official had held with Israeli officials since Shepherdstown… But before the Turks could fully examine the six GPS coordinates being offered by Olmert, Olmert got urgently called back home.
One or two days later he launched the assault on Gaza.
In both Damascus and Ankara there was some real anger that in the whole exercise of the promximity talks these two governments had merely been “used” by Olmert and as part of an elaborate strategic deception operation, designed to provide a flim-flam of diplomatic movement to hide the reality of the assault that Olmert– and Barak– had for many months been preparing, against Gaza. There is considerable evidence of other elements of this strategic deception operation, too, as has been widely noted by Israeli analysts and reports. In one part of it, Barak went on a very silly game show and had tomatoes thrown at him, or whatever, to “lull” the watching world into thinking that Israel really couldn’t be preparing any serious military operations if the defense minister had so much free time on his hands…
In Damascus, in addition, I heard some real relief expressed that the regime had dodged a bullet by not having moved to the next level of direct talks with Olmert by the time he launched the assault on Gaza.
—
So now we are back to Bibi Netanyahu in power in Israel.
Moualem told me he thought the best to resume the peace negotiations with Israel would be to resume the approach that was used with Olmert in Turkey; and to resume it with Turkey playing the same role, as before.
Here was what he said, precisely:

    We think that was a good approach: to start with the indirect talks in that way. And then, if we had gotten over the preliminaries with the Turks the plan was to hand the task of completing the peace agreement over to the Americans.
    The best way would be to try to repeat this approach now. If this should succeed, the success would belong to Barack Obama — and if we fail, the failure would be ours alone!
    Why do we need the U.S. in this? Firstly, because of the unique nature of the relationship they have with Israel, and secondly because of their command of certain technical capabilities — for monitoring and verification of a peace agreement — that only the United States has.

Of course, Mitchell and Obama may well have other plans for how to proceed. My own longstanding preference, fwiw, is for a resumed, all-track, international peace conference that is convened with the goal of securing a comprehensive, all-track peace between Israel and all of its neighbors.
I wish that in his Cairo speech, Obama had mentioned the words “comprehensive peace.” He has mentioned them since then; but in the Cairo speech would have been even better.
If that really is his goal– as seems to be the case– and it is also, crucially, the goal of the Arab Peace Initiative, then that needs to be repeatedly spelled out, and concrete actions in pursuit of that goal need to be taken very soon indeed.
Maybe the resumed international peace conference should be convened in Turkey. That would be a fabulous location, and would send many constructive messages to important audiences all around the world. Plus, Edogan and Davutoglu– recently named his foreign minister– have proven their abilities as mediators and negotiators on a broad range of issues relevant to the quest for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
I can’t quite make up my mind between Ankara and Istanbul. Istanbul maybe carries a bit of left-over Ottoman baggage– but it is a ways more exciting city!
But maybe the Ottoman baggage has nearly all dissipated now, anyway. Gosh, I still have half an essay on my hard drive on the emergence of a helpful, de-escalatory form of neo-Ottomanism in Turkey under the AKP… Ankara’s foreign policy under the AKP has truly been inspired. (Including, of course, that even though Turkey’s a NATO member it dug its heels in, in opposition to Bush’s invasion of Iraq.)
Enough here, for now. The main topic of this post is, after all, the history of Syria’s peace efforts with Israel since 1991.

CSM piece on the AKP in Turkey

Sometimes I feel I exist in a time-warp! Today, the CSM published an opinion piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago, based on my time in Turkey.
I still think its main argument is a really important one. It is that Obama– and a lot of other westerners–

    could learn a lot from Turkey about how a smart Islamist party can be a valued participant in a democracy.

That is such a valuable lesson. The AKP is such an intriguing party!
The reference to Egypt in the intro was because the piece was originally conceived, by me, to coincide with Obama giving The Speech, June 4, in Cairo.
Well, that was eight days ago. An eon in the fast-moving world of Middle East politics these days.
The concluding argument in the piece is this:

    in the Bush years, Washington worked actively to overthrow both Hamas and Hezbollah…
    Several Bush-era officials openly questioned whether the electoral victories of Hamas and Hezbollah actually “proved” that a party could be both dedicated to Islamist principles and democratic rule over the longer term. Turkey’s experience provides intriguing evidence that it can.
    Obama should value Turkey’s views on regional affairs. He may not be ready yet to go along with all the advice he receives from the AKP government in Ankara. But Ankara has much valuable experience that it can share with its NATO ally.

By the way, the dateline of “Adana” came about because I was writing the piece while Bill and I were being conveyed in a rather comfortable touring-car from Kappadokya to Hatay (Antakya)… So at some random point I looked out at the signs on the freeway and figured that the nearest town to where we were was Adana, which I think hosts a large US/NATO air base. I confess I never went into Adana, at all. Just rushed right past it, and rushed through Hatay as fast as we could, too.
And wow, that was just 13 days ago. Feels like two eons.

Mitchell mission getting very serious

Most people in the western MSM have for some days now seemed strongly fixated on the elections in Iran. (And my thanks to Scott Harrop for getting his excellent post on that up here this morning.)
However, something else really important is happening in the Middle East in these days. That is the latest trip around the region being made by special peace envoy George Mitchell.
Today, Mitchell has already visited Lebanon, and is probably just about now arriving in Syria.
My sense is that after he returns to Washington, after everyone has heard what Israeli PM Netanyahu will say in his much-touted speech on Sunday, and after the important people on Washington’s Arab-Israeli policy have been able to do some joint brainstorming there… we might see some significant “next steps” emerging from the White House.
I hope so. I certainly hope there is some decisive move to expand the administration’s actions from words to deeds, and to expand its purview from “merely” the issue of a settlement freeze (which is only an interim-stage issue, anyway, however important it is), to the all-important goal of securing a fair and sustainable final-status peace between Israel and ALL of its neighbors.
Syria is, of course, an important part of this, so Mitchell’s visit there is extremely timely (or, in fact, long overdue.). This is his first visit either there or to Lebanon in his present round as envoy, since he skipped both countries during his earlier three trips around the region.
On this trip, Mitchell has already been in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon…. All this, in the wake of Obama’s June 4 speech at Cairo U.
It is worth reflecting a little on the meaning, for Syrians and for their relations with the US, of Mitchell’s visit to the country. So long as G. W. Bush was president, as I noted in this recent piece, high officials in the neocon-swayed US administration considered themselves to be “in a state of quasi-war” with Syria. This manifested itself in Bush-era acts like the following:

Continue reading “Mitchell mission getting very serious”

My Moualem interview on ForeignPolicy.com

… is here.
I will just add to everything else I’ve written about Syria-Israel in recent days that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was in Washington last week, where he conveyed the message that Turkey is very willing to support Syria’s suggestion that any new Syria-Israel talks resume as proximity talks in Turkey, taking up where the talks broken off by Olmert left off in late December.
Davutoğlu has only recently been named FM. Prior to that he was a special adviser to PM Erdoğan. In that capacity, it was he who orchestrated the whole proximity talks project between Israel and Syria last year.
He also seems to be a man of considerable strategic vision: a foreign-policy intellectual who then gets a chance to influence real power. Sort of Kissinger without the bullying and arrogance, you might say.
He was the author of the AKP’s policy of “zero problems with the neighbors.”

My book on Syria-Israel talks, being reprinted

I just heard from the good folks at the US Institute of Peace Press that they will be reprinting my 2000 book The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond.
The book had fallen out of print a couple of years ago, which I thought was a real pity. But one phone call to a friend at USIP and it seems they’re now planning to print up a bunch more copies. (My thanks to that friend!)
This is very timely, given Mitchell’s imminent arrival in Damascus.

Continue reading “My book on Syria-Israel talks, being reprinted”

Highlights from my interview with Syrian Foreign Minister Moualem, June 4

On his impressions of
Pres. Obama, his hopes from Obama’s
[at that moment underway] Cairo speech, and Sen. George Mitchell’s peace
mission:

We think Pres. Barack Obama seems very sincere. But can he deliver? There is
always Congress and the pro-Israeli lobby to take into account.

With the speech, we hope Obama can
deliver everybody’s dreams! Including his own dream, and that of the
Palestinians—to see the occupied territories freed from occupation and
all Israelis to be able to live in peace.

… I don’t know
Sen. Mitchell, but I have worked closely in the past with Fred Hof, who is one
of his assistants. What we’ve heard about Mitchell’s work in Northern Ireland
and on the Mitchell Commission on the Palestinian issue is encouraging to
us.  We are very ready to work with
him.

We approve of Barack Obama a lot. The man put a comprehensive peace back on the
agenda. He also intends to pull out of Iraq completely. We are ready to help
with that, but we need our conditions in the matter addressed, too.

On the May 31st
phone call he had with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

I think Hillary Clinton is a good and effective Secretary of
State. We agreed on a Road Map to normalize US-Syrian relations in all
fields—political, security, and cultural.  We agreed we have a mutual, shared vision that centers around these three points: to stabilize Iraq; to work for a
comprehensive peace in the Middle East; and to cooperate on combating
terrorism.

We realize none of these depend on Syria and the US alone;
but they also involve other players.

On the way the Obama administration has been implementing sanctions
against Syria:

I am very eager to see a real improvement in our relations
with Washington. But nothing has happened yet. Even on the question of the
parts for our civilian air fleet [whose shipment has been blocked under the
US’s sanctions legislation], we have seen no movement. They haven’t informed
the Europeans yet that it’s okay to ship those parts. I think your Commerce
Secretary could authorize this whenever he wants, as it’s a matter of aviation
safety.

… It seems anachronistic to us that Obama
recently renewed the Syrian Accountability and Restoration of Lebanese
Sovereignty Act. The issue has been resolved! We withdrew our troops from
Lebanon, and have exchanged ambassadors with Beirut.

On Syria’s continued
presence on the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism”:

We know that our position on the list is not even really in
regard to Syria and the United States as such, but more related to Hizbullah and Hamas and their fight against Israel. But
it’s very strange that you condemn me as a “terrorist” at the same time as you
call on me to help you combat terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere. It doesn’t make
sense!

On Sen. Kerry, who
visited Damascus recently and held a number of meetings with Pres. Bashar al-Asad:

Sen. Kerry’s role is essential. He enjoys the trust of my
president. They have had good meetings and several good telephone calls. There
is chemistry between the two men, you could say.

On prospects for
dealing with Israel’s Likud government:

The most important thing is that there should be a political
decision for peace. It is not important to us whether the government is Likud
or Labour.

On the Arab Peace
Initiative:

Yes, there is Arab consensus on the Arab Peace Initiative,
which was reaffirmed at the Arab summit in Doha [in late March]. This mandates
the implementation of all the Security Council’s resolutions about the
Arab-Israeli issue and lays out commitments for what will happen after that.

On the proximity talks
that the Turkish government hosted throughout several months of 2008 between
Syria and Israel:

We were very happy with the Turkish role. The Turks were
completely professional,  trustworthy, and helpful as mediators. We think that
was a good approach: to start with the indirect talks in that way. And then, if
we had gotten over the preliminaries with the Turks the plan was to hand the
task of completing the peace agreement over to the Americans.

The best way would be to try to repeat this approach now. If
this should succeed, the success would belong to Barack
Obama—and if we fail, the failure would be ours
alone!

Why do we need the US in this? Firstly, because of the
unique nature of the relationship they have with Israel, and secondly because
of their command of certain technical capabilities—for monitoring and
verification of a peace agreement—that only the United States has.

On Syria’s previous
peace efforts with Israel—in nearly all of which he was a direct
participant:

We got closest to bridging our differences under Rabin. He
was the only Israeli leader we have dealt with who had a real strategic vision
for this region. We were able to engage on every single issue with him. We
differed only on some details regarding the timetable for implementation.

The effort that [US-Israeli businessman] Ron Lauder
launched, trying to mediate between us and Netanyahu’s first
government in the 1990s also seemed very serious. But it ended
prematurely. Lauder told us that Ariel Sharon had interfered, leaking news of
the initiative to Daniel Pipes and thereby aborting it.

We were ready to sign an agreement with Israel even if the
Palestinians didn’t conclude their agreement. But this has to be a genuine
peace agreement for us.

On Iran, US-Iranian
and Syrian-Iranian relations:

We are ready to help. We want to help inform both sides
about their real importance—about the United States’ true importance in
the world, and Iran’s true importance in the region.

Can the relationship we have with Iran help us to resolve
the Arab-Israeli conflict—or, will solving the Arab-Israeli conflict
actually help to reduce the importance of Iran in regional affairs? These are
important questions to discuss.

Why would the US want to persist in trying to mobilize an
Arab-Israeli coalition against Iran? We are talking about peace in the
whole region!

What would happen if we managed to achieve that? Iran would
then have to choose to go with the peace, or against it.

If a close ally of Iran like Syria went to Iran and said
‘This peace is in our interest’, what do you think would they do? I can tell
you they have never opposed any of our peace moves since 1991. Even with
the Turkish mediation last year, they told us they supported it.

On whether Syria could
mediate between Fateh and Hamas:

This mediation effort needs an Egyptian direct role, as at
present; and that role should be supported by the Arabs.
But the mediator should be neutral between Fateh
and Hamas. Ultimately, the two Palestinian parties must come together to reach
common ground between them without pressure.

They need to see that they are both losing from the present
stalemate—both of them!

Gaza is in a terrible humanitarian situation, and has to be
a priority.

Now we have a new U.S. president with a different approach,
so we hope there can be speedy progress.

He should realize, though, that Hamas has already taken two
important steps: Khaled Meshaal
announced his support for a Palestinian state with its border at the pre-1967
line—he did this at a press conference two years ago, and has restated
that position many times since.  He
has also said that Hamas will accept a political solution to the conflict if
the majority of Palestinians accept it. That means he accepts the political
solution.

The Palestinians will have to have an election in January,
anyway. But meanwhile, their split need not be, and indeed is not, an obstacle
to progress in peacemaking.

On whether and how he
sees the issue of the Three Preconditions the US and its Quartet allies defined
for any Hamas participation in peacemaking getting resolved:

First of all, this is a matter for the Palestinian parties
to resolve, not Syria.

Secondly, this idea of “recognizing Israel” as a
pre-condition to the Quartet even talking with Hamas has no basis in the
international terms of reference for the diplomacy. Look at us: We have
negotiated with Israel since 1991, sometimes very productively indeed, and we
have never given, or been required to give, formal recognition to Israel.
Recognition is something that will be part of the outcome of a successful peace
negotiation, and should not be considered a precondition!

Thirdly, these preconditions have become an obstacle in
intra-Palestinian reconciliation,  so everyone needs to find a way to remove that
obstacle.

His hopes regarding
the Lebanese elections of June 7th:

I hope they happen peacefully, and that the Lebanese people
choose people who will represent their interests well.  And I wish the Lebanese people well!

On the potential role
in the peacemaking of Quartet member Russia:

The diplomatic initiative the Russians are now undertaking
is serious. We told [Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov
when he was here that the peacemaking effort needs to be prepared well; it
needs to have a clear aim; it needs to be conducted on the basis of clear
understandings; and it needs to build on what’s been achieved already. We
believe Russia can help in all these parts of the effort.

WaPo’s Kessler pulls punches on Ross

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler had an article today in which he deals with the topic of Dennis Ross’s objectivity and the appropriateness of having this person, of all available people, acting as Sec. Clinton’s adviser on Iran and Gulf affairs.
It is good and notable, I guess, that this topic can even be raised by a journo in the MSM. For many years, almost no-one in the MSM would have dared even mention the criticisms that have surfaced against a leading Jewish-American public figure like Ross, for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.
However, Kessler considerably pulls his punches in the article.
He makes no mention of the many questions that have been raised about Ross’s competence to arrive at any judgments about decisionmaking in Iran, a very complex country of whose affairs he has never previously demonstrated any detailed knowledge.
Though Kessler does mention Ross’s role as co-author with another WINEP person of the new book “Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East”, he doesn’t mention the fact that the book argued strongly against a key proposition propounded by his principals in the administration: namely that there is a strong link between Iran policy and Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
Also, in the book, Ross and Makovsky express a hard line toward Iran that can give the Iranian government ample reason to believe that a US leadership guided by Ross’s advice may only be undertaking diplomatic overtures to Tehran as a ruse, preparatory to launching a further escalation of its attacks against the Islamic Republic.
Finally, though Kessler does mention Ross’s role as a co-founder of a very hawkish US group called United Against Nuclear Iran, he mysteriously makes no mention of Ross’s just-relinquished role as founding President of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People’s Public Policy Institute (JPPPI). According to reports in the Israeli press, while Ross was still its president JPPPI was “tasked” by the Israeli government with doing some important strategic planning on its behalf.
Kessler also writes in deadpan vein, “Ross has written that his admiration for Israel has not hurt his effectiveness as a negotiator.” But he has apparently been quite unable to find a single Arab or Muslim person to corroborate that statement!
That part is pretty hilarious.
But I wish Kessler and his editors had been braver and published much more of the material that I am sure they have to hand that strengthens the judgment that this man is a quite unsuitable pick for the Iran-affairs advisory post in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Addition, 11:20 a.m.: I just read the article in the paper edition. It is still always easier for me to read texts on paper! What struck me on this read was this framing Kessler made in his fourth para of what “the issue” is around Ross:

    Ross is undertaking this assignment amid questions in Washington about whether he has sufficient clout in the nascent Obama administration. And in the Middle East, many officials view him as too pro-Israel, raising concerns about whether he is the right person for the job of coaxing the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I would say that seriously mischaracterizes the concerns here in Washington DC. Some people here doubtless have questions about whether he has enough clout in the administration– but I can tell you that many others– perhaps an even greater number!– question whether he too much clout. Worries on that score are not, as Kessler’s framing would have you believe, limited to the Middle East.