 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Debate Focus Profile Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters To settle or not to settle
By David Hirst
Forecasting the outcome of the revived Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, is, in the final analysis, conjecture that has as much to do with psychology as with diplomacy. For it requires a degree of insight into his innermost thoughts which President Hafez Al-Assad, most enigmatic of Arab leaders, has never vouchsafed to the world. Will he sign the last of the treaties between Israel and its Arab neighbours -- that arch of the temple of Middle East peace? It would be about as risky to predict that he will, or won't, as it was, say, to predict, in the last days of July 1990, that Saddam Hussein would, or would not, invade Kuwait.
He is suspended between two clear-cut, fateful alternatives. On the one hand, he has long insisted that Syria really does want a final peace; and there is no objective means of impugning his sincerity. On the other, there is a school of thought which says, quite plausibly, that, at the end of day, he is afraid of peace, that if he were offered an even more favourable one than he can reasonably expect, he would still, when it came to the crunch, hesitate to accept it. For him, peace of the kind on offer amounts to the historic failure of a generation, a system, an ideology: so central has Palestine been to all that Ba'athism ever stood for. To be sure, the Syrian people might want peace; but they will also want fundamental changes in the nature of the regime that has governed them these past thirty years.
The crunch is coming. The new breakthrough is almost certainly a portent of that. A potent, tri-partite conjunction of personal and political motives ensures it. President Bill Clinton wants to complete his term with a foreign policy triumph to compensate for the sleaze that has beset it. Prime Minister Ehud Barak is a man in a hurry, seemingly consumed by vast ambitions on several fronts at once. Not the least of them is his commitment to end the occupation of south Lebanon by July. If, to keep that pledge, he is forced to withdraw unilaterally, without any agreement to which -- via Lebanon -- Syria is a party, the former "hell-hole" for Israeli soldiers could turn into a strategic nightmare for him.
Assad's motives, though hardly on public display, are probably the most compelling. According to his biographer, Patrick Seale, he deems it a point of overwhelming personal honour to recover the Golan over whose loss he presided, as defence minister, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But, at 71 and in poor health, he hasn't much time left to do it. He also faces a succession crisis. If he does believe that a peace treaty will strengthen, rather than weaken, the existing order then he will certainly want to achieve one before handing over power to his expected heir, his son Bashaar.
But it is South Lebanon that may finally have made up his mind. The only militarily active frontier of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is the last, considerable card in his historically weakening negotiating hand. But, given the overall military balance of power, it is ultimately an even more powerful one in Israel's. A unilateral Israeli withdrawal would greatly weaken any Israeli incentive to come down from the Golan, and -- as Israel's onslaught against the Lebanese "infrastructure" showed in summer -- it could easily drag Syria into a large-scale confrontation which it could not possibly win.
The breakthrough has spurred questions about who, Barak or Assad, gave more ground to make it possible. All three leaders, according to Clinton, took "blood oaths" to be discreet about that. But, given his legendary obduracy, Assad's contribution is the most significant. He had indefatigably insisted that Barak publicly endorse the commitment supposedly given by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that full withdrawal from the Golan means withdrawal to the line of 4 June, 1967. That has been fudged; Al-Baath newspaper has reverted to talk about "full peace for full withdrawal".
Important, too, is the high level at which the talks are being resumed, suggestive of their make-or-break quality for everyone -- but especially the Syrians. Barak once said that "when Assad and I enter a room we will leave with an agreement". He is not there yet, but, with Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa as his interlocutor in Washington, he reckons he is on the way. Arab commentators agree that both sides are now anxious to get beyond technicalities to substantive, "political" results.
That doesn't mean, of course, that when it comes to specifics, the negotiations won't be very tough indeed, with plenty of scope for deadlock on the five main issues -- withdrawal, "normalisation", water, security arrangements, and the timetable of implementation -- into which they break down. On the vital, territorial question, Assad would find it as hard to renounce access to Lake Tiberias -- which is what a return to the 4 June line means -- as Barak would to cede it to him.
But specifics are only part of the matter. In the largest historical reckoning Israel has far more to gain from a peace treaty with the last two of its neighbours (Beirut will follow in Damascus's wake) than Syria does. "For the first time since the establishment of the state" -- wrote the leading commentator Yosef Lapid in Maariv on Sunday -- "we will be at peace with all our neighbours, and with the Arab world. It is the dream of generations, an End-of-Days vision, a chance we cannot not miss."
Clearly, the Israelis, in the person of their prime minister at least, are reconciling themselves to the loss -- grosso modo -- of the Golan as the price to be paid for this fundamental, this existential boon. But whether Assad will grant it to them or not probably depends only in part on what he achieves with regard to the still highly contentious specifics of any deal. He must know that he can't achieve all he wants, but he may get enough to be willing and able to portray them, all-powerful ruler that he is, as the peace with honour he seeks. It depends, above all, on those higher, survivalist calculations as to which of the two alternatives -- to settle or not to settle -- he deems better for himself and his regime. It his choice, his alone, and one that may soon be upon him. No successor could make it.
