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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Dates with Damascus
By Graham UsherAmid the official dirges that accompanied the death of Hafez Al-Assad, a shriller note was detectable. As the dramatic news filtered out of Damascus on Saturday Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak quietly placed his army on "increased alert" along Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon "as is necessitated by such a situation."
It was a sign of what the Israeli leader described the next day as the "wholly new situation in the Middle East" caused by the sudden end of a ruler many in his cabinet viewed as the "toughest and most difficult enemy of all." It remains to be seen whether the "new situation" will change that perception and lower the hostility, but it will take time either way. For Israelis -- commented Israel's Justice Minister Yossi Beilin on 10 June -- "for 30 years Assad was Syria and Syria, Assad."
The alert was relaxed after 24 hours, once the fear of coup attempts and "tensions" abated. Since then, the Israeli consensus is that for the near future the priorities of Syria's "President select" Bashar Al-Assad are less Israel than smoothing his way to power and consolidating his base at home. Very few Israeli politicians and analysts believe there will be much movement on the Syrian track of the peace process this side of US presidential elections in November. At the meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, Barak also appeared confident that "quiet" would prevail on Israel's borders with Lebanon and Syria.
The larger question is whether peace and quiet will prevail if and when Bashar establishes himself as the uncontested heir to Assad's Syria. And whether he will be interested in striking a peace agreement on terms more to Israel's liking than those demanded by his father, whose consistent line was a full peace only in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. And whether -- in the meantime -- there is anything Israel can do to make the young Assad less like the old.
If there is, the theatre for it is again likely to be Lebanon, though not necessarily through war across the border. Rather Israel (with the US) is likely to lend its echo to those voices inside Lebanon that will demand -- with Assad dead and the Israeli occupation over -- that the time has also come to end Syria's "presence" in the country.
Praying for a one-time foe; Arafat and the Palestinian delegation
The theme was aired even before Assad's death. "Do not let your country become host again to terrorist organisations and foreign powers," Barak warned Lebanon last month, two days after his own foreign power and "terrorist organisation" of the South Lebanon Army had beat a hasty retreat from the south. The warning was followed by explicit calls from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US ambassador to Israel, Martyn Indyk, for the withdrawal of the 35,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon and for the Lebanese government to assert its "authority" over Hizbullah and the border with Israel.
But to what end? Neither Barak nor Albright had made the Syrian presence in Lebanon an issue in the "live" phase of Israel's negotiations with Syria earlier this year. On the contrary, a basic tenet of Barak's strategy was that Syrian and Lebanese tracks were inextricably linked and that it was preferable to have Syria in Lebanon than outside it. The sudden concern with Lebanon's "sovereignty" (something to which Israel and the US have never paid much heed in the past) was rather to put the squeeze on Syria to accept Israel's terms at the negotiating table. With the "tenacious, intransigent" father now gone, the same squeeze is likely to be put on the young and untried son.
The view of many Israeli ministers is that for Bashar to survive politically he must improve Syria's economic situation, which with growth rates at less than two per cent and unemployment at 30 per cent is truly dire. To achieve this he must not only maintain Syria's economic "union" with Lebanon -- and particularly the hundreds of thousands of Syrian workers employed there, he must also modernise the Syrian economy by opening it up to Western and particularly European capital and technologies. For Beilin, there is only one road to this Nirvana. "My hope is that whoever will replace [Assad] will understand that Syria's only chance for serious economic growth will come by way of peace with Israel." The converse is the threat: no peace with Israel means Syria's isolation and increasing bankruptcy.
The other consequence of Bashar's accession to power is that most peacemaking now will go along the Palestinian track, if only because an agreement there is the only one possible in the few months remaining of Clinton's tenure. On Sunday Israeli and Palestinian negotiators left for Washington to resume talks on the outstanding interim issues and on reaching a Framework Agreement on the final status issues of Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements and water. And while Yasser Arafat attended the funeral of the "great Assad" -- and declared three days of mourning in the Palestinian Authority areas -- he still intends to meet President Bill Clinton in Washington on Thursday.
Of the two dates, most Palestinians would prefer their leader to meet the one in Damascus than at the White House. They view the passing of Assad as a rare opportunity to turn the page on what has long been a cold and bloody chapter in the relationship between Syria and the Palestinian leader, characterised by rivalry, suspicion, war and massacres. It was a struggle to represent the Palestinian cause that has long rebounded to nobody's benefit except Israel's. For the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who reside in Syria and Lebanon but whose fate will be addressed in Washington, the greater the Arab solidarity between the countries that host them the greater their strength vis-à-vis the resettlement schemes of Israel and her allies.
"No one power can hold exclusively the refugee file," says a Palestinian leader in Lebanon's Ain Helweh refugee camp, which has seen more than its share of blood due to the Palestinian-Syrian contest. "Not the Palestinians, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, not Arafat and not Israel. It is a common Arab and international file. It has to be owned by all if its resolution is going to be accepted by all."
