Rime Allaf, February 2010

While the Obama administration appears to have decided to take the road of dialogue and engagement with Syria, its belated overtures to Damascus reflect Israel’s current needs rather than a genuine break with the Bush approach.

It is not unusual for the Middle East to find itself submerged with rumours of war, even while the mechanics of a peace process continue to grind, at least for the sake of appearances. One year after the Israeli assault on Gaza (and no closer to having reached one of its declared goals of liberating its soldier held prisoner by Hamas), Israel has been sabre-rattling on a large scale and casting its net even wider.

Adding to the constantly rising rhetoric about Iran, and to the direct threats to groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas, Israel is now pretending to argue that if peace is not reached soon, war could break out and include Syria. Different levers have been used to convey this message. While Defence Minister Ehud Barak postures as merely projecting the danger of conflict, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman shrieks that war would have dire consequences on the Syrian president himself and unseat him from power; this outburst followed a statement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem likening Israelis to thugs and warning them to go back on the road of peace if they did not want war to reach their cities.

Questions about the nature of such a war quickly surfaced, especially when Lebanon complained about Israeli threats and planes violating its airspace. In strong terms, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri warned that his country would remain united in its stand against Israel, and, in a clear reference of support for Hizbullah in case of an Israeli attack, added that “we will stand with our own people.”

Off the back burner

While the rapid escalation of these warnings may have been surprising, similar rhetoric of war threats has been heard repeatedly in the two decades since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. It has had varying degrees of intensity, conveyed through an eclectic medley of Israeli positions. Indeed, every time Israel feels it has reached what it considers an obstacle (such as the inevitability of ‘concessions’ on its part) it tries to neutralise one track and kick-start another. With this in mind, the process between Israel and Palestinians can now, for all intents and purposes, be declared dead.

Clearly, Israel is trying to reignite the Syria track which had been on the back burner for the last year. The war on Gaza brought an abrupt end to indirect talks between Syria and Israel through the intermediary of Turkey, and created yet another condition from Israel. After the Turkish prime minister’s vocal criticism of Israel, and his revelation that then-Israeli premier Ehud Olmert had misled him by talking peace with Syria while preparing to launch the war, Israel has decreed that Turkey would no longer be an acceptable intermediary, regardless of the two countries’ formal alliance.

Syria, however, still considers Turkey to be the most reliable partner, especially in the absence of the United States on that particular track. Since the failure of the US-brokered peace talks in Geneva between President Hafez al-Asad and then-prime minster Barak in 2000 (which President Clinton, in his memoir, blamed on the latter’s cold feet), and the subsequent advent of the Bush administration, Syrian-Israeli peace talks had been wiped from the agenda. With the invasion of Iraq and the turmoil in Lebanon and Gaza, and the attempted political isolation of Syria, the last track on anyone’s mind was the Syrian-Israeli one.

Enter George Mitchell, special envoy of President Obama to the Middle East. While his visits have had little effect on the situation, they nevertheless manage to command the attention that American engagement with the region usually brings. But so far, his overtures have been met with much scepticism, and even derision in some quarters. If the US president himself could not get the Israeli prime minister to agree to a partial freeze on settlements in the West Bank for six months (the step initially demanded from Israel in return for US engagement), what could the envoy hope to achieve? That would depend on what the remit actually entails, of course, and it is hardly a secret that few people expect Mitchell to be heavily involved on the moribund Palestinian track.

Belated engagement

Exactly five years after the US withdrew its ambassador from Damascus – protesting Syria’s presence in Lebanon and blaming it for the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri – Washington has nominated a new ambassador to Syria, which has accepted the nominee.

The timing is puzzling, to say the least. Neither the reason given for withdrawing the ambassador, nor the Obama administration’s motto of ‘change’ a year ago, have ultimately impacted the development of Syrian-US relations. Had those ties depended on Syria’s behaviour in Lebanon, the US could have announced its ambassador’s return following the big reconciliation between all parties there, crowned by Saad al-Hariri’s visit to Damascus in December 2009. Had the US really intended to generally improve on the fruitless methods of the Bush administration, it could have dispatched an ambassador soon after Obama’s swearing-in. Instead, the American modus operandi mostly remained unchanged.

In his June 2009 speech in Cairo, allegedly addressed to ‘the Muslim world’, Obama did not deign to stretch a hand and start a new page with Damascus, having the previous month renewed sanctions, which Bush imposed on Syria in 2004. In July, however, after Obama extended further sanctions, which had been passed by Bush in 2007, the Syrian ambassador to Washington announced he had been officially informed that “the US embargo imposed on Syria in all fields pertaining to civil aviation safety and civil plane spare parts has been lifted, as well as the embargo on exporting communications and information systems equipment and technology to Syria, including software, hardware and internet-related equipment.” Administration officials clarified that sanctions would be eased on a case-by case-basis, and that the White House would view requests from companies requesting waivers to sell to Syria.

Syrian optimism was to be short-lived. In December, the White House rejected a request by France to issue a waiver for Airbus (which uses some American parts in its aircraft and is thus subject to US law) to sell civilian planes to Syrianair. After having signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus on an initial contract of 14 planes to be delivered between 2010 and 2018, and the engagement of France to provide a further 36 planes until 2028, Syria found itself forced to turn to Russia to agree on the lease of Tupolev airliners. With its Boeings grounded for lack of spare parts, and only six Airbuses left in flying condition, Syrianair was dealt a heavy blow by this turnabout, hardly demonstrative of a change in US policy.

With its diplomatic nomination one month later, it would seem the Obama administration has made up its mind about taking the road of dialogue and engagement – albeit by following an entirely new script. As the rest of Syria’s positions remain unchanged, its regional alliances not wavering in the last couple of years, and as security and intelligence cooperation (including on Iraq) has been discussed on various occasions with visiting American officials, there remains one plausible reason why the US would suddenly decide to refill a post that sat empty for five years: the needs of Israel.

It is not a coincidence that it should be Mitchell, during his third trip in a year to Damascus last month, who reportedly announced the nomination of a new ambassador to Syria, a matter normally left to established official channels. As an envoy dispatched to organise a peace process, Mitchell will have attached strings to the American offering, and Damascus will have already been given the usual US speech about ‘what it needs to do’ in exchange for a return to normalcy. What is more worrying, however, is what is left implied.

Squeezing the Palestinians

Nobody really believes that Israel is pushing the US to rekindle ties to Syria because it wants peace with Syria. Indeed, the current prime minister has made it clear that he would not return the Golan, and Israel is in the process of voting on a bill for legislation to grant tax benefits to 33 settlements there.

Syria’s position, supported by numerous UN Security Council resolutions, has never wavered from accepting nothing less than the Golan. But with Syria back in the game, Israel hopes to push Palestinians into an even tighter corner, and to force their hand into accepting Israel’s own terms for some sort of settlement of the conflict. Israel’s reasoning is not new on this front and assumes that if it fears being abandoned in favour of a deal with Syria (and consequently Lebanon), Palestinians will eagerly rush back into the negotiations wagon and be more pliable.

Unfortunately for Israel, and very much because of its own actions, there is no Palestinian in a position to negotiate anything, nor even to accept concessions. With the terms of both the presidency and the legislative council having now expired, neither the acting head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, nor the acting prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, or the entire parliament are legally entitled to speak on behalf of Palestinians, with or without the pressure of a Syrian track. This reality is not likely to stop Abbas from struggling to keep his role alive; while calls for Syrian-Israeli talks are gaining traction, Abbas is now mulling the option of indirect talks with Israel, through the intermediary of the US.

Indeed, it seems that the diplomatic game of musical chairs dictated by Israel has started again, with the US providing the music and enticing Syria to make a run for the only seat they have made available. Like long-awaited buses which finally arrive one on the tail of another, US officials keep turning up in Damascus, as if they had suddenly discovered the merits of dialogue; having just heralded the new ambassador, Mitchell now also makes place for another senior diplomat, William Burns, to visit Damascus and the region this month. With the addition of Obama’s new envoy to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussein, it would appear the US has at least decided on the means of engagement, if not necessarily on the ends.