Monday 28 April 2008

    Since the year 2000 and the end of the Clinton administration, no progress has been possible between Jerusalem and Damascus with respect to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, a pre-requisite condition for any peace between Israel and Syria. Things are changing. Last week, the mediation Turkey has been discreetly conducting since April 2007 became public knowledge - to the extent that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan went to Damascus to discuss the state of progress in his efforts with President Bachar el-Assad.

    So, Syria and Israel are once again ready to talk peace, and, above all, desire that it be known that is the case. Even if they're far from agreement, that's notable progress.

    Direct talks with the Israelis will not take place until a new American administration is in place. Such negotiations will, in fact, require the United States' guarantee and President George W. Bush "has neither the vision, nor the will to promote the peace process," noted President Bachar el-Assad.

    So he specified that the objective of the exercise is to be ready for a change in United States' diplomacy after next November's elections.

    Israeli officials have the same concern. They know that they'll have trouble finding a White House interlocutor as indulgent as George W. Bush. Showing themselves ready for dialogue may be useful for winning the trust of the next president. That's the minimalist explanation. The other consists of saying that the Israelis are trying to protect themselves against a possible rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

    In fact, everyone knows that an Israeli-Syrian discussion cannot limit itself to the Golan Heights - conquered by Israel in 1967 and which served as the springboard for Syrian attacks during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. At a time of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, the Golan's strategic interest is not what it once was for Israel. In fact, even if it remains unmentioned, there are many other subjects - more serious, more difficult and more essential to the region's future - in the "basket" of negotiations with Damascus.

    There are the ties that Syria maintains with Palestinian Hamas, the leadership of which is located in Damascus. Israel will demand that the offices of the Islamist organization in the Syrian capital be closed. There's also the Syrian support for Hezbollah. Israel will require guarantees that the threat the Shiite militia brings to bear against its northern border cease.

    On the Syrian side, the Golan is a historic and fundamental claim. Sooner or later, they say in Damascus, it will return to Syria. More important is to maintain, or rather to reestablish, the Syrian stranglehold over Lebanon. Israel has no intentions on the land of cedars and could accommodate itself to a Syrian presence, on condition its own security be guaranteed. There is a possible entente there.

    None of this is without impact on the close ties Syria has woven with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. Lebanon and the role assigned to Hezbollah are at the heart of the partnership that has been composed between the Islamic Republic and the Syrian regime. Does Syria want to distance itself from Tehran?

    It so happens that Iranian leaders didn't budge when their Syrian allies started to talk peace with Israel. What must be deduced from that? There we enter into the unfathomable mysteries of the Middle East, among which the unclarified assassination of Hezbollah's terrorist leader, Imad Moughnieh, in February, or the latest "revelations" about the Israeli raid against a Syrian nuclear installation supplied by North Korea.

    Whatever the case, Turkish mediation has much to do. And that it should be the Turks at work says much about the United States' temporary marginalization in the Middle East, as well as about Europe's chronic impotence.