Is Israel the Enemy Syria Must Have? : Early indications from Madrid suggest a cynical hard line

The first phase of the Middle East peace conference has ended. Whether there will be a second phase any time soon depends on whether Arabs and Israelis, with American coaxing, are able to agree in Madrid over the weekend where the prospective next round of bilateral talks should be held.

Phase one went pretty much as most observers expected. On all sides the formal speeches, interview statements and rebuttals struck familiar themes and recited well-known grievances. Look closely at what the chief spokesmen for the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian sides said, however, and you can discern faint glimmers of light hinting at doors that may have opened just a crack. But look even cursorily at the comments of Syria’s Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh and you will see a door that remains firmly barred and bolted. U.S. officials may well have been disappointed at Syria’s uncompromising stance, but they should not have been surprised.

Henry A. Kissinger noted long ago that the Arabs cannot make war against Israel without Egypt and cannot make peace without Syria. U.S. policy-makers in the years since have had ample occasion to appreciate the truth of that assessment. Take Egypt’s large armed forces out of the Arab military equation, as the 1979 peace treaty with Israel did, and the credibility of the Arab threat shrinks dramatically. But let Syria wield its coercive veto over other Arabs who might be truly interested in reaching an accommodation and making peace with Israel--as Jordan and the Palestinians may now be--and peace hopes fade.

Does Syria want to end its conflict with Israel? Its most tangible reward for abandoning 43 years of hostility would be the chance to repossess the Golan Heights, which it lost after going to war against Israel in 1967. But the Golan is of small economic consequence to Syria. Vastly more important to President Hafez Assad, who has held supreme power since seizing it in a 1970 coup d’etat, is the political value of remaining at war with Israel.

That continuing state of war provides the rationale for his survival. It is used by his narrow-base martial law regime, nearly all of whose members are drawn from the small and secretive Alawite religious sect, to justify an enormous police state apparatus, utter intolerance of political opposition and murderous suppression of domestic dissent.

The war with Israel has been the excuse for Assad to spend 60% of the national budget and more on his armed forces. When Assad agreed to contribute token units to stand against Iraqi aggression he was rewarded with more than $2 billion in aid from the Persian Gulf states and Japan and Germany. Most of it immediately went to buy more weapons from China and North Korea. Syria’s ramshackle, shortage-plagued economy meanwhile grows weaker. The ruling elite, enriched by trading monopolies and drug smuggling from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, are unaffected.

Is Syria interested in peace with Israel? What the last two decades have made clear is that its rulers’ first priority is holding on to power, using whatever ruthless measures are required. That doesn’t bode well for a Syrian peace with Israel. The greater misfortune is that it could hinder progress between Israel and the Palestinians and Jordanians as well.