Syria’s Assad Offers Up Harsh Reality

JERUSALEM — Syrian President Hafez Assad apparently has cut off Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to buy peace with the Arab world at a price cheaper than what his predecessors were willing to pay. While unsurprising, the rejection this week raises troubling questions about what happens to the peace process now.

Will Netanyahu, Israel’s new hard-line leader, retreat from his recent campaign positions and make difficult choices for Israel that could push the peace process forward?

Or will he let the current stalemate fester, with the risk that mistrust and disappointment on both sides could escalate violence on Israel’s northern front or even with Syria itself--not to mention the ever-present danger of more terrorist bombings or a new Palestinian uprising in Israel and its occupied territories?

For days, Netanyahu had proposed that Israel be allowed to opt out of its quagmire in southern Lebanon, where it is suffering casualties weekly at the hands of militant Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas, while keeping the Golan Heights that Syria wants back as a topic for future negotiation.

The bargain was offered to Assad at a time when Israel--at least to many Arabs--appears to be stalling and backtracking on commitments it made to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his people, including last week’s decision to relax a four-year freeze on Jewish settlements in occupied areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But few here understood why Netanyahu believed that Assad would accept the deal dubbed “Lebanon First,” in which Israel and Syria would try to build confidence for further talks by settling their disputes in Lebanon, where Syria has thousands of troops and sway over anti-Israeli guerrilla forces.

And when the Syrian leader spoke at a news conference in Egypt on Wednesday, the answer was plain: “Syria and Lebanon first,” Assad deadpanned. “At the same time, and in the same steps.”

Assad also seemed to be equally dismissive of Netanyahu’s request to reopen negotiations with no conditions, saying: “We don’t see in the said invitation any formula which makes us feel that there is even a small opening for a possible peace breakthrough.”

That reply appeared to leave Netanyahu’s proposals slowly twisting in the wind, though his office issued an optimistic statement saying Israel “does not regard the words of the president of Syria as an absolute rejection. . . . His words are a rejection of what Assad interprets as Israel preconditions. But Israel has no preconditions.”

Israel might not have conditions, Assad said, but he does.

He termed them the “basic foundations” established by his government and Israel in five years of talks before Netanyahu took office. These conditions include mutual acceptance of the concept of land-for-peace and U.N. resolutions calling on Israel to give up occupied territory.

Assad, with ripe irony, quoted Netanyahu’s followers as saying, “The Arabs will come to us.”

“We are not in a rush,” said the Syrian leader, who is known for negotiating with glacial patience. “Once things are ready and the givens are right, we are prepared to resume the peace process.”

That response may represent Netanyahu’s first harsh brush with regional reality since winning office in May, showing there are limits to the concessions that Israel can extract from the Arabs, especially Assad.

Syria’s leader does not bother to bow, and he has never sugar-coated his demands. He has always said he wants back the Golan Heights, taken by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, or nothing.

“The difference between Assad and everybody else in the region is that he plays his cards fairly straight,” said James Zogby of the Arab American Institute in Washington. “What you will get from him is a reality check. Unless there is substance, he won’t play.”

So where does Netanyahu go now? Though he may be trying to paint Assad as the continuing block to peace, one possibility for the Israeli prime minister would be to explore how much diplomatic, economic and military pressure could be brought to bear on Syria and its proxies--the Lebanese government and the Hezbollah guerrillas--perhaps with American help.

Other Arab leaders already deeply involved in the Middle East peace process, such as Jordan’s King Hussein and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, might also assist.

Meantime, though, Netanyahu and some Israeli generals have made ferocious remarks, especially directed toward Hezbollah, which Tuesday killed the 10th Israeli soldier since Israel’s “Operation Grapes of Wrath” air and artillery campaign ended April 26.

“The Hezbollah is fighting us, and we will fight it back,” Netanyahu warned in a television interview Tuesday. “If anyone has the illusion that we will allow our army and our country to become the punching bag for terrorists, he is mistaken.”

Israel’s military has also been leaking intelligence that Hezbollah, with Syria’s knowledge, has stockpiled new, longer-range rockets near the border of Israel’s self-declared “security zone.”

The reports could provide a justification for renewed operations against Hezbollah--or even against Syrian targets. Late Wednesday, Israel sent its jets out for a rocket attack against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

But Israel’s recent forays into Lebanon have left it more vulnerable than ever before, some say.

“Let’s admit it,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israeli journalist specializing in Arab affairs writing in the Jerusalem Report, “Israel is begging to be rid of Lebanon.”

In the peace process, there is another possibility: Netanyahu could soften his stance toward the Arabs even as he keeps up his tough talk.

He appeared to move in that direction Monday on a trip to Jordan, where he said he was willing to talk to Syria about “all outstanding matters”--a phrase some observers took to mean newfound flexibility on the question of the Golan Heights.

He could also reassure the Arabs by going through with a stalled redeployment of Israeli troops from Hebron, though there were reports Thursday that, under a new proposal, troops will pull out of a smaller area of the West Bank city than promised--and then only gradually.