Delay Peace With Syria

Israeli-Syrian peace is imperative, but not in the short run. In the long run, peace in the Middle East can be achieved only when Israel completes peace treaties with all its neighbors.

Peace between Israel and Syria could not and should not take place during the reign of Hafez Assad. Peace between Israel and Syria is a matter for the long run. President Assad is preconditioning peace on Israel’s withdrawal from every inch of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights. Assad also has made it clear that he will not accept any deal with Israel short of the one completed with Egypt in 1979. This means that not only will Israel have to withdraw from all Syrian territory, but also that Syria will require compensation with a large infusion of economic aid from the United States. Like Anwar Sadat, Assad will ask for the modernization, training and equipment for an outmoded Syrian army.

American economic and military aid to Egypt in the last 20 years has neared $25 billion. The U.S. also forgave Egypt’s $7-billion debt when it joined the Gulf War coalition against Saddam Hussein. Assad would want economic and military aid of $2 billion to $4 billion a year. But regardless of which political party controls the next U.S. Congress, Syria will be seen as a terrorist rogue state and not as strategically important as Egypt. Therefore, there will be no such support for aid to Syria now that the Cold War is over.

Nor is there any reason why the U.S. should buy the peace for Israel. No Israeli political leader, even a pragmatic Ehud Barak, will encourage the United States to provide Assad with an American-made army. There are strategists in Israel who are very much concerned with the American-paid modernization of the Egyptian army. Egypt’s current rivals, Libya and Sudan, don’t justify such a buildup.

In view of the Egyptians’ refusal to have common military exercises with Israel, any leader of Israel is justified in being apprehensive. Syria borders directly with Israel, unlike Egypt with a 400-mile Sinai desert buffer zone, and would pose a most serious threat with an Americanized, modern army.

After Assad’s death the stability of Syria is a matter of serious doubt. The Syrian state is his praetorian guard. There is no institutionalized state or party in Syria, only a minority of Alawis who govern a police and military dictatorship that will fall without Assad. The question of Assad’s successor is argued endlessly, but pointlessly. No dictator in history has succeeded in securing a successor. The reasons for Assad’s paralysis about making peace with Israel are not hard to find. He has ruled tyrannically, with the support of the military and the Baath Party, for the past 30 years. He may be an anachronism, but he is not ready to relinquish his image as the hero of pan-Arabism. He is apprehensive that peace with Israel would remove the justification for tyranny and create pressure for greater freedom of movement in Syria, undermining the police state.

Another consequence of peace with Israel would be to put Lebanon in the international spotlight.

As long as Israel dominates part of Lebanon, Assad can continue his rule there. Once Israel withdraws from Lebanon, which will be part of the Israel-Syria peace treaty, the pressure on Assad to withdraw from Lebanon will be immense. In fact, he may get no American or Syrian economic support until Lebanon is freed.

The wisest action is to remember that Assad is not ready, nor are the United States and Israel, to make peace on his terms. Those critics who argue that it is easier to deal with a predictable Assad than an unpredictable post-Assad Syria make a point; however, those critics who consider his regime predictable will also agree that Assad is nevertheless rigid and unbending. Therefore, a post-Assad regime might include the new generation of Arabs who were not born into an age of colonialism and haven’t taken part in numerous Arab-Israeli wars. They are more interested in a global economy than in the anachronistic, pan-Arabist dream.

Assad is the last relic of an ideology and a political aspiration that was sunk in the Sinai Desert in the 1967 War with Israel. He is not the person to make concessions. If a miracle happens, and Assad makes serious concessions, then it would be a different ballgame.

Israel should wait for Assad’s regime to end. His successors will be weaker, and they may want to buy foreign peace and quiet while they consolidate their internal positions. They may have more incentives to settle than Assad has. Those who will argue that without peace there could be a war must be aware that since 1979 the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty has produced only a cold war--not peace.