Peace Benefits Offer Arabs a New Lever

The unusual exchange of flattering remarks by Syria’s President Hafez Assad and the Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak has increased the hope for an early Syrian-Israeli peace agreement. But it has also raised concerns that such progress may come at the expense of postponing Palestinian-Israeli peace. These concerns are unwarranted. Progress on the Syrian-Israeli front could be especially helpful for the Palestinians.

In the past, there was reason for Palestinian discomfort with bilateral deals between Israel and the Arab states. Having little direct leverage with Israel alone, the Palestinians saw the prospect of an Arab-Israeli war as a lever for securing Israeli compromises. Diminishing these prospects before a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement is reached was seen to undermine the Palestinians’ hand.

Such reasoning is no longer relevant. Two of Israel’s neighbors--Egypt and Jordan--already have peace treaties with Israel. Syria’s military leverage will help Syria defend its interests, but Damascus will not go to war with Israel just to improve the Palestinians’ negotiating hand.

Any link between the Palestinians and Arab-Israeli relations more broadly centers on the degree of poltical and economic “normalization” of relations between Israel and the Arab states. In the past three years, it has become clear that slow progress on the Palestinian-Israeli front was, in part, responsible for worsening Arab-Israeli relations. But, on this score, the Arab states at peace with Israel brought more leverage and influence for the Palestinians than other Arab states.

Egypt, the first to make peace with Israel, has become the Palestinians’ leading ally in the Arab world, and, despite the best efforts of the late King Hussein of Jordan, the troubled Palestinian-Israeli peace process prevented warmer Jordanian-Israeli relations. If relations between Syria and Israel improve, Syria, which would then have a stake in preventing the collapse of Palestinian-Israeli talks, would be in a better position to influence these talks.

One serious concern involves timing. The Palestinians expect a “final settlement” deal with Israel within a year, and Barak wants to pull Israeli forces from Lebanon (and therefore make progress with Syria) within the same year.

Israeli-Syrian negotiations need not take long. The contours of a settlement are well-known to both sides, and although important details must still be negotiated, the primary ingredient for success is political will on both sides. Indeed, the source of recent optimism about Syrian-Israeli peace is this newly expressed will to advance it.

This leaves the question about the Israeli public’s ability to swallow both a Palestinian deal and peace with Syria all at once. Barak has promised to put any peace proposal to a public referendum. The prime minister-elect may be able to seize this as an opportunity: Two deals may be easier to sell than one, if the outcome is the peace most Israelis crave.

The Palestinian track will be impossible to ignore, no matter what happens on the Syrian front. Significant progress will need to be made before all parties lose control of events, which almost certainly would be the outcome of a unilateral Palestinian independence declaration.

What is said about Syria could also be said about the other Arab states. The new lever for the Arab world today is not the possible costs of war for Israel but the possible benefits of peace. This new thinking should be the core of Israeli and Arab policies to exploit an unusual opportunity for clinching a comprehensive and just deal.