The Ball for Syrian Peace Is in Israel’s Court

One of the last places one would expect to see a sign banning smoking is in a five-star hotel in Damascus, where such prohibitions are completely at odds with local custom. But the concierge, noting the amazement of a European guest, quickly reassures him with a complicitous wink: “Don’t worry, you can smoke as much as you want; the sign is for American tourists.”

Syria’s hotel managers, restaurateurs, nightclub owners and bazaar merchants, counting on the conclusion of the peace treaty they want so badly, are preparing for a massive arrival of tourists as soon as the U.S. State Department removes Syria from its list of “terrorist states.” Meanwhile, Syrian businessmen are anticipating, as a consequence of a peace deal, that international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank give them the credits, investments and technological means needed to revitalize a war economy that is both anachronistic and exhausted.

Many ordinary Syrians, in keeping with reports in the state-controlled media, still believe--or at least passionately want to believe--that peace is within reach. Among the elites with access to satellite television, the Internet and mobile phones, however, the mood is bleak. Syrian secularists--whether they support or oppose the Assad regime--fear that a prolonged stalemate or any territorial concession to Israel could result in a rise in Islamist influence.

More generally, Syrians fear that the disappearance of President Hafez Assad, whose health is fragile, will be followed by a period of instability, making any agreement with Israel impossible. Senior Western diplomats in Damascus agree. They believe that Israel is mistaken if it hopes to get a better deal after Assad. They are convinced that Assad alone will be able to normalize relations with Israel, and that whoever succeeds him will have neither the prestige nor the authority to do so.

Such subjects are taboo among Syrian officials, but their frustrations and worries about the future easily can be gleaned from their off-the-record comments. A very senior official told me that Israel was “losing an historic opportunity because peace with Syria will inevitably lead to a normalization with the entire Arab world. Regional cooperation could then get underway in various fields, including water, benefiting the economic development of all the peoples of the region.”

Another close Assad advisor lamented that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “has deeply disappointed us.” He added, “Our president publicly praised him, calling him a ‘strong and honest man, a leader who can accomplish whatever he decides to do.’ We saw Barak as the true successor of Yitzhak Rabin. What’s more, he was elected on a peace platform, and seemed to have the stature of a statesman who would honor his electoral promise of putting ‘an end within 15 months to the 100-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict.’ ”

An official deeply involved in the Israeli-Syrian negotiations at Shepherdstown last January was categorical: “We reached compromises on 90% of the outstanding issues, and we could easily resolve the remaining 10%, including the question of the waters of Lake Tiberias [Sea of Galilee] , if Israel honored its commitment to return the entire Golan. Barak’s predecessors, Rabin and Shimon Peres, made this commitment, and even Benjamin Netanyahu, through the intermediary of the Jewish American businessman Ron Lauder, did so . . . . “

The Syrians are all the more disappointed and puzzled by what they see as Israeli backtracking from the withdrawal commitment in that they are convinced that they themselves have gone long distances in fulfilling their side of the “land for peace” commitment--the fundamental principle of the negotiations accepted by all the parties at the Madrid Conference in 1991. Before and during the Shepherdstown negotiations, they gave in to a number of Israeli conditions they had previously insisted were unacceptable, including the establishment of full diplomatic and consular relations as well as bilateral cooperation in various economic fields such as transportation, telecommunications and tourism. More significantly, the Syrians committed themselves to fight international terrorism, to ban from Syria any organization that endangered Israeli security and to downsize their army and its operational capacities in proportions larger than those required of Israel’s forces.

“Without a return to the 4 June 1967 borders,” a high official emphasized, “President Assad will never be able to sell such a peace to the Syrian people.” Noting that the “ball is in Israel’s court,” he added, “Our differences are so narrow that there must certainly be a way to reach a settlement, though the condition [to a settlement] is whether Barak is able to neutralize the hawks in his own government.”