Richard Haass is rumored to be set to become new Middle East pointman (see Jim Lobe below). This would be a good choice. See his profile at Wikipedia. Richard Nathan Haass (born July 28, 1951, Brooklyn) has been president of the Council on Foreign Relations since July 2003, prior to which he was Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell. See, “The New Middle East,” in Foreign Affairs 2006.

Syria Implies Terms for Resumption of Talks with Israel, As-Sharq al-Awsat (Thanks Alex)

Walid Mouallem, Syria’s Foreign Minister, explains that Syria set its terms for a resumption of indirect negotiations with Israel. They are:

1) Hudna between Hamas and Israel
2) Opening up access to Gaza
3) Ensuring that Israel’s engagement with the Syrians will not be at the expense of the Palestinian track.

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Mouallem was much more vague about “terms” than the Assharq Alawsat article suggests. The context is provided below. Mouallem preserves flexibility for Syria to restart talks in the future.

Syria: Israel proved it doesn’t want peace
Roee Nahmias Published: 01.05.09/ Israel News

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem defined the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip as “a barbaric act any way you look at it” and called on the international community “to try those responsible to these war crimes which violate international law, including the Geneva Treaty.” 

In a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan after completing a series of meetings in Ankara, Moallem said, “I came to Turkey to discuss ways to bring about an immediate ceasefire, a removal of the blockade and the opening of all crossings, as well as finding a mechanism to achieve these goals.

“I stress to you that our opinions are similar and that we have formed a joint stance.”…. Turkish Foreign Minister Babacan called on Israel to hold its fire immediately. …. 

“Relying on the Security Council at this stage is imaginary and wont’ achieve a thing,” he claimed.  Moallem said the indirect Turkish-mediated talks between Syria and Israel were halted “naturally”.

“When the indirect talks began there was an agreement on a lull between Hamas and Israel achieved through Egypt. It was valid for six months, during which the siege should have been lifted, but Israel violated it two weeks later,” the Syrian minister argued. 

“Turkey knew that the talks between us were being held as long as Israel didn’t launch a military operation in Gaza or in the West Bank and that this would not be at the expense of the Palestinians. It was natural that in such a situation, with the aggression on Gaza, the talks would be halted.

“Returning the Golan Heights is important, but this stance is also important to the Syrian leadership. This aggression proves that Israel has no desire for peace.”

 Dennis Ross Will Get Iran File, Haass will get Israel-Arab conflict, says Nelson Report: by Jim Lobe

“…Dennis Ross will become Special Envoy for Iran, reporting directly to SecState-designate Clinton, rather than to the White House. …

Nelson also reports that Richard Haass will be Special Envoy for Israel-Arab affairs, apparently something of a compromise between Ross and Dan Kurtzer. For the direction he is likely to take, particularly regarding the Palestinian and Syrian tracks, see my article on his recent report co-authored with Martin Indyk. They also wrote a version of their policy recommendations in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs.

Nelson reports that Richard Holbrooke will become and Special Envoy for India and Pakistan and Anne Marie Slaughter head of Policy Planning, among many other likely appointments of particular relevance to Asia policy.”

Also see Lobe’s « Heilbrunn Reviews Neo-Con Travails

Beyond Iraq: A New U.S. Strategy for the Middle East
By Indyk and Haass
View article at Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009

Bush Plan Eliminated Obstacle to Gaza Assault
Inter Press Service | Gareth Porter | January 5, 2009

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (IPS) – Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the leading faction in a fully legitimate government.

But the George W. Bush administration helped Israel eliminate that obstacle by deliberately provoking Hamas to seize power in Gaza. That plan was aimed at getting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the democratically elected Hamas government — something Bush had tried unsuccessfully to do for many months….

A New Middle Eastern Cold War
Michael Young, 01.05.09
The true theater behind Gaza.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The term “Arab cold war” was popularized by the late American scholar Malcolm Kerr, who in 1971 published a book of the same name. A deserving classic at a concise 166 pages (with index), The Arab Cold War examined how the Arab world of the 1950s and 1960s was governed by “urgent appeals to Arab unity,” when the reality was that “its governments and parties [were] dominated by bitter rivalry.”….

…. Judging from the limited Egyptian reaction to his injunctions, Nasrallah overplayed his hand. The Arab states, mediocre as they are, are more solid than their enemies imagine. Militant Islamist groups may be better at fighting Israel, but they cannot substitute for what states offer. However, the traditional Arab powerhouses are being marginalized by the more dynamic non-Arab states on their periphery–Iran, Turkey and Israel–as well as by some Arab states, such as Syria and Qatar, that have profited from the widening rifts provoked by the new Middle Eastern cold war.

What lessons are there for the United States here? The Obama administration should recognize these dynamics and accept that its allies are less credible because they are undemocratic, have narrow legitimacy, and offer no hope of amelioration to their peoples, while Israel further undermines them by denying a political horizon to the Palestinians.

Arab democratization is a bad word for many Obama Middle East hands, who seek a return to a political realism justifying making deals with America’s foes. Democracy-building smacks too much of George W. Bush. Yet unless the Arabs open their societies up in states that are more than monuments to intimidation, America’s allies will continue to lose ground, and America with them. In the realism game, Iran and Syria, like the militant Islamists, are better than Washington. The Americans won one cold war, but victory in this Middle Eastern version may be dodgier.

An Iraqi debt: Editorial of the Baltimore Sun
Our view: America should do more to aid 2 million refugees from the war we started
January 4, 2009

Violence is significantly lower these days in Iraq, and the Americans who still keep the peace there are busy planning for a significant troop withdrawal over the next 18 months. But that country’s hopes for a brighter economic future are shadowed by the loss of more than 2 million refugees – many of them doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers – who have fled to Jordan, Syria and other neighboring countries.

Most of these displaced people are afraid to return to Iraq, which they believe remains unsafe. Now they are trapped in countries where they are less than welcome and sinking into poverty. It’s a plight laid out in vivid detail in a recent series of stories by Baltimore Sun reporter Matthew Hay Brown.

Their continued exile represents a challenge that America has a responsibility to deal with. The United States has resettled more than 16,000 Iraqis over the past two years. The Bush administration has contributed more than $500 million to the United Nations and other organizations to address the crisis. But as the country that unleashed the chaos that fed the Iraqi exodus, America should be doing much more.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to provide at least $2 billion to expand services to these Iraqi refugees, and that’s a pledge he must keep, if this nation is to accept its moral responsibility to help victims of the war.

Ending the War in Gaza International Crisis Group

Royal Slams US “Reckless” Position On Gaza

RIYADH (AFP)–A member of the Saudi royal family blasted the U.S. government on Tuesday for its “reckless” position towards Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip.

“The Bush administration has left you (with) a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza,” Prince Turki al-Faisal said in a message directed at President-elect Barack Obama. “Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza,” Faisal, a former ambassador to the U.S., said at a forum on relations between the Gulf region and the U.S.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal slammed Israeli politicians for “shedding Palestinian blood in what has become a tactic for Israeli parties to settle their election battles.” In an address read out at the forum by his deputy, the minister said peace in the region won’t be achieved unless Israel pulls out of the territories it occupies.

He called on Obama to live up to his campaign message of “change,” urging co-operation with the Arab world. “Together we can reach a peaceful and permanent solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said.

 DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Syria does not want to put pressure on Hamas in its conflict with Israel, diplomats said on Wednesday, although the Israeli assault on Gaza has harmed prospects for a Syrian-Israeli peace deal.

“Everyone wants this to end. The question is, how? Egypt and Saudi Arabia want Hamas to stop firing rockets, but given the ferocity of the Israeli response Syria will not be party to any solution that punishes Hamas,” one of the diplomats said in the Syrian capital.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad set out his viewpoint at talks this week with U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, a staunchly pro-Israeli republican law maker who regularly visits Damascus, where Hamas’s exiled leaders are based.

A source familiar with the meeting said Assad told Specter Israel’s offensive jeopardized the chances of peace in the long run. The way to deal with Hamas, Assad told Specter, was to stop asking Syria to pressure the group and push for a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the source said….

Another European diplomat said championing Arab resistance served Syria well. “The Syrians see Arab governments like Egypt as getting undermined as a result of this, not them,” the diplomat said. 

Syria has said the Israeli attacks have ruled out a resumption of indirect talks with Israel any time soon, although Specter said after meeting Assad that the Syrian president was still interested in pursuing peace with Israel….

Syrian officials have dismissed Israeli demands to cut support for Hamas and Lebanon’s Shi’ite movement Hezbollah and distance itself from Iran as a pre-requisite for peace.

But they say Syria’s external posture could change if a deal with Israel was achieved.  …

Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony
December 30, 2008, THE INDEPENDENT

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling. Independent, Monday, 29 December 2008

…There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, “We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?” It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: “The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians… this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn’t have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions – but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas’s sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to “pressure” its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being “put on a diet”. According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people….

The dire cost of domestic rivalries
Neve Gordon
guardian, 29 December 2008

Israel seems more concerned with electoral politics and restoring its military reputation than stopping the Qassam rockets…

Although Olmert did not say as much, the “mission” includes four distinct objectives. The first is the destruction of Hamas, a totally unrealistic goal…. The second objective has to do with Israel’s coming elections…. The third objective involves the Israeli military. After its notable humiliation in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, the IDF has been looking for opportunities to re-establish its global standing…. Finally, Hamas and Fatah have not yet reached an agreement regarding how to proceed when Mahmoud Abbas ends his official term as president of the Palestinian National Authority on January 9. One of the outcomes of this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer since Hamas will be unable to mobilise its supporters in order to force him to resign.

What is clearly missing from this list of Israeli objectives is the attempt to halt the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel’s southern towns. Unlike the objectives I mentioned, which are not discussed by government officials, this one is presented by the government as the operation’s primary objective. Yet, the government is actively misleading the public…

Nir Rosen in the Guardian, here

“…The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? …

Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.

…Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some “collateral” civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to “shock and awe”, as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.

Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak.

From the ashes of Gaza
Tarik Ali, THE GUARDIAN, Tuesday 30 December 2008

In the face of Israel’s latest onslaught, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution.

The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy’s chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had “provoked” Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and Nato’s favourite Islamists in Ankara failed to register even a symbolic protest by recalling their ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UN security council to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the west claims it is combating in the “war against terror”.

The bloodshed in Gaza raises broader strategic questions for both sides, issues related to recent history. One fact that needs to be recognised is that there is no Palestinian Authority. There never was one. The Oslo Accords were an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians, creating a set of disconnected and shrivelled Palestinian ghettoes under the permanent watch of a brutal enforcer. The PLO, once the repository of Palestinian hope, became little more than a supplicant for EU money.

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the “international community” in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run.

Even the timing of the election was set by the determination to rig the outcome. Scheduled for the summer of 2005, it was delayed till January 2006 to give Abbas time to distribute assets in Gaza – in the words of an Egyptian intelligence officer, “the public will then support the Authority against Hamas.”

Popular desire for a clean broom after ten years of corruption, bullying and bluster under Fatah proved stronger than all of this. Hamas’s electoral triumph was treated as an ominous sign of rising fundamentalism, and a fearsome blow to the prospects of peace with Israel, by rulers and journalists across the Atlantic world. Immediate financial and diplomatic pressures were applied to force Hamas to adopt the same policies as those of the party it had defeated at the polls. Uncompromised by the Palestinian Authority’s combination of greed and dependency, the self-enrichment of its servile spokesmen and policemen, and their acquiescence in a “peace process” that has brought only further expropriation and misery to the population under them, Hamas offered the alternative of a simple example. Without any of the resources of its rival, it set up clinics, schools, hospitals, vocational training and welfare programmes for the poor. Its leaders and cadres lived frugally, within reach of ordinary people.

It is this response to everyday needs that has won Hamas the broad base of its support, not daily recitation of verses from the Koran. How far its conduct in the second Intifada has given it an additional degree of credibility is less clear. Its armed attacks on Israel, like those of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Islamic Jihad, have been retaliations against an occupation far more deadly than any actions it has ever undertaken. Measured on the scale of IDF killings, Palestinian strikes have been few and far between. The asymmetry was starkly exposed during Hamas’s unilateral ceasefire, begun in June 2003, and maintained throughout the summer, despite the Israeli campaign of raids and mass arrests that followed, in which some 300 Hamas cadres were seized from the West Bank.

On August 19 2003, a self-proclaimed “Hamas” cell from Hebron, disowned and denounced by the official leadership, blew up a bus in west Jerusalem, upon which Israel promptly assassinated the Hamas ceasefire’s negotiator, Ismail Abu Shanab. Hamas, in turn, responded. In return, the Palestinian Authority and Arab states cut funding to its charities and, in September 2003, the EU declared the whole Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization – a longstanding demand of Tel Aviv.

What has actually distinguished Hamas in a hopelessly unequal combat is not dispatch of suicide bombers, to which a range of competing groups resorted, but its superior discipline – demonstrated by its ability to enforce a self-declared ceasefire against Israel over the past year. All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it. Overwhelmingly, the boot of murder is on the other foot, ruthlessly stamped into Palestine by a modern army equipped with jets, tanks and missiles in the longest-armed oppression of modern history.

“Nobody can reject or condemn the revolt of a people that has been suffering under military occupation for 45 years against occupation force,” said General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, in 1993. The real grievance of the EU and US against Hamas is that it refused to accept the capitulation of the Oslo Accords, and has rejected every subsequent effort, from Taba to Geneva, to pass off their calamities on the Palestinians. ….

Israel Recussitates Hamas, By Daoud Kuttab in Washinton Post

Thanks to Israeli bombs, the Islamic movement has been saved from political death.

For two years, the Islamic Resistance Movement (known by its Arabic acronym, Hamas) has been losing support internally and externally. This wasn’t the case in the days after the party came to power democratically in early 2006; despite being unjustly ostracized by the international community for its anti-Israeli stance, Hamas enjoyed the backing of Palestinians and other Arabs. Having won a decisive parliamentary majority on an anti-corruption platform promising change and reform, Hamas worked hard to govern better than had Fatah, its rival and predecessor.

Things began to sour when Hamas violently seized control of Gaza, but even then, Hamas enjoyed considerable domestic support — and much goodwill externally. Then the movement turned down every legitimate offer from its nationalist PLO rivals and Egyptian mediators to pursue reconciliation, and support for it began to slip.

Things got worse in November when a carefully planned national unity effort from the Egyptians failed because, at the very last minute, Hamas’s leaders refused to show up in Cairo. Failure to accept this roundtable invitation greatly upset the Egyptians, and they and other Arab leaders scolded Hamas publicly. ….

The disproportionate and heavy-handed Israeli attacks on Gaza have been a bonanza for Hamas. The movement has renewed its standing in the Arab world, secured international favor further afield and succeeded in scuttling indirect Israeli-Syrian talks and direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. It has also greatly embarrassed Israel’s strongest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan….

Why Israel Feels Threatened By BENNY MORRIS in NY Times

Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state offer challenges that Israel’s leaders and public find difficult to counter….

…. But the attack will not solve the basic problem posed by a Gaza Strip populated by 1.5 million impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are ruled by a fanatic regime and are tightly hemmed in by fences and by border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt.

An enormous Israeli ground operation aimed at conquering the Gaza Strip and destroying Hamas would probably bog down in the alleyways of refugee camps before achieving its goal. (And even if these goals were somehow achieved, renewed and indefinite Israeli rule over Gaza would prove unpalatable to all concerned.)

More likely are small, limited armored incursions, intended to curtail missile launches and kill Hamas fighters. But these are also unlikely to bring the organization to heel — though they may exercise sufficient pressure eventually to achieve, with the mediation of Turkey or Egypt, a renewed temporary truce. That seems to be the most that can be hoped for, though a renewal of rocket attacks on southern Israel, once Hamas recovers, is as certain as day follows night.

The fourth immediate threat to Israel’s existence is internal. It is posed by the country’s Arab minority. Over the past two decades, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity and embracing Palestinian national aims. Their spokesmen say that their loyalty lies with their people rather than with their state, Israel. Many of the community’s leaders, who benefit from Israeli democracy, more or less publicly supported Hezbollah in 2006 and continue to call for “autonomy” (of one sort or another) and for the dissolution of the Jewish state.

Demography, if not Arab victory in battle, offers the recipe for such a dissolution. The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews).

If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050. Already, within five to 10 years, Palestinians (Israeli Arabs coupled with those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) will form the majority population of Palestine (the land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean).

Friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews is already a cogent political factor. In 2000, at the start of the second intifada, thousands of Arab youngsters, in sympathy with their brethren in the territories, rioted along Israel’s major highways and in Israel’s ethnically mixed cities.

The past fortnight has seen a recurrence, albeit on a smaller scale, of such rioting. Down the road, Israel’s Jews fear more violence and terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Most Jews see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.

What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality. Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.

Israel’s sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow.

Specter carries message from Israel to Syria, December 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter carried a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Specter (R-Pa.) met Sunday with Olmert in Israel, where he said he “got a review of the Syrian negotiations” from the Israeli prime minister, the Jerusalem Post reported. He left Israel Monday, and refused to discuss the details of the message he was carrying.
,
“I believe the efforts to isolate Syria have not been successful,” Specter told the paper. “We ought to try to change things. President [Bill] Clinton tried to do a good job in 1995 and 2000, and I think it ought to be pursued.”

Bush Pardons Man who Supplied B-17 bombers to Israel in 1948, which bombed the house of America’s military attaché in Damascus, wounding him.

President Bush pardoned Charles Winters, who served 18 months in prison for violating the US neutrality Act by helping to deliver two converted B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to Israel in 1948. The US has promised that it would embargo arms sales to both Arabs and Israelis in 1948.

Private Americans however defied this policy and helped build up Israel’s military. The three Flying fortresses which were delivered to Israel made their first appearance over Syrian skys in July 1948, breaking the cease fire that had been signed by both sides. Israel used them to bomb Syrian positions on the front and in down-town Damascus for three days after the truce had been declared.

The Syrian government complained bitterly to American officials in Damascus that the airplanes proved that the U.S. was not respecting its arms embargo. U.S. officials responded that “the planes had been acquired from American civilians over whom the U.S. government had no control.” All the same, many at the embassy in Damascus were unhappy with this response. They had particular cause to lament America’s inability to uphold the embargo when one of the bombs dropped by a Flying Fortress hit the residence of the U.S. military attaché, badly damaging his house and wounding the attaché himself. The Syrian government censored all press reports about the provenance of the bombers in order to avoid further stirring up the passions of the local populace. 

Here is the BBC article covering the pardon of the US smuggler.

Bush pardons Israel bomber seller
BBC, Wednesday, 24 December 2008

The B-17s were Israel's only heavy bombers in the 1948 war

US President George W Bush has granted a rare posthumous pardon to a man who broke the law to supply aircraft to Jews fighting for the state of Israel.

Charles Winters served 18 months in prison for violating the US Neutrality Act by helping to deliver in 1948 two converted B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.

In 1961, then Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir commended Mr Winters for his contribution to her country’s survival.

Two others convicted with him in 1949 were pardoned by previous presidents.

President John F Kennedy pardoned Herman Greenspun in 1961, and President Bill Clinton pardoned Al Schwimmer in 2000. Mr Winters died in 1984.

‘Overwhelmed’

In the summer of 1948, Charles Winters worked with the two men to transfer to Israel two B-17s that he had converted for use in his Florida fruit business.

Winters flew one of the two aircraft himself to Czechoslovakia, where they and a third B-17 were retrofitted to be bombers before being flown to Israel.

The Hollywood film director, Steven Spielberg, was one of the many people who wrote a letter to President Bush in support of a pardon. “There are probably many unsung heroes of America and of Israel, but Charlie Winters is surely one of them,” wrote Steven Spielberg.

The three aircraft were the only heavy bombers in the Israeli Air Force, and historians say they helped turn the 1948 war against Arab armies in Israel’s favour….

The killing in Gaza has underlined how divided the Arab world is. America’s allies: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the PLO are ranged against Iran’s allies: Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, and Qatar. The Gaza violence, meant to topple Hamas, will make the breach wider and general radicalization of the region more serious.

Bashar al-Asad, as president of the Arab League has called for an Arab summit to be held in Doha on Friday. Syria and Qatar are challanging Husni Mubarak and King Abdullah to boycott it, which will embarrass them in front of their people who are outraged by the killings in Gaza. Egyptians demonstrated in front of the Journalists Union and were exceptionally angry. Everyone is asking Egypt to cut its relations with Israel. In response, Mubarak said he would open the Rafah crossing at its border with the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip to receive wounded Palestinians, but Palestinians took matters into their own hands before Egypt could move to control the opening. Palestinians near the border areas broke down the Egyptian-Gaza border fence shortly after the Israeli airstrikes stormed the southern Gaza area. Clashes erupted between Egyptian border guards and the Palestinians who tried to cross into the Egyptian side. An Egyptian officer was killed.

Hamas leader Mashaal appeared on Aljazeera to say, “I want to tell President Mubarak and the custodian of the two holy mosques that they will have to answer to God about what they are doing today.”

Egyptians participate in a pro-Gaza rally in Cairo Dec. 28, 2008. I

The Bush administration issued blistering criticism of Hamas. Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said that Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, was responsible for the outbreak of violence and called its rocket attacks “completely unacceptable. These people are nothing but thugs,” he said. “Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a statement that said: “The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza.

Barack Obama’s spokeswoman said that while Mr. Obama was monitoring global events, “There is one president at a time.” In the campaign, Mr. Obama made statements that sounded similar to those issued by the Bush administration on Saturday. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” Mr. Obama said in July. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

Saudi Arabia urges US intervention over Gaza: “Superpowers should take responsibility to stop these attacks,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported, citing a telephone conversation between Saudi King Abdallah and U.S. President George W. Bush.

President Nicolas Sarkozyof France was one of many world leaders calling for an immediate halt to the rocket attacks on Israel and to the Israeli airstrikes. He condemned “the irresponsible provocations that led to this situation, as well as the disproportionate use of force.”

Syria suspends indirect peace talks with Israel, International Herald Tribune

Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
28/12/2008

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas….

The neighborhood bully strikes again
By Gideon Levy, HAARETZ, 28/12/2008

Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: “Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn’t be provoked into anger… Not that the bully’s not right – someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!”

Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation “Cast Lead” is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.

What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History’s bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment – today nearly everyone acknowledges as much – embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.

In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime. …

Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction. ….

Jerusalem Post: Peace with Syria? Too costly
By EFRAIM INBAR, 2008-12-28

…A peace treaty with Syria does not improve the strategic situation. Nothing beats the status quo. … Generally, Israel has little to gain from economic or cultural interactions with the Arab world. Our neighbors have not opened up to globalization and have remained poor, an unappetizing market for our products. Moreover, their societies are despotic, corrupt, fanatic and in deep cultural crises. The Arab world has nothing to offer and Israel should keep its distance.

Hysteria in Gaza by Freddy Deknatel

Israel is trying to decapitate Hamas in Gaza, to use an favorite expression of military spokesmen and a docile American media, and the bodies are piling up.

What is the limit? As it stands, over 200 Palestinians are dead. One Israeli died today from a rudimentary rocket fired from the Gaza, the supposed impetus for all this.

When the “operations” subside — after how many days? — what will have changed? More Palestinians will have died because Israeli “security” is sacrosanct in the current international system but Arab lives are not. But it goes beyond American-made bombs and jets and stonewalling in the Security Council. Blame falls also on the supportive Arab regimes in America’s orbit — perhaps Egypt most of all — as Gaza is blockaded, bombed, blockaded, and bombed again, this time among the worst in its history. 

Helena Cobban’s analysis: http://justworldnews.org/archives/003281.html
 

ANALYSIS / How did Assad manage to gain international respect?
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 26/12/2008

After eight and a half years at Syria’s helm, President Bashar Assad is gaining the respect and admiration that had been reserved for his father Hafez. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been courting him enthusiastically with the help of a Turkish matchmaker, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. European leaders are standing in line to meet with him. Close associates of U.S. president-elect Barack Obama see Syria as the basis for a new balance of power in the region.

Columnist David Ignatius of The Washington Post interviewed Assad this week in Damascus. Five years ago, Ignatius met a rigid and doctrinaire Assad. Now he found him relaxed, informal and even laughing sometimes. In Israel, too, people are speaking differently about Assad, who is perceived as a responsible and serious neighbor you can do business with.

Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Military Intelligence (MI) head Amos Yadlin all believe that Syria can free Israel from its strategic problems since the Second Lebanon War in 2006. They dream of a new Middle East in which Syria disengages from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and links up with Israel and the United States in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and “special status” (renewed control) in Lebanon. Compared with the fragmented Palestinians, who cannot be relied on, Syria resembles an island of stability and order. Even Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes a withdrawal from the Golan, is not attacking Assad personally.

The Israeli attitude toward Bashar Assad has gone through three incarnations. During his apprenticeship, when his father was preparing him to be his heir, people here were impressed by Bashar’s “Western” background: He was an eye doctor living in London who surfed the Internet. In retrospect, it seems there was an element of Israeli provincialism here: Ehud Barak isn’t really comfortable with a computer, Shimon Peres doesn’t have one, Netanyahu prefers to read printouts, and former prime minister Ariel Sharon only learned to use the Web toward the end of his term, with the help of his family. Olmert, however, is addicted to Ynet and online sports reports. Perhaps this is why he was the first to try to connect seriously with Assad.

Sharon was the only Israeli leader since Menachem Begin to refuse to conduct negotiations with Syria. He and his associates described Assad as an overgrown child, a Hassan Nasrallah groupie cut off from reality. A senior intelligence official spread a story he claimed to have heard from colleagues in Egypt: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wanted to speak to Assad once, but was told he was busy with his PlayStation and couldn’t be interrupted.

The Israeli air force flew a scare sortie over Assad’s palace, and they snickered here that his aides didn’t even tell him about it.

Yossi Baidatz, who was IDF Northern Command’s intelligence officer and now heads the research division at MI, noticed that Assad was quietly working to improve the balance of power vis-a-vis Israel. After Sharon bombed a Syrian radar station in Lebanon in 2001, Assad decided to change his father’s policy and directly provide Hezbollah with Syrian weapons. Until then Syria had served as a way station for Iranian weapons and Nasrallah was kept a safe distance from Damascus. Then the army’s storehouses and arms-production lines were opened and Nasrallah became a regular visitor to Assad’s palace.

Israel paid the price: Most of the Israelis killed in the Second Lebanon War, both civilians and soldiers, were hit by weapons Syria had sent to Hezbollah, not by Iranian weapons. Then it emerged that Assad had taken a far more daring decision and had secretly bought a nuclear reactor from North Korea.

Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush acted to isolate Assad, and were successful for some time. Negotiations over the return of the Golan, which had stopped when Barak was prime minister, were not renewed. The air force bombed an Islamic Jihad base in Syria after the suicide attack on Haifa’s Maxim Restaurant in 2003. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Syrians feared they were next and sent a peace proposal to Israel. Then-foreign minister Silvan Shalom suggested examining it seriously, but Sharon dismissed it.

In early 2005, when Sharon was becoming the darling of the international community because of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the Syrian army was expelled from Lebanon. The United States and France blamed Assad for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri; Assad later became the main suspect in the international investigation into Hariri’s killing.

Assad absorbed the humiliation and focused on strengthening his regime by making Hezbollah Syria’s strategic arm against Israel, and building the nuclear reactor. Had he succeeded, he would have achieved the “strategic balance” his father had dreamed of. The war in the summer of 2006 justified the doctrine of “resistance”: Hezbollah came out a winner and Israel was defeated. The Hamas takeover of Gaza showed that Iran and Syria were on the rise, and Israel in retreat.

According to Olmert, he began the peace probes with Syria in February 2007 during a visit to Erdogan in Turkey. If this is so, the Hezbollah victory had shaken Israel’s nonchalance and prompted him to put the Golan up for sale, for fear of a further strengthening of the “axis of evil.”

But the plot thickened with the discovery of the Syrian nuclear reactor. Olmert cut off contact and prepared to attack the reactor, recruiting international support. He was worried about how Assad would react. Would he launch a missile attack on Tel Aviv and deploy in the Golan, or show restraint and continue the quiet in the north? Olmert ordered a psychological profile of Assad from MI, which analyzed his complex relationship with his father and elder brother – the heir-apparent before his death in a car accident in 1994.

Olmert’s gamble paid off. The reactor was destroyed, Syria remained outside the nuclear club and the world supported Israel. The cold war in the north continued with assassinations of high-ranking Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus and Syrian general Mohammed Suleiman, an Assad adviser who had been in charge of the nuclear project. Syrian sovereignty was once again harmed and Bashar decided to sit by quietly.

Olmert began to think of Assad as a responsible leader, and moved to renew the peace talks mediated by the Turks. He was prepared to revive negotiations with Syria despite America’s reservations. The isolation was broken. French President Nicolas Sarkozy invited Assad and his wife to Paris, Sarkozy visited Damascus, and European statesmen followed in his wake.

Olmert depicts revival of the Syrian track as a courageous diplomatic move. It can also be seen differently: In a combination of bullying moves, cautious diplomacy and military restraint, the cunning Assad has driven a wedge between Israel and the U.S., and is being welcomed in Europe without making even one small gesture toward Israel or the U.S. The arms are continuing to flow to Hezbollah, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad command centers in Damascus are thriving. Assad has successfully leveraged his father’s alliance: He is enjoying Iranian economic and military support, but hints that he would give it up for a better deal with Obama.

Bush views Syria as a criminal dictatorship, an incorrigible supporter of terror that’s trying to destroy “the emerging democracy in Lebanon” (which from Israel looks like a bad joke) and is helping bad guys kill Americans in Iraq. At his final meeting with Olmert, last month, Bush asked him: “Why do you want to give Assad the Golan for free?”

In a speech last week, Olmert justified the “down payment” to the Syrians. The prime minister spoke enthusiastically about the chances for peace with Syria, which he said “is not eager to be counted as part of the axis of evil and has a strong desire to emerge from its international and economic isolation and join the West.” From Israel’s perspective, “removing Syria from the axis of evil is of paramount strategic interest.”

Just before he leaves office, Olmert remembered to enlist public opinion in support of an agreement with Assad. It appears his enthusiastic speech is part of a circular deal: Olmert praised the Syrians on Thursday, Assad reciprocated with public support for direct talks on Sunday, and Erdogan hosted Olmert on Monday, in order to discuss a draft on renewing direct talks. Olmert and his diplomatic adviser Shlomo Turgeman sat with Erdogan and his people, who occasionally left the room to phone the Syrians.

Olmert knows he will not sign an agreement with the Syrians before he leaves office and hopes begin direct talks so he can leave behind active negotiations. He wants to renew the talks without having to pay an advance “deposit” of a full withdrawal from the Golan. In his view, his predecessors gave up everything in advance and he will achieve the same thing with a “down payment-minus.”

In the face of the Syrian demand to return the Golan, Israel is demanding that Syria disengage from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Olmert is prepared for a gradated Syrian disengagement, and Israel will pay initially with a less-binding declaration about withdrawal. Assad, meanwhile, is not buying the goods and has not yet agreed to the Israeli proposal. But Olmert has another two months to try.

Olmert is not the first to try to gain something from the Syrians. Yitzhak Rabin wanted a security arrangement with demilitarization on the Syrian side. Peres wanted a comprehensive regional agreement with dozens of Arab and Muslim leaders at the signing ceremony and detailed normalization accords. Netanyahu wanted an early-warning station on Mount Hermon. Barak preferred that the payback come from America in the form of extensive military aid. And Olmert wants disengagement from Iran. None of them achieved anything, nor did they evacuate the Golan. The situation on the ground remains as it was, and Israel isn’t making efforts to develop its communities on the Golan.

In his interview with The Post, Assad said he will not wait for the Palestinians for peace talks and proposed integrating Hezbollah and Hamas into the diplomatic process. But he demands a full withdrawal from the Golan and U.S. sponsorship of direct talks with Israel.

It will be interesting to see how he deals with Olmert’s replacement: Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, each in their own way, oppose the Syrian track and prefer Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Will they change their mind, or will Assad need to apply his methods of persuasion?

By Alex,

.
Number 5: Hamas was launching rockets into southern Israel.

Although very few of these missiles hit a target and very few Israelis died as a result of those attacks, the rockets are a source of psychological stress as Israelis living in the affected areas had to live in constant fear.

Number 4: The attacks were a part of Israel’s strategy to ensure the utter failure of Hamas in governing the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in 2006 to lead them.

From day 1, Israel made life very difficult for anyone living in Gaza under Hamas’ leadership. Israel is not alone in this project. Many westerners also believe that Arabs who elect a hardline Islamist party at some point in the future should never forget the painful failed experiment of electing Hamas.

225 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured on day1 of Israel's attack

Number 3: To help America’s weak Arab allies

The “Moderate Arab” leaders and rulers needed to reduce the collective weight of their adversaries in the Syria/Iran/Hizbollah/Hamas coalition. Egypt lost its patience with Hamas recently after the popular Palestinian group did not sign an Egyptian mediated agreement for settling Fatah/Hamas differences. Hamas’ leadership made it clear to the Egyptians that within the complicated regional power competition, Hamas is firmly committed to Syria. Egypt got the message: if you want to play a role in Palestinian affairs, it is still possible, but you need to coordinate with Syria. Alhayat reported this week that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told visiting French prime minister that “Syria and Iran control Hamas .. Syria blocked Egypt’s efforts to reach an agreement between Fatah and Hamas”

In 2006, it was widely believed that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia wanted to see Israel succeed in destroying Hizbollah. Today, many Arabs interviewed on Aljazeera were already accusing Egypt of giving Israel an Arab green light to finish off Hamas.

A week ago, seven thousand Israeli policemen had to do a “training exercise” that was described by Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, as “a huge police training exercise to prepare for riot control and to deal with different scenarios“.

Number 2: To cool down Arab and international pressure on Israel. Pressure to live up to the high expectations at this advanced stage of the Peace process with Syria and with the Palestinians.

Since Israel made the decision to give Sinai back to Egypt, 4 years after the relatively challenging 1973 war, Israel always found a way to get out of peace negotiations that were nearing success. Prime ministers get kicked out of office for corruption, others are killed by extremists, and the uncertainties of Israeli politics takes care of the rest.

After this week’s blood bath in Gaza is over, the Syrians will find it difficult to negotiate with Israel and the Arabs would find it difficult to continue to promote their “Arab peace initiative”.

Israel is not ready for the price of peace.

Number 1: Some Israeli and Bush administration hardliners want a last chance to draw Hizbollah into another confrontation with Israel before President Bush is out of office.

Israel is too proud to be able to live with the fact that Hizbollah defeated its army during its invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Assassinating Hizbollah’s Imad Mughnyieh was supposed to lead to a Hizbollah retaliation against some Israeli diplomats outside the Middle East after which Israel would have a reason to go after Hizbollah again. Hizbollah promised to retaliate, but did not make that mistake.

Israel is trying again to make it difficult for Hizbollah to not get involved.

Very best to all Syria Comment readers for the New Year. Best, Joshua

Latest census in Syria: Population stands at 22.331 million. The work force is around 4.9 million, of which 1.38 million employed with the government.. [Thanks Idaf]

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Olmert to Turkish PM: We must advance toward direct Israel-Syria talks

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Turkish counterpart Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday, telling him that “Whatever we don’t do today in the Middle East, we may not be able to achieve tomorrow. We must advance toward direct peace talks between Israel and Syria as soon as possible.”…

Tzipi Livni on Tuesday said that if Israel signs a peace deal with Syria, Damascus must take concrete steps to ensure the accord is worth more than the paper it is written on. ….

 Likud chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu, … flanked by two Likud leaders who are closely identified with security issues, former Israel Defense Force chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon and Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Peled, added, “We have come here to openly say that a government I will head will remain on the Golan Heights and will protect it as a strategic asset.

“One doesn’t have to be a military expert to understand from here why the 1967 border is not a defensive line from this direction,” Ya’alon said.

Peled, who was the head of the Northern Command during his army career, said, “they are trying to sell us in Turkey. The Golan is the oxygen of the Jewish state, and to discuss it is potential suicide for the state of Israel.”

Asad: Syria would eventually embark on direct peace talks with Israel, but they must be based on U.N. Security Council resolutions, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday.

“It is essential to apply resolutions by the U.N. Security Council” on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Assad said on Monday.

In exchange for peace Syria is demanding the return of the entire Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in 1981 in a move unrecognized by the international community.

But Israel has baulked at this, since it would mean returning land right down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, its main source of fresh water.

Assad also stressed the role of Europe in the peace process, saying: “Israel-Europe relations must be linked to Israels acceptance of U.N. resolutions.”

Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 call on Israel to withdraw from Arab territory it captured in the 1967 war.

Ehud Barak, Defense Minister and Labor leader, says:

“I am continuing the policy set by [David] Ben Gurion, which states that Israel has no interest in wars. If the quiet continues, there will be quiet. If the calm breaks, we will operate.”  He added that he was currently working together with Israel Defense Forces Chief Gabi Ashkenazi and Military Intelligence head Amos Yadlin to advance talks with Syria.  “I am taking action to advance peace in the real world, not in an imaginary one,” Barak said. “I am active more than anyone else in trying to reach peace with Syria. The director of Military Intelligence, the chief of staff and I, in contrast to others, are pushing for a settlement with the Syrians. We are the ones who are saying that we must not wait, that we must move ahead, take risks.”  Barak also said that the recent remarks by feted author Amos Oz that the Labor Party has ended its historical role in Israeli politics were unfair and incorrect. “What he said hurt me. I think there was something unfair in what he said.” 

A New Partner In Syria?
David Ignatius, 24 December 2008, The Washington Post

President Bashar al-Assad says he doesn’t want to send a message to Barack Obama, exactly, but to express a three-part hope for the incoming administration’s Middle East policy:

First, he hopes Obama won’t start “another war anywhere in the world, especially not in the Middle East.” And he trusts that the doctrine of “preemptive war” will end when George W. Bush leaves office.

Second, Assad said, “We would like to see this new administration sincerely involved in the peace process.” He hopes that Obama will back Syria’s indirect negotiations with Israel, and he urges the new administration to pursue “the Lebanese track and the Palestinian track, as well.”

Asked whether he would mind if the Syrian track went first (a sequence that has worried some Syrians who prefer the ideological purity of following the Palestinians), Assad answered: “Of course not. Each track will help the other.”

Third, he says he wants Syria and the United States to work together to stabilize Iraq as American troops begin to leave. “We can’t turn the clock back,” Assad said. “The war happened. Now we have to talk about the future. We have to forge a process, a political vision and a timetable for withdrawal.”

In all three “hopes,” Assad seemed to be looking for a new start with Obama after years of chilly relations with Bush. Assad said he knew little about Obama or his policies but has heard that he is more in contact with ordinary people than Bush has been, which, Assad contended, would give Obama a better understanding of America.

Assad spoke in English during the 30-minute interview Monday. He was accompanied only by his political and media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban. This time, in contrast to my interview with him in 2003 , when Assad was often stiff and doctrinaire, he was loose and informal, breaking several times into laughter.

Assad’s easy demeanor suggested that he’s more firmly in charge now. The Bush administration’s attempt to isolate Syria has failed, even in the judgment of senior White House officials. That leaves Assad in the catbird seat, courted by European and Arab nations and conducting back-channel talks through Turkey with his erstwhile enemy Israel.

Asked, for example, about reports that Saudi Arabia is seeking to improve its relations with Damascus because it sees U.S. engagement with Syria ahead and fears that “the train may be leaving the station,” Assad laughed.

“Maybe it has already left the station,” he said. But he vows that he is ready to receive any emissaries. “I have no problem with the Saudis. We would like good relations with every country in this region.”

Assad said that he is ready to move to direct talks with Israel as soon as he receives clarification on two points: One, he wants assurance that the Israelis will withdraw fully from the Golan Heights. To clarify that issue, he sent a “borders document” to the Israelis this month that highlights some points along the pre-1967 border. As of Monday, he said, he hadn’t received an Israeli response. His second condition for direct talks is that the United States join as a sponsor.

On the crucial question of Syria’s future relations with Iran, Assad was noncommittal. He said the relationship with Iran wasn’t about the “kind of statehood” Syria has or its cultural affinities but about protecting Syrian interests against hostile neighbors. “It’s about who plays a role in this region, who supports my rights,” he said. “It’s not that complicated.”

Asked whether Syria was prepared to restrain Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon, Assad said this was a matter the Israelis should sort out in separate negotiations with the Lebanese. Indeed, he promoted the idea of the other negotiating tracks — which would draw in, at least indirectly, Hezbollah and Hamas.

“The longer the border, the bigger the peace,” Assad said. “Hezbollah is on the Lebanese border, not Syrian. Hamas is on the Palestinian border. . . . They should look at those other tracks. They should be comprehensive. If you want peace, you need three peace treaties, on three tracks.”

A relaxed Assad clearly believes that Syria is emerging from its pariah status. An international tribunal is still scheduled to meet in The Hague to weigh Syria’s alleged role in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. But in the meantime, Assad is receiving a stream of visiting diplomats. He looks like a ready partner for Obama’s diplomacy, but a cautious one — waiting to see what’s on offer before he shows more of his hand.

Patrick Lang :

“The “borders” issue in the Golan Heights has become a non-issue.  This is not the ’60s.  Israel’s survival does not depend on the possession of a few hundred square kilometers of stony, scruffy land.  Technology and capabilities have moved on.  The military realities that the Likudniks like to talk about render such consideration “oldspeak,” mere excuses for not giving up a square centimeter of the others side(s) land,”

“Bashar Assad’s Syria has sought accommodation with the US for the last several years.   This was firmly rejected by the Bush people because it was and is neocon/Likud doctrine that Syria must be subdued and eviscerated, not accommodated.  Assad wants to be let out of the “doghouse.”  He wants there to be a new beginning for the Middle East, one that a modern man like him can accept.  This is our chance and the biggest opportunity the Israelis have ever had.  Can the Israelis and their American “friends” rise to the occasion.  I doubt it.  They are so paralyzed by fear that their options are self limiting.  We should hope for the best.”

The Threat on Syria’s Doorstep, Middle East Monitor, By Stephen Starr (See the entire issue of Middle East Monitor – esp. Questions Remain about the US Raid in Syria)

Syrian President Bashar Assad is pointing responsibility for recent terror attacks in Syria at Saudi Arabia and its Lebanese allies – and not without justification.

Israeli Author Oz Says Barak Too Easy on Settlers: Haaretz, 2008-12-23
Budget Deficit at 9 percent of GDP in 2009: Syria’s budget will post a deficit of USD 4.8 billion next year or 9 percent of its GDP. [More at Syria Report]

Oil and Gas: Oil Subsidies Bill at USD 6.9 billion at End September 2008: Mahrukat posted a record deficit of USD 6.9 billion in the first nine months of the year according to figures from the company. [More at Syria Report]

Damascus Bourse Signs With Market Evolution, Al Thawra Says
2008-12-23, By Nadim Issa Dec. 23 (Bloomberg)

 — The Damascus Securities Exchange signed a contract with Bahamas-based Market Evolution Software products Limited to install electronic systems necessary to operate the bourse in the first quarter of 2009, Al Thawra reported, without saying where it got the information.

The company, which installed equipments for the Macedonia Stock Exchange and the Ljubljana Stock Exchange, will provide the trading, settlement, monitoring and display systems for the Syrian bourse, the Syrian newspaper reported.

It is finally end of life for Syrian Airlines’ Jubmo and Caravelle planes: [Thanks Alex]

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Oil Price Decline Threatens Syrian Refining Plan, Alao Says
By Maher Chmaytelli
Bloomberg, 17 December 2008

Syria may not be able to increase oil production and refining capacity as planned as the decline
in petroleum prices threatens investments, Syrian Petroleum Minister Sufian al-Alao said.

“We are concerned,” Alao said today in an interview in Oran, Algeria, at a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in which Syria holds an observer status. “The private companies are reviewing their projects in light of the price decline.”

Syria has in the past two years announced plans to build three refineries that will add 350,000 barrels a day to current capacity of 220,000 barrels a day. The nation has also invited bids for licenses to drill offshore as it seeks to stem a decline in crude oil production.

Kuwait’s Noor Financial Investment KSCC is re-assessing its plan to build a 140,000 barrel-a-day refinery, Alao said. The other two refinery projects “look secure, as they are being done with state companies,” he said, referring to a 140,000 barrel-a-day plant planned with Petroleos de Venezuela S.A, the Iranian Oil Co. and Malaysia’s Al-Bukhari Group, and a 70,000-barrel-a-day facility planned with China National PetroleumCorp.

The refineries will allow Syria to import and process Iraqi crude, offsetting its own declining supply, when they come on stream in 2012. Iraq’s oil exports through Syria, which had contravened United Nations sanctions, stopped in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Syria imports about 60,000 to 70,000 barrels a day of gasoil, a fuel used for heating and transportation that accounts for half its consumption of refined products. The country’s electricity consumption is increasing an annual 7 percent as its population and economy grow.

Syria’s crude production has fallen to about 380,000 barrels a day, from a peak of 600,000 barrels a day in 1996, according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

Syria not to join OPEC: oil minister
Xinhua, 17 December 2008

Syrian Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources Sufian Allaw Wednesday said that his country will not join the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) due to its small oil output and declining exports.

“Syria will not join OPEC due to its small output and declining oil exports,” the minister told Xinhua on the sidelines of the 151st extraordinary ministerial meeting in the northwestern Algerian city of Oran.

He declined to give the “fair prices” what his country expects in the international markets, saying “each country has its own favorable prices.”

Syria has a daily output of some 400,000 barrels and exports half of the output.

Earlier in the day, Russia, the biggest non-OPEC oil exporter, also ruled out the possibility of joining the oil cartel, according to Russian Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky.

The OPEC comprises Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, but Indonesia has suspended membership and officially leaves the cartel at the end of 2008.

Ancient cemetery found in Syria
UPI, 18 December 2008

Archaeologists have dug up a large ancient cemetery in the middle of the Syrian desert, providing a glimpse into life and death in the 19th century B.C. The necropolis discovered near the Syrian oasis of Palmyra about 125 miles northeast of Damascus, has at least 30 large burial mounds, ANSA reported Wednesday….

”Future excavations of the burial mounds will undoubtedly reveal information of crucial importance.”

The team of Italian and German experts, which concluded its 10th annual excavation in central Syria in late November, found the elaborate cemetery along a stretch of an old Roman road marked with stones bearing Latin inscriptions with the name of the Emperor Aurelius, who put down a rebellion led by the Palmyran queen Zenobia in 272 A.D. The discovery includes a Roman staging post that was perfectly preserved by a heavy layer of sand.

(CSRwire) Washington, DC – December 15, 2008 – With an eye towards exploring the legacy and the future of Lebanon’s 2005 Cedar Revolution, which forced the exit of Syrian forces from Beirut, the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation (LRF) and the Aspen Institute hosted a forum event with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Dep. Asst. Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, Saban Center Director Martin Indyk, US Representative Charles Boustany (D-La.), US Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV), The Daily Star Opinion Editor Michael Young, Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius, Lebanese Minister of State Nassib Lahoud, several Lebanese Members of Parliament, and foreign policy experts from the Council of Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Religioscope Foundation. The December 12 forum was the first major US program sponsored by the LRF.

During the day-long event, panelists discussed how Lebanon can ensure its sovereignty, establish a functional democracy, and eliminate threats from inside the country and from abroad. The event kicked off with a call from Secretary Albright for the United States to support the efforts of the non-Hezbollah forces in Lebanon to provide the basic services of a democratic government: “Democracy has to deliver. People want to vote and eat.”

“Our goal is to help Lebanon claim its birthright as a great nation, a regional center of finance and the arts, an example of what’s possible among people when they can work on building something up, rather than tearing each other down,” said Eli Khoury, president of LRF.

Citing the impressive ability of Lebanon, a country the size of Delaware, to “get the attention of the world,” Feltman spoke to an audience that included a number of Lebanese citizens about the likelihood of a shift in tone and emphasis with an incoming Obama Administration. “Changes in style and tactics should not be viewed with alarm,” he said. “Refrain from your habit of overanalyzing [the United States].” Feltman was also quick to warn that Hezbollah is just as much of a threat to the security of Lebanon as it is to Israel. It was a theme echoed by Indyk, who said that the “disarmament of Hezbollah is a Lebanese responsibility.” Indyk said that as long as Hezbollah was more militarily advanced than the government, it would continue to be a state within a state-jeopardizing Lebanon’s sovereignty and US support. Some speakers observed that Hezbollah should be able to retain its role as a political entity, but only if it disarms and yields to the government’s “monopoly of force” essential for the survival of Lebanese democracy.

Meanwhile, in a panel discussion among Lebanese members of parliament, political rivals debated the upcoming Lebanese election. Moderator Michael Young observed that the panel represented the “divisiveness of the Lebanese political class.” Still, all the panelists agreed that Lebanon should be a sovereign state, free from all forms of outside interference and manipulation. As Rep. Rahall said later in a keynote speech, “Do not let Lebanon be a prize for signing a peace treaty.”

Other notable quotes from the December 12 conference included:

“The support of the democratic values of Lebanon is something that is bipartisan in this nation.” – Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, The Aspen Institute

“Syria is a master at playing the spoiler role if it feels ignored or that its interests are threatened.”- Theodore Kattouf, President, AMIDEAST

“If Hezbollah and its allies take control of Lebanon, … the basis of US support for Lebanon will be jeopardized.” – Martin Indyk, Director, Saban Center, Brookings Institution

“We have to look at Syria’s intention toward Lebanon by the facts on the ground, not by what Syria is saying.” – Jeffrey Feltman, Deputy Secretary of State for Near East Affairs

“Iraq is the greatest disaster in foreign policy primarily because of what it did to the good name of democracy.” – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

“As we elect the 44th president, we have turned power over peacefully longer than any other place in the world.” – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

“Lebanon’s failure would be a failure of opportunity for the United States in the Middle East.” – US Representative Charles Boustany

“The stakes are existential. … Lebanon is at the intersection of the realists and the transformationalists.” – Nayla Mouawad, Qornet Shehwan MP, Zghorta

“There is more competition over parliament seats than there is dialogue in Lebanon right now.”- Ghassan Mokheiber, Change and Reform MP, Metn

“Unless Hezbollah and the situation with Lebanon is high on the next administration’s list of priorities,” the Middle East will remain insecure. – Steven Cook, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

“I keep waiting for the actions of Hezbollah to create a counter – reaction. But it never seems to, and that worries me.” – David Ignatius, Columnist, The Washington Post

“Using one religious group to stop another is part of the tragedy of Lebanon.” – David Ignatius, Columnist, The Washington Post

Video of the conference will be posted at video.aspeninstitute.org.

The Lebanon Renaissance Foundation is an independent civil society group whose members are drawn from all religious denominations, who, through their professional activities, have been engaged in efforts aimed at preserving the core values of the Cedar Revolution. For more information, visit www.lebanonrenaissance.org.

Assad seeks Israeli stance on Golan
Reuters, 16 December 2008

Syria has drafted a document defining the boundaries of the Golan Heights and was waiting for an Israeli reply through Turkish mediators, sources familiar with the talks said this week.

President Bashar Assad recently told Western officials that Damascus wants Israel to take a clear position on the territorial problem between the two countries before agreeing to push stalled peace talks forward.

The Syrian document sets the boundaries with reference to six geographical points, the sources told Reuters.

“The president was clear that Syria wants to know the Israeli view about what constitutes occupied Syrian territory before progress could be made,” one of the sources said.

“According to Syrian thinking, Israeli agreement on the six (geographical) points could help seal a peace deal next year. But Israel may not be able to provide a response any time soon, when it is in such political turmoil,” a second source said.

The Prime Minister’s Office said in response to the report, “We do not negotiate through the media.” ….

Assad tells European diplomats that he isn’t responsible for restraining Hezbollah, and won’t be “Israel’s bodyguard”…  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1048342.html

Livni: Syria peace must involve more than just eating hummus in Damascus
Haaretz.com, 16 December 2008

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Tuesday said peace with Syria would have to involve more than mere culinary tourism, speaking in response to reports of Syria’s demands in indirect negotiations with Israel.

“What is important to us is not a peace of opening embassies and eating Humus in Damascus, but the halting of arms smuggling through Syria to Hezbollah, their strong ties to Iran and their endless support of terrorist organizations such as Hamas,” said the foreign minister.

Livni, the chairwoman of the leading Kadima party and a prime ministerial hopeful, made the comments at a conference in the northern Galilee.

She added: “I don’t know of negotiations that end before they have begun.”

Earlier Tuesday it emerged that sources familiar with the peace talks said this week that Syria has drafted a document defining potential boundaries for the Golan Heights and is waiting for an Israeli reply through Turkish mediators.

President Bashar al-Assad recently told Western officials that Damascus wants Israel to take a clear position on the territorial problem between the two countries before agreeing to push stalled peace talks forward…

Israeli diplomat: No more talks with Syria at this time
By Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern
Haaretz.com, 17 December 2008

Israel and Syria have both told Turkey that they are not currently interested in conducting another round of indirect talks with each other, an Israeli diplomat told Haaretz this week.

The diplomat said Damascus and Jerusalem explained that they are suspending the Turkish mediation in peace negotiations because talks would be pointless before Israel’s general election on February 10. Turkish officials said they believed talks would be resumed after Israel gets its new leader.

The decision to shelve the process did not invoke much protest from the Foreign Ministry, where top diplomats have said they are unhappy with the way peace talks have allowed Syria to break out of its isolation, despite its classification as a terror-sponsoring country.

This problem reached new levels when the European Commission issued a draft early this month for updating its free trade agreement with Syria, which had been suspended for several years. The signing of a final free trade deal will not happen any time soon, but the draft represents a significant achievement for Damascus…

Olmert: It is possible to negotiate peace deal with Syria
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz, 19 December 2008

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday in a speech that it was possible to negotiate a peace deal between Israel and Syria.

Speaking at a conference of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, Olmert said that the indirect Israel-Syria talks mediated by Turkey can lead to direct negotiations, stressing that a peace treaty with Syria can be achieved.

Referring to ongoing indirect peace talks, mediated by Turkey, Olmert continued, saying “the talks with Syria were thorough and important. Removing Syria from the radical axis is one of Israel’s top priorities.”

“Tough sacrifices will be required,” Olmert continued, “but the prevention of lost lives is worth it. Syria is not interested in belonging to the axis of evil, and wants to forge ties with the U.S.”

Olmert said a peace treaty would break the ties between Syria and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, but he could not guarantee success. He said, “How will we know if we don’t try? How can we try if we are not prepared to take any risks?”

“A peace deal with Syria will alter the balance of power between moderates and extremists in the Middle East? A deal with Syria will minimize the threat of war from the north and will eliminate the assistance it gives to terror organizations,” Olmert went on to say.

Right-wing MKs were quick to respond to Olmert’s address, with Likud MK Yuval Steinitz saying “the Golan is essential to Israel’s security, welfare and future, and cannot be used as currency by the Olmert-Livni government.”

MK Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi) also criticized Olmert’s remarks, saying that the prime minister “dreams that the Israeli public will forget the corruption scandals that brought about the end of his reign, while [Syrian President Bashar] Assad dreams of wading in the Kinneret.”

Meanwhile Thursday, Olmert announced that he would be meeting Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday to discuss Israel’s indirect peace talks with Syria and other issues.

Turkey has been mediating the indirect talks but they were suspended earlier this year after Olmert announced his resignation over a corruption scandal.

Olmert remains Israel’s caretaker premier until a new government is formed after a February election.

“Prime Minister Olmert spoke yesterday to the Turkish prime minister and they agreed to meet on Monday in Ankara,” said Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman. “The meeting will deal with bilateral issues as well as regional issues, including the political processes in the region.”

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said indirect peace talks with Syria will be high on the agenda during the Olmert-Erdogan meeting.

“It’s possible that there will be another round but it has not been decided,” the official said of the Israeli-Syrian track.

On Tuesday, it emerged that sources familiar with the peace talks said this week that Syria has drafted a document defining potential boundaries for the Golan Heights and is waiting for an Israeli reply through Turkish mediators.

Israel and Syria held almost 10 years of direct talks under U.S. supervision which collapsed in 2000 over the scope of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Israel captured the plateau in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it more than a decade later – a move rejected by the United Nations.

Change they can believe in
By Walter Russell Mead Published: December 17, 2008

Reviving the Middle East peace process is the worst kind of necessary evil for a U.S. administration: very necessary, and very evil.

It is necessary because the festering dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians in a volatile, strategically vital region has broad implications for U.S. interests and because the security of Israel is one of the American public’s most enduring international concerns.

It is evil because it is costly and difficult. The price of engagement is high, the chances for a solution are mixed at best, and all of the available approaches carry significant political risks.

The incoming U.S. president, Barack Obama, faces a daunting task. He needs to develop a Middle East peace strategy that makes a clear break with the past, that is politically sustainable at home and abroad, that offers real hope for a final resolution, and that in the interim can bring benefits to the two peoples, the wider region, and the United States itself.

The way to do this is to change the way that a peace deal is framed.

In the past, U.S. peacemakers have had an Israel-centric approach to the negotiating process; the Obama administration needs to put Palestinian politics and Palestinian public opinion at the center of its peacemaking efforts.

Despite their military weakness and their political factiousness, the Palestinians hold the key to peace in the Middle East. And if the United States hopes to create a more secure and stable environment for Israel, it must sell peace to Israel’s foes.

The Syrian Strategy
by Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. 2008-12-21

….It is not inconceivable that the regime in Damascus might throw its supporters in Tehran under the bus in exchange for prestige, cash and a free hand in Lebanon. But it is unrealistic to expect President Assad to dispose of Hezbollah and Hamas in the same way. Mr. Assad — broadly disliked at home, a member of a mistrusted Alawite minority, comically inept at managing his country’s resources — can maintain his grip on power only as long as he is seen as a vital instrument of Israel’s defeat. ….

Carter meets with political leader of Hamas in Syria
CNN, 14 December 2008

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met Sunday in Damascus, Syria, with Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas’ political wing, a Hamas official said.

The five-hour meeting ended late Sunday and covered several issues, including Cpl. Gilad Shalit — an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas since June 2006, the official said.

Carter previously met with Meshaal in April.In that meeting, the Hamas leader promised Carter that the group would allow Shalit to send a message to his parents, Noam and Aviva. Carter also asked Hamas to release Shalit, Meshaal said after the former president’s visit, but the request was rejected. Hamas said Sunday it will soon release a statement about the latest meeting between Carter and Meshaal.

Carter’s series of meetings with top Hamas officials in April garnered condemnation from the U.S. and Israeli governments. They criticized him for engaging in diplomacy with a group that both governments consider a terrorist organization. How the incoming Obama administration will receive Carter’s meetings with Hamas remains to be seen.

During his visit in Syria, Carter also visited the Saint Taqla convent in the city of Maalula, north of Damascus, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria, EU closer to economic deal, hurdles remain
Daily Times, 16 December 2008

Syria and the European Union nudged closer to signing an economic agreement on Sunday but political differences among EU powers on how to handle relations with the Damascus government could delay a deal, diplomats said.

Officials from the two sides finalised the draft text of the association agreement, which focuses on economy, trade and security, and initialled it in a late ceremony on Sunday.

“This is mainly an economic agreement that will put reforms in Syria on a clear tack, but we don’t ignore the fact that it will also establish a political dialogue with the European Union,” Abdullah al-Dardari, Syria’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, told reporters.

“The European Union is a market of 430 million people. Our goods have to be well priced but also of higher quality to be able to penetrate it,” he added

The agreement drops tariffs gradually between the two sides over the next 12 years.

It also has chapters on weapons of mass destruction and human rights, an issue that has been repeatedly raised by the European officials after Syrian authorities stepped up arrests of President Bashar al-Assad’s political opponents…

Syria looks to better times
By Sami Moubayed
Asia Times Online, 16 December 2008

There are two main schools of thought regarding the future of Syria, now that George W Bush has begun his long march into history and will be leaving the White House in January. Optimists claim that the future will be promising and rosy, citing Barack Obama’s expressed desire to engage with Damascus to find solutions to regional peace, Iraq and Lebanon.

Signals of this optimism are already emerging, the latest a statement by President Bashar al-Assad saying that the United States will be re-appointing an ambassador to Damascus in 2009. That went unchallenged by Washington. Other signs include Obama toying with the idea of appointing veteran US diplomat

Daniel Kurtzer, who wrapped up a visit to Syria in mid-2008, as his Middle East envoy. Kurtzer, who is close to the Syrians and served as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Israel, is someone who has repeatedly called for dialogue with Damascus.

Others, however, are careful not to get too optimistic over Obama, claiming that dialogue between Damascus and Washington will be difficult – in some cases, very difficult. A third school, currently a minority, believes that Syria is in for difficult times because the international tribunal over the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri, has been set for March 1, 2009. This will roll the clock back to 2005, when Syria’s relationship with the international community was at a historic low. Pessimists argue that after becoming president, Obama will find it difficult to deliver on Syria, because of loose ends leftover from the Bush era, and would rather pursue the Palestinian-Israeli peace process…

….  What many people fail to understand is that Syria is not seeking financial reward for a peace deal with Israel – unlike the case with Egypt in 1978 or Jordan in 1994. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, once even commented that she was always surprised that the Syrians were not seeking direct US financial assistance, when talks were on the verge of succeeding in the mid-1990s.

Syria’s argument always has been that the only reward it wants is the lifting of sanctions, allowing the Syrian economy to grow and attract investment in a prosperous and healthy manner, from Europe, the US and the Arab Gulf. Syria is a rich country that has enough wealth and potential to manage and develop its own economy, without US money. Paying it to sign a peace agreement would mean that strings are attached, the Syrians believe. If peace does materialize in late 2009 – or early 2010 – this would give, in addition to restoration of the occupied Golan Heights, a tremendous boost for the Syrian economy, providing jobs, attracting investment and increasing growth.

Matters began shifting in Syria’s favor after the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006….

 

By Patrick Worsnip
Reuters
Wednesday, December 17, 2008; 2:53 PM

Daniel Bellemare

U.N. investigator says Hariri killing can be solved

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. investigator probing the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri said on Wednesday he believed the case was solvable but asked for patience as he assembles evidence.

Daniel Bellemare was addressing the U.N. Security Council, which later extended the life of his Beirut-based commission for another two months until a special court to hear the politically sensitive case is set up in The Hague on March 1.

Hariri and 22 other people died in a car bomb explosion in Beirut on February 14, 2005. Some anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians have said Syria was behind the bombing, a charge Damascus denies.

Bellemare, a Canadian who will also be prosecutor when the case comes to court, sought to play down what he said were misconceptions that the move to the Hague would mean indictments would immediately be issued.

He said he would continue his investigations as prosecutor even after the commission ceases operations on February 28 and could not say when they would be completed.

“Fast food justice is not on the menu,” Bellemare said, describing the investigation as “probably one of the most difficult in recent times.”

“There will be no indictment of convenience.”

But he said there was “no such thing as the perfect crime” and, answering the question of whether the case was soluble, added, “While no one ever said it would be easy, my answer to this question is unequivocal: Yes, this case can be solved.”

While countries funding the investigation and the tribunal were entitled to ask whether it was worth continuing, the answer was “absolutely,” he said.

But, he said, “While there is anxiety and impatience, the process must be allowed to follow its course.”

In a report for the council made public earlier this month, Bellemare said his team had found new information that expanded their list of suspects, as well as fresh clues to where the suicide bomber responsible for Hariri’s death came from.

He gave no further details on Wednesday.

The Return of Realpolitik in Arabia
by Fouad Ajami in WSJ

To its surprise, the new administration could yet discover that our adversaries do not wish to see our withdrawal from their midst. The Iranians thrive on the American presence in the Persian Gulf and feed off it. They are the quintessential oppositional force. They are not good at generating policies of their own. Their work consists of subversive attacks on Pax Americana in the region. The call by President Bush’s critics for a dialogue with Iran will be exposed for the pathetic fraud it has been all along. The American drama swirling around the rise of Mr. Obama is of no interest to the theocrats in Tehran. For them, it is business as usual in the Persian Gulf.

Arrests show fears of Saddam followers: The arrests of more than 20 security officials for allegedly trying to revive Saddam Hussein’s banned political party show how the Shiite-led government believes that supporters of the old regime still pose a threat — perhaps as much as al-Qaida or Iranian-backed militias.

Iraq: The Shia Religious State – Matthew Duss, American Prospect

A moment for truth as Britain exits Iraq

Not So Fast
By Eli Lake
The New Republic, 24 December 2008

When it comes to Iraq, “withdrawal” seems to be the word of the day. In Washington, the incoming administration has revived the Obama campaign’s 16- month timetable for removing combat troops from Iraq. At his press conference on Monday, for example, Obama said he still thought that timeframe was “realistic” and said he would be meeting with military commanders to discuss “how we proceed” in what he calls a “withdrawal process.” Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Obama’s timeframe was “agreeable,” suggesting that the current Pentagon chief has also agreed to a withdrawal.

The agreement ratified on Thanksgiving Day by the Iraqi parliament would seem to lay out a road map for just the kind of withdrawal Obama has promised. It demands that all U.S. forces–with no exceptions–exit the country by the last calendar day of 2011 and that they return to their bases by the end of June 2009. What’s more, it mandates that the unsightly international zone in the center of Iraq’s capital be dismantled and requires the explicit approval of Iraq’s government for any U.S. military actions against Iraq’s neighbors or within the country. For those inclined to call America’s presence in Iraq an occupation, the Status of Forces Agreement, or sofa, as it is referred to at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, appears to end it.

All of this has left many with the impression that American soldiers will be out of Iraq by the time Obama begins his campaign for reelection. Or, as Senator Claire McCaskill told Fox News on Sunday: “The important part about that SOFA agreement is it embraces the kind of timetable that Barack Obama made a foundation of his campaign…”

….The call by President Bush’s critics for a dialogue with Iran ill be exposed for the pathetic fraud it has been all along. The American drama swirling around the rise of Mr. Obama is of no interest to the theocrats in Tehran. For them, it is business as usual in the Persian Gulf…..

Russia in talks with Iran over sale of anti-aircraft missiles, despite Israeli objections
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz.com, 16 December 2008

Israel plans to send one of its most senior security officials to Moscow tomorrow to express concern over Russia’s decision to renew contacts with Iran for the sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Haaretz has learned.

Israeli officials said the government will send the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau Maj.-Gen. (res) Amos Gilad to try to dissuade the Kremlin from supplying Iran with S-300 missiles – which would significantly complicate any military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

During his two-day visit in Moscow, Gilad will meet with the Russian chief of staff, the head of intelligence as well as senior defense officials and diplomats. In addition to talks on the S-300 sale, Gilad is expected to bring up the Iranian nuclear program and Syria’s supplying of Russian-made weapons to Hezbollah.

Earlier this year, Russia said it would not move forward with the transaction. In October, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Russia, where he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and with his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. The meeting was set up to try and persuade the Russians to drop two deals in the works – one to sell S-300 missiles to Iran and the other to sell them to Syria.

The Russian foreign ministry’s spokesman said Russia will not go ahead with the Iranian deal. “We have declared more than once at the very highest political level that we do not intend to supply those types of armaments to countries located in regions that are, to put it mildly, unstable areas,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.

The Russian official added that the Kremlin makes decisions on selling such systems based on “both preserving the balance of power in the given region, and taking into account the need to provide stability and security in the region.”

But in spite of these statements, Israeli officials say Russia and Iran renewed negotiations on the purchase of the missile system several weeks ago. The sources confirmed a report that appeared in the foreign press on the matter two weeks ago.

In a recent internal discussion on the matter, Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave ministry officials instructions to put in a request for clarifications from the Russian administration’s highest levels.

The weapons sales are a very sensitive issue for Israeli diplomats, who view it as a form of leverage that Russia is trying to apply on Washington. Some in the Foreign Ministry believe Russia has decided to move forward with the deal in order to demonstrate a hard line ahead of Barack Obama’s entry into the White House as U.S. President.

The S-300 missile, called the SA-10 in the West, has a range of 150 kilometers and is capable of striking a plane at altitudes of up to 30,000 meters. The movable launchers are operational within minutes, and the system’s radar is able to simultaneously acquire and engage dozens of targets.

Poll Finds Widespread International Opposition to US Bases in Persian Gulf
WorldPublicOpinion.org, 15 December 2008

A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 21 nations around the world finds widespread opposition to the United States having naval forces based in the Persian Gulf. Most also believe that most people in the Persian Gulf region oppose such bases.

In general, America’s approach to the Middle East and the Muslim world gets poor grades around the world. The United States is widely viewed as disrespectful of the Muslim world. Its support for democracy in the Muslim world is seen as limited to cases where the government is cooperative with the US. More publics than not believe that the US is not really seeking the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

The poll of 21,740 respondents was conducted between July 15 and October 24, 2008 by WorldPublicOpinion.org in 21 nations (in Iran: January 13-February 9). Margins of error range from approximately +/-2 to 4 percent. Most of the world’s largest nations were included (China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Russia), as well as several nations in the Middle East (Egypt, Iran, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Azerbaijan, and Turkey). Also included were Mexico, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Kenya, Pakistan, Thailand, and Ukraine, as were publics in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Not all questions were asked in all nations…

Iran’s Regional Security Policy: Opportunities and Challenges
George Emile Irani
16/12/2008

…….The linchpin of Iran’s policy is to preserve its security and project its presence and influence in countries with major Shia populations, such as Iraq and Lebanon. Its desire is to take the leadership of the Muslim world away from the hands of Sunni-dominated states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Iranian foreign policy is dictated by the need to maintain the country’s sovereignty and independence in the light of past interventions by regional and global powers.

The country has developed a strong strategic relationship with Syria and both countries have adopted policies supporting anti-Western and anti-Israeli groups, such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon…..

THE TANGLED US-IRAN KNOT, Part 4, Is a deal on the Middle East possible?
By Gareth Porter

Iran is both willing and able to lend the US a hand in Middle Eastern conflicts – and with the Sunni extremists the two share as an enemy. But for there to be a grand accord to rekindle US-Iran cooperation, the will need to recognize ‘s regional power status and end its fixation on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

Russia to donate 10 MiG fighter jets to Lebanon
By Borzou Daragahi and Raed Rafei

Moscow says it also might sell tanks and artillery to Lebanon and that its goal is to help stabilize the nation. The move signifies Russia’s military resurgence in areas long dominated by the U.S.

Russia in talks with Iran over sale of anti-aircraft missiles, despite Israeli objections
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz.com, 16 December 2008

Israel plans to send one of its most senior security officials to Moscow tomorrow to express concern over Russia’s decision to renew contacts with Iran for the sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Haaretz has learned.

Israeli officials said the government will send the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau Maj.-Gen. (res) Amos Gilad to try to dissuade the Kremlin from supplying Iran with S-300 missiles – which would significantly complicate any military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

During his two-day visit in Moscow, Gilad will meet with the Russian chief of staff, the head of intelligence as well as senior defense officials and diplomats. In addition to talks on the S-300 sale, Gilad is expected to bring up the Iranian nuclear program and Syria’s supplying of Russian-made weapons to Hezbollah.

Earlier this year, Russia said it would not move forward with the transaction. In October, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Russia, where he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and with his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. The meeting was set up to try and persuade the Russians to drop two deals in the works – one to sell S-300 missiles to Iran and the other to sell them to Syria.

The Russian foreign ministry’s spokesman said Russia will not go ahead with the Iranian deal. “We have declared more than once at the very highest political level that we do not intend to supply those types of armaments to countries located in regions that are, to put it mildly, unstable areas,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.

The Russian official added that the Kremlin makes decisions on selling such systems based on “both preserving the balance of power in the given region, and taking into account the need to provide stability and security in the region.”

But in spite of these statements, Israeli officials say Russia and Iran renewed negotiations on the purchase of the missile system several weeks ago. The sources confirmed a report that appeared in the foreign press on the matter two weeks ago.

In a recent internal discussion on the matter, Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave ministry officials instructions to put in a request for clarifications from the Russian administration’s highest levels.

The weapons sales are a very sensitive issue for Israeli diplomats, who view it as a form of leverage that Russia is trying to apply on Washington. Some in the Foreign Ministry believe Russia has decided to move forward with the deal in order to demonstrate a hard line ahead of Barack Obama’s entry into the White House as U.S. President.

The S-300 missile, called the SA-10 in the West, has a range of 150 kilometers and is capable of striking a plane at altitudes of up to 30,000 meters. The movable launchers are operational within minutes, and the system’s radar is able to simultaneously acquire and engage dozens of targets.

Poll Finds Widespread International Opposition to US Bases in Persian Gulf
WorldPublicOpinion.org, 15 December 2008

A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 21 nations around the world finds widespread opposition to the United States having naval forces based in the Persian Gulf. Most also believe that most people in the Persian Gulf region oppose such bases.

In general, America’s approach to the Middle East and the Muslim world gets poor grades around the world. The United States is widely viewed as disrespectful of the Muslim world. Its support for democracy in the Muslim world is seen as limited to cases where the government is cooperative with the US. More publics than not believe that the US is not really seeking the creation of a viable Palestinian state….