The Syrian effort to beef up Hizbullah and to broaden its alliances with Iran makes sense within the context of its pursuit of peace with Israel. Only by counterbalancing Israel can it to hope for peace.<\/p>\n
Syria\u2019s main problem vis a vis Israel is that it is too weak. It needs to get stronger to be taken seriously. It can do this in a number of ways, some of which are: building up Hizbullah, acquiring nuclear capability, developing better weapons, using Iran to scare Israel, upgrading its economy and relations with important powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and France. Syria must pursue all of these.<\/p>\n
Israel upped the ante with the 2006 Lebanon war and Gaza campaign, signaling that it can raise the level of pain to previously unimagined levels for those who oppose it. Without nukes (presumably Israel destroyed its effort to develop this option) Syria must go for low tech missiles which is the most effective and cost efficient deterrent available to it.<\/p>\n
Without these things, Syria would be forgotten. The Golan would fall from the table \u2013 it almost has, anyway.<\/p>\n
The main proof that Syria\u2019s strategy is smart, if not a success, is Hillary Clinton’s speech at AIPAC. She said<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cBoth sides must confront the reality that the status quo of the last decade has not produced long-term security ….<\/p>\n Finally, we must recognize that the ever-evolving technology of war is making it harder to guarantee Israel’s security. For six decades, Israelis have guarded their borders vigilantly. But advances in rocket technology mean that Israeli families are now at risk far from those borders. Despite efforts at containment, rockets with better guidance systems, longer range, and more destructive power are spreading across the region. Hizbollah has amassed tens of thousands of rockets on Israel’s northern border. Hamas has a substantial number in Gaza. And even if some of these are still crude, they all pose a serious danger, as we saw last week.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Had Syria not helped to build up Hizbullah or had Hizb been destroyed in 2006 \u2013 there would have been no Turkish talks in 2008 and Syria would have lost whatever negotiating power it had. The only reason Israel and the US still talk about flipping Syria is because of its relationship to Iran and Hizbullah. From a purely balance-of-power point of view. Iran\u2019s pursuit of Nukes increases the likelihood of Syrian\u2013Israeli peace. No that Obama has pushed health-care through congress and looks as if he might tangle with Israel and the question of Arab-Israeli peace, Syria must push the question to the forefront. One way to do this is to bear his teeth and raise the flag of resistance, a third intifada, and possible rekindling of war between Hizbullah and Israel.<\/p>\n Syria cannot changes its posture toward Israel until Israel relinquishes the Golan. Assad has said this a number of times. He will only discuss altering his relations with Hizbullah and Hamas once the Golan is returned and not before. To do otherwise makes no sense.<\/p>\n From Assad’s point of view, the 1990s and the Oslo process was a decade in which Syria was played by Israel. By opening up Golan discussions, Israel bought Syrian compliance in Lebanon and Palestine for eight years. Syria helped tamp down resistance to Israel from both Hamas and Hizbullah during the 1990s. Lebanon experienced a renaissance. But Syria received little in return. Syrians believe that the Israeli prime ministers who followed Yitzhak Rabin did not want peace if it meant returning the entire Golan and only wished to continue the process because it was useful for other goals. They were using the Golan as a lure to keep Syria complacent and to put pressure on Palestinians to cede more land.<\/p>\n Supporters of Israel argue that prospects for peace are strongest when the US favors Israel and there is no light visible between their policies. This argument is not born out by the facts or history. By making Israel so much stronger than its opponents, Washington is dooming prospects for peace. It is time for the US to distance itself from Israel and to stop providing it with money, arms, and unlimited diplomatic support.<\/p>\n Both sides of the fence<\/a> Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is not unlike his father. Hafiz al-Asad was a foreign policy pragmatist who went against the grain on occasion based on perceived national interest. He was able to steer a foreign policy course for Syria where it could play on both sides of the regional and international fences. Syria is the only country in the Arab world that can do so in any meaningful way. On the one side of the fence Syria has been a cradle of Arab nationalism, yet it supported non-Arab Iran against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. It was the leader of the Arab confrontation states traditionally arrayed against Israel, yet it has engaged in direct and indirect negotiations with the Jewish state for almost three decades, coming tantalizingly close to a peace agreement in 2000. It was a client state of the Soviet Union during the superpower Cold War, yet it sent troops to fight alongside American forces in the US-led UN coalition to evict Iraq from Kuwait in 1990-91. This foreign policy hopscotch can be frustrating to those countries that would like to see a more consistent policy path emanating from Damascus, but it is exactly the ability to do this that has allowed Syria to muddle through various crises in the recent past as well as provide what otherwise is a relatively weak state some leverage and utility. …..<\/p>\n …There are those who say that the US may have overplayed its hand with Syria too soon. Syria also has to be careful not to overplay its hand. Maybe Bashar feels the Obama administration is too disorganized and weak right now to worry about making positive impressions, but this might not always be the case, especially if the US president’s perceived standing improves due to the passage of the time-consuming health care legislation. Bashar worked hard to finally be taken seriously in Washington and in the region, but straddling the fence can be dangerous too if you don’t know when to-or can’t-get off of it when the time is right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Assad keeps Europe waiting<\/a> Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, after the Arabl League summit on 28 March<\/p>\n The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, talks to reporters after the closing session of the Arab League summit this week. Photograph: Mohamed Messara\/EPA<\/p>\n European Union diplomats in Syria work in a handsome stone house in the leafy Abu Rummaneh quarter of Damascus, guarded by machine gun-toting policemen at the gate. Their well-appointed offices are strewn with glossy brochures about the links between the EU and this Arab republic \u2013 testimony to valuable assistance programmes and ambitions for a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.<\/p>\n Yet there is unease about the way things are heading. Last October, after a decade of negotiations, the two sides were poised to sign an “association agreement” covering political and economic issues, trade and investment, modelled on those already concluded by the EU and its eight other “Mediterranean partners”.<\/p>\n Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have all put their relations with Brussels on a formal footing; maverick Libya is conspicuously absent from this “ring of friends”. But Syria balked at the 11th hour, insisting it needed more time. The reasons tell an interesting story about President Bashar al-Assad and the view from Damascus.<\/p>\n The official line is that Syria has undergone significant changes since the text was initialled in 2003. A revised version took some of them into account: British and Dutch demands for special statements on human rights and weapons of mass destruction were defeated and the language used now is standard to all EU-Med association agreements.<\/p>\n Still, economic conditions have fuelled fears that the free trade requirements could endanger Syrian industries, though tariffs on EU goods are to be cut over long periods. Crushing competition from the Turkish textile market has served as a warning.<\/p>\n “We are reviewing the relevance of the text to the Syrian economy today,” explains Abdullah Dardari, the deputy prime minister and architect of recent economic reforms. But there is much more to it than that. “Even a free trade agreement must be built on political understanding and trust,” he says. “An EU foreign policy that respects Syrian and Arab rights creates more confidence \u2013 and makes the lives of technocrats and economists easier.”<\/p>\n Beyond the crunchy detail of the agreement’s 144 articles there is a litany of complaints that Syria deserves better. Europe’s passivity in the face of the US-led war in Iraq \u2013 with British participation \u2013 is a big one. Others include the EU, led by France, blaming Syria for the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, support for Beirut’s “cedar revolution” and Syria’s ejection from Lebanon after nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n Yet another is Europe’s failure to challenge US policies towards Israel and the Palestinians, especially its refusal to talk to the Islamists of Hamas, Syria’s protege \u2013 which, like Lebanon’s Hizbullah, is considered a terrorist organisation on both sides of the Atlantic but a “resistance movement” in Damascus.<\/p>\n “Nobody is in a position to lecture us on human rights,” insists another official, echoing Assad at his most combative. “The Europeans should have an independent position vis-a-vis Syria.”<\/p>\n The western media is considered hostile too. Journalists who ask about the prospects for political change in Syria get angry answers about the boycott of Hamas, the invasion of Iraq or Israel’s war on Gaza. More thoughtful responses explain that the president’s priorities are boosting the economy, creating wealth and raising educational standards so his country can take its place in a globalised world.<\/p>\n Syrians have also noticed, like others before them, that the EU is less than the sum of its parts. “We used to have a Europe file but we’ve split it into separate countries \u2013 France, Germany and the UK,” said Samir al-Taqi, the influential head of the Orient Centre for International Studies. “Europe no longer behaves as a unit and you get policies of the lowest common denominator.”<\/p>\n And the Qatari and other Gulf Arabs flocking to Syria’s newly liberalised financial and investment sector \u2013 the Damascus stock exchange is just a year old \u2013 do not share European concerns about Assad’s domestic or foreign policies.<\/p>\n Worse, for Brussels and its representatives in Abu Rummaneh, is the sense that Syria cares more about its slowly improving relations with the US. Not a week goes by without some senior administration official or congressman arriving from Washington, often invited for a flattering one-to-one at the presidential palace. The US ambassador was withdrawn after the Hariri killing, but a newly appointed one is eagerly awaited.<\/p>\n Americans and Europeans are both wooing Syria because of its strategic position in the Middle East \u2013 its role in any peace process, its co-operation in fighting jihadi terrorism and stabilising Iraq and its capacity, if excluded, for troublemaking, as Iran’s main Arab ally and supporter of “resistance movements”. “For Syria the carrots are just not tempting enough,” argues Rosa Balfour of the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “It can ignore Europe because its political role is so important.” The gloomy conclusion is that, despite reassuring noises, the agreement with the EU may not be signed any time soon.<\/p>\n The feeling in Damascus is that Syria has come through a tough period and survived to realise that it still holds cards that others badly want it to play. “Five years ago things looked really bad for this regime \u2013 with Lebanon, Iraq, Bush and the neocons,” says a Syrian intellectual who is privately critical of Assad. “Now look. Are these guys very smart or is it just that the rest of the world really needs them?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Line](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/c\/ca\/IsraeliSettlementGrowthLineGraph.png\/800px-IsraeliSettlementGrowthLineGraph.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBy David W. Lesch Monday, March 29, 2010
\nForeign Policy<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static.guim.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/3\/30\/1269944392514\/Syrias-president-Bashar-a-001.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nAn increasingly confident Syria is playing hard to get in its relations with the EU
\nBy Ian Black in Damascus
\nguardian,\t\t\t \t\t\t\t Tuesday 30 March 2010<\/p>\n