Will Syria Give up the Golan as it Gave up Alexandretta?
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
In the comment section, one reader asked:
“Would it be conceivable that Syria comes to terms with the Israeli occupation of the Golan as it has come to terms with Turkey’s occupation of Hatay?”
Israel plan does seem to be to wear Syria down on the Golan issue. It may also be America’s default plan, as well. President Bush pursued this policy fairly openly. Although it was not Bush’s stated goal, his attempt to force Syria to give up support for Hizbullah and Hamas without linking such concessions to the Golan issue was tantamount to asking Syria to accept Israel’s ownership of the Golan. The Obama says he wants to stop Israel’s settlement to pursue internation law, but has been unable or unwilling to articulate the goal, not to mention act on it with conviction.
Daniel Kurtzer, twice ambassador to Israel and close Obama adviser, just visited the University of Oklahoma and gave a series of fine talks. He argued that the two state solution is the only solution for Israel. “There is no plan B,” he said. I asked him whether the status quo was the likely solution on the Golan. Kurtzer did not answer directly – but raised his eyebrows and smiled. This was after he suggested that Israel could wait 4 or 5 years before opening negotiations with Syria in order to take advantage of what he argued was a deteriorating economic and environmental situation in Syria that would weaken its position further. Declining oil and water reserves were drivers of this weakness. His argument was that Syria would be more inclined in several years to climb down from its demand for all the Golan.
The problem with this argument is that as Syria becomes weaker, Israel is also likely to shift its demands and become less willing to make concessions. Israel is not interested in negotiations with Syria today because Syria is too weak. Israel has no compelling incentive to make difficult political concessions on the Golan. In short, I think it is safe to say that the current Western position – perhaps not openly articulated – is to wait Syria out.
Syria has no immediate answer to this Israeli-American strategy. Syria’s attempts to change the military balance of power in its favor have not been successful. Israel and the US have thwarted them, i.e. Israel’s bombing of Syria’s “nuclear” facility, Western pressure on Russia, Iran, and N. Korea not to supplied advanced weapons to Syria while tricking out Israel with its most advanced weapons. One can also point to the West’s policy of maintaining Israel’s crushing military advantage over its Arab adversaries as proof that Western governments favor Israel’s permanent acquisition of occupied lands. Some of these politics are: protection of Israel’s nuclear advantage, proscription of anti-Israeli resistance as terror, support for Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and Gaza as an appropriate response to resistance from Arabs, Israel’s success in getting Egypt and Saudi to turn against Arab resistance, and pressure on Iran to abandon its anti-Israel stand.
The terrible drought now devastating swaths of Syria’s Eastern provinces only underscores Syria’s weakness.
Can president Assad reverse this equation so that Syria will get stronger in comparison to Israel? I will not pretend to know the answer to this question. Syrians are now rejoicing in Turkey’s pro-Arab stand, which they see as an important shift in the regional balance of power in their favor. They also hope that Syria’s economic liberalization will liberate the capitalistic talents of their people, which have long been bottled up by socialism and bad management. They look to Saudi Arabia’s recent step toward Syria as a sign that Arabians will not completely abandon the notion of pressuring Israel and helping Syria in its struggle with Israel. Syria hopes that as Iraq sorts itself out from the body blows it has suffered it will take a concerted “Arab” stand. The recent contretemps with Iraq over Sunni militants is not auspicious, however. The old competition between Iraq and Syria is not likely to abate simply because the regime has been changed.
I cannot say that I am optimistic about the immediate prospects of the Arabs sorting out their difficulties in time to retrieve the Golan. All the same, the objective of getting back the Golan is much more deeply embedded in Syria’s nationalist psyche than was Alexandretta. Syrians will not easily give it up. Much can go wrong for Israel in the coming 30 years to reverse the balance of power.
It took Syria 70 years to overcome the loss of the Alexandretta, which was a separate administrative unit under the French Mandate. The Golan has been occupied for only four decades and was an integral part of independent Syria. There are risks to Israel’s strategy of gambling on a future of Syrian weakness. Many things could change the balance of power in the region. Arabs could find unity. The position of the US may decline. China and India may eventually take an interest in mediating Middle East conflict as their dependency on oil and trade with the region grows and as the US monopoly over Middle East security fades. They are both likely to take a less pro-Israel view than the US. As Turkey becomes more democratic it is likely to become more hostile to Israel in response to public antipathy for Israel’s displacement of its Muslim subjects. Europe could take a more pro-Arab view both for economic reasons and if it’’s roughly 5% Muslim citizenry were to organize and responded to an organized Arab position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. None of these possibilities seems particularly immanent today, but 30 years is a long time.
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15-10-2009, 15:53
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