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| Volume VII, February 2000, Number 2 |
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| Syria, Israel and the Middle East Peace Process: Past Success and Final Challenges |
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| Martha Neff Kessler |
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Ms. Kessler is an analyst with the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency. The views in this article are hers alone. For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.
The progress achieved over the past decade toward ending the Middle East conflict has been an accomplishment unparalleled in the more than three decades of attempts to bring peace to the area. The Madrid Conference in 1991, the Oslo accords in 1993, the treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, and the step-by-step establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were the result of painstaking diplomacy that overcame longstanding psychological and political barriers once thought to be insurmountable.
The least celebrated and least understood accomplishment of those negotiations took place between Israel and Syria. There were no Rose Garden handshakes between Syrian President Hafiz Asad and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Syrian leaders attended none of the high-profile summits and ceremonies during the course of broader negotiations. Nothing changed on the ground along the contested Syrian-Israeli border. None of the progress made between the two sides from 1992 through 1996 was ever officially acknowledged, and, of course, no treaty was concluded. The deadly circumstances that ruptured the negotiations -- Palestinian terrorist acts inside Israel and Israel's over-reactive retaliation in southern Lebanon -- ushered back all too rapidly the vitriolic exchanges between Syria and Israel that for decades had poisoned the atmosphere. On the surface, it appeared that nothing good had come of years of effort.
Despite appearances, significant barriers were overcome when Syrian and Israeli officials met for the first time face-to-face at the Madrid Conference. Over the course of the next five years, they negotiated down to many of the fine points the substance of a possible agreement. Perceptions among Middle East watchers vary on just how close Syria and Israel came at that time to a final treaty before negotiations were derailed by events put in motion by the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Rabin in 1995. But most observers agree that significant progress was made. Although conducted in effective secrecy, the talks continued over enough time and in a serious enough manner that Israelis and Syrians -- not just their leaders -- began to believe in the possibility of peace and to prepare for it. This accomplishment, for the most part, survived the Netanyahu era even though the Syrian negotiating track was neglected, Israeli leaders regularly characterized Asad as rejecting peace, and talk of war reemerged in the region's propaganda machinery.
With the election of Israeli Prime Minister Barak in May 1999, the prospects for an Israeli-Syrian peace have again brightened, even though talks have intermittently stalled. A hard look at the causes of problems and the near miss of earlier negotiating rounds, particularly from the rarely discussed Syrian perspective, seems in order lest a second chance be lost. In the midst of rapidly changing circumstances in the Middle East -- leadership and generational change, spreading weapons and information technology, transforming demographic growth, and potentially volatile developments in the broader region -- another missed opportunity may have amplified repercussions tantamount to failure.
THE MOST TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP
Of all the relationships in the Arab-Israeli conflict, that between Israel and Syria has been the most burdened with hatred, even though Egyptians and Israelis have suffered more casualties in their wars and the Palestinian and Lebanese relationships with Israel have produced far more day-to-day bloodshed, danger and fear. For Syria and Israel, the list of offenses each holds against the other is long. From the Israeli list, the broadest and most entrenched have been Syria's rejection of Zionism, the cruelty and persistence with which Syrians acted upon this belief, and the similarity of this thinking to Western antisemitism. On the Syrian list, the gravest have been Israeli territorial expansionism and hegemony at Arab and Syrian expense, the racist character of Israel's attitude toward and treatment of the Arabs, and the linkage of these actions to Western colonialism, which -- Syrians believe -- is the forerunner of Israel's transgressions.
The wellsprings of the two societies' distrust and fear of one another are almost identical, entrenched in an unchangeable past and clouded by racial and religious prejudice. Governments of both have engaged in excessive demonization and propagandizing, to the point that their populations have virtually no grip on facts nor an informed understanding of the enemy. The remote, austere character of Syria's leadership and the often high-handed hubris of Israel's have worsened the atmosphere. So did decades of superpower politics in the region that sharpened differences and fed many false hopes about how the conflict would end. Sorting out this complicated relationship will be critical to achieving true reconciliation after the treaties are signed, when it is time to seek real peace.
That Syria and Israel have been able to move forward at all in peace efforts amidst this highly charged sentiment is attributable to the determination of leaders on both sides who have significantly advanced the process. In the case of Israel, much is known about Rabin, Peres and Barak -- their strategies for protecting Israel and their visions of peace. Syria's President Asad, on the other hand, is generally the subject of one-dimensional labeling -- rigid, tactical, autocratic, brutal -- and often likened to Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The comparison is seriously misleading, in that in personality, background, private behavior and strategic and political goals the two are polar opposites. Even though U.S. presidents and statesmen who have dealt with Asad over the course of 30 years privately describe him as extraordinarily intelligent and the premiere strategic thinker in the Arab world, characterizations of him in the broader foreign-policy community rarely include these qualities, emphasizing instead wildly different attributes ranging from enigmatic and power hungry to Hamlet-like indecision and inertia.
First and foremost, Asad has been riveted on strengthening Syria and keeping it as independent as possible in a region crowded with more powerful countries: Israel, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Iraq. He has not pursued grandiose visions of "Greater Syria" or leadership of the Arab world, as many of his detractors have charged. The cautious character of his rule, his eclectic tactics and leverage building, and the pattern of Syria's alliances in the shifting power structure of the region and international order are moves of a defensive player, not one chasing rigid dogma or an idealized vision of a resurgent Arab world. As a result of Syria's disastrous losses in the 1967 war and the deep imprint of its mistakes on Asad personally, he has never overestimated Syria's capabilities or importance since coming to power in 1970. He has been determined, however, to regain all of the Golan Heights from Israel, knowing he has limited strengths to use in the task and a fairly narrow range for flexibility and compromise, given that Syrians universally expect full return. Understanding how Asad has tried to manage this challenge is virtually the only useful predictor of where Damascus will position itself in this latest phase of the peace process.
LEGAL HIGH GROUND AS PROTECTION
Since the Madrid process began in 1991, many have questioned whether Asad really wants a settlement with Israel because he has been so demanding about the circumstances under which he will permit negotiations. According to this reasoning, Asad is only concerned about maintaining his regime and installing his son as successor and thus refuses to take risks on behalf of peace and purposely impedes the negotiating process with demands for preconditions and ironclad assurances. This characterization of his actions contains only peripheral truth and misses Asad's primary motives. Since the beginning of the Madrid process, Asad has dealt with five Israeli prime ministers representing vastly different constituencies on the Israeli political spectrum, and he has watched Israeli negotiators repeatedly (in his judgment) outmaneuver the Palestinians and the Arabs generally in one round after another. Asad, therefore, seeks protection first and foremost from losing any part of the Golan Heights permanently to Israel and, worse, from being dominated by an Israeli regional superpower, both possible outcomes of mishandled negotiations.
Historically, no country was more responsible for the Arabs' seemingly rigid approaches to peace efforts following the 1967 war than Syria. It was the master at using procedural issues to manipulate the other Arabs, fortify its own position, and protect itself from the dangerous political currents generated by Arab anger and humiliation over the outcome of the 1967 conflict. Damascus showed none of Jordan's receptivity to secret contact with Israel or Egypt's willingness to probe quiet diplomacy through third parties.
The Syrians assiduously protected the position that Israel had illegally seized the Golan Heights and other Arab territory in the 1967 war and that this illegality and its remedy -- full Israeli withdrawal -- were not subject to negotiation. Damascus was even equivocal for years about accepting the ambiguous wording of U.N. Resolution 242 that embodied the principle of the illegality of seizing territory by force, fearing that in negotiations Israel would exploit the ambiguity to best the Arabs even on this internationally accepted legal principle. To the Syrians, protecting the legal high ground was paramount. Damascus would not even discuss territorial adjustments, let alone serious compromise, with Israel but would negotiate only over the terms of security arrangements once their territory was fully restored. Here too the Syrians were unbending, insisting that the Arabs discuss only non-belligerency; peace could not be a subject for negotiations and, in any case, would have to await future generations.
Further, the Syrians argued that negotiations on these circumscribed issues could only commence after an Israeli pledge of full withdrawal from the territory it occupied. Syria and the other Arab states should not be required to negotiate while Israel still held what was rightfully theirs. Given its diplomatic weaknesses relative to Israel, Syria wanted to magnify its only real strength, its position in international law and in the United Nations, and to avoid negotiation altogether. With single-mindedness, Damascus clung to this posture and tried to impose it on Syria's Arab partners.
Given its military and political weakness relative to Egypt, Syria wanted to bind the Arabs together so all could benefit from Egypt's strength. Damascus was more insistent than any of the other Arab "confrontation" states that the Arabs stick together. Otherwise they would be dealt with individually from positions of weakness by Israel, which would get the better of each one and weaken the Arab bloc permanently. Finally, Syria understood that a potent asset in dealing with Israel was the Arabs' ability to withhold from it what many Israelis most wanted: recognition and ultimate acceptance into a peaceable regional order. Even the simplest form of recognition -- acknowledging the presence of an Israeli negotiator -- was regarded as a bargaining chip by the Syrians, who felt all too acutely their weakness in what for them was an existential struggle.1
The Syrian preoccupation with a united Arab negotiating strategy also reflected Damascus' close identification with the Palestinian cause as both a symbol of the injustices perpetrated by the European powers and as a matter of utmost importance to the Arabs' strategic future. Asad came to believe, following the U.S.-sponsored disengagement agreements of 1974, that Israel's long-term intention was to divide and weaken the Arabs and thus make it easier ultimately to legitimize its expansion into Arab territory it occupied, with Jerusalem and the West Bank heading the list.
Asad clearly saw the Palestinians' future, no matter what form it took, as influencing the stability of all the surrounding Arab countries. Millions of displaced Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere and a violence-prone Palestinian political movement constituted the most volatile, radical force in the entire Middle East. Unleashed, it could destabilize Syria and other countries of the region. Under Israel's control, a Palestinian entity would greatly enhance Israel as the region's preeminent power. The Palestinians' fate in Israeli-occupied territory, therefore, could drive the destiny of the entire Arab Middle East and thus was, in Syria's view, the rightful concern of all the Arabs, not just a handful of Palestinian leaders.
Asad intended to position Syria so it would have some say over how this potentially explosive problem was managed. In the power politics of the region that meant developing leverage over the Palestinian leadership and influence among its political factions and large refugee communities. In the context of negotiations, it meant binding the Palestinians to a coordinated and, optimally, united negotiating strategy. These concerns quickly put Asad at serious odds with Yasser Arafat and were among the most important drivers of Syria's meddling in Jordan's uneasy relationship with the Palestinian movement and Syria's prolonged involvement in the Lebanon crisis.
Asad also wanted to harness the emotional power of the Palestinian cause to Syria's own in an effort to fortify Damascus with as much Arab and international support as possible. Asad, the pragmatist, was less mesmerized by the "solutions" of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalist thinking than his predecessors but still believed in the core premise that the legacy of colonialism in the Arab Middle East was weak nation-states and divided, disinherited peoples. The Palestinians were for him and millions of other Arabs the most compelling example and powerful symbol of this legacy. Asad has been both motivated by the Palestinian cause and determined to channel its force to Syria's benefit. However, his approach most consistently has been to contain its radical nature -- an armed nationalist force pushing to redraw the borders of a volatile region -- and deny any Israeli claim to it.
These positions and perspective came to be expressed in what the Arabs called the five "nos": no negotiations with Israel before its agreement to withdraw completely from the occupied territories; no direct, face-to-face negotiations with Israel; no partial solutions; no separate deals; and no formal peace treaty. Although all the Arabs initially signed on to this unbending posture, Syria, in retrospect, was its most committed adherent and advocate. Syria added its own sixth "no": that there would be no Syrian settlement with Israel until the Palestinians' rights were satisfied. Until 1991, Syria virtually wrapped itself in these positions, tried to maintain discipline within Arab ranks, and only briefly during disengagement negotiations after the 1973 war and the run up to the Geneva Conference showed even the slightest signs of considering any other position.
In Asad's view, this stand off, while dangerous, was preferable to the risk of dividing and forever weakening the Arabs in treaty arrangements that could not be reversed. This posture effectively foreclosed any Syrian-Israeli negotiations and intimidated Jordanian and Lebanese leaders more willing to test the negotiating waters. The "nos" generally prevailed in the Arab world for about a decade, from the loss of the territories to Israel in 1967 until 1977 when Egypt's President Sadat made his dramatic trip to Jerusalem, launched on a solitary Egyptian agenda, and definitively broke from Arab ranks.
Despite the euphoria of most Egyptians in the aftermath of the 1973 conflict, that war was a bitter disappointment for Syria. Syrian leaders believed with considerable justification that President Sadat misled and in important instances lied to them in planning the coordinated battle plan they undertook together. Syria, left prematurely by the Egyptians to fight a single-front campaign for too long, lost rather than captured the ground necessary for successful diplomatic bargaining. The negotiating front was even worse than the battlefront for Syria. Sadat had misled Damascus by not revealing secret pre-war negotiating overtures to Israel through the auspices of the United States. Unbeknownst to Syria, the two allies had undertaken their attack with very different objectives: Egypt hoped to jump start a bilateral peace initiative it had already secretly undertaken on its own and would ultimately pursue alone. Syria hoped the war would spur the superpowers to launch a multilateral peace effort in which Cairo and Damascus, both fortified by "liberated" slices of their individual territory and by a united negotiating stance, would negotiate a comprehensive final peace. From Syria's perspective, Sadat and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abandoned a comprehensive peace almost from the beginning and Israel succeeded with Kissinger's complicity in prying Egypt away from the other Arabs into a separate deal.
While the 1973 experience for the Arabs reversed some of the humiliations of previous outright defeats at Israel's hand, it was hardly the redefining moment that Asad had hoped for and was the beginning of the end of the tactics embodied in the five "nos." The Syrians' sense of betrayal by Sadat and Kissinger as Egypt separated from the other Arab frontline states and Asad's fear of Israel's intent to divide and dominate the Arabs were overwhelming and deep. Much of the world now remembers those events in Middle East history much differently; little attention was paid at the time to the specific reasons why Damascus undertook to isolate Egypt and shun the United States as the drama of the Egyptian president's trip to Jerusalem and high-level peace making unfolded.
Apart from any judgment about the validity of Syria's perspective, it is important to acknowledge for four reasons: it was shared by millions of Arabs throughout the region; it helps explain the depth of Syrian distrust, so regularly underestimated by peace negotiators; and it gives some true measure of the hurdles that were overcome by American diplomacy in securing Syria's participation in the Madrid peace initiative. Finally, the imprint of the 1973 war is deepest on Asad, his colleagues and their contemporaries, but the conflict was such a strategic failure for Syria that it has had a strong influence on the next generation of Syrians, from which Asad's successor will come.
THE POLITICS
BEHIND THE POLICIES
The procedural rigidities that Syria espoused during the aftermath of the 1973 war masked political circumstances that would have made it very risky for Asad or any Syrian leader to follow the dangerous negotiating gambit Sadat initiated. The heterogeneous character of Syria's political culture made it far more difficult to lead than Egypt, particularly during the 1970s, when Asad was still in the process of consolidating his government and healing political wounds caused by the radical left-wing ideology and policies of his predecessor, Salah Jadid. Sadat, by contrast, had a smoother rise to the top following Nasser's death, faced a much more homogeneous population, and had the advantage of a pharaonic tradition that conferred great authority on the ruler and popular value on stability.
Syria's roiling political environment had produced a quarter century of coup d'états, popular discord and disorder prior to Asad's rule. Centralized authority was suspect in the eyes of a population divided into many ethnic, religious and regional groups and still influenced by a historical narrative in which the area had only once been effectively and durably ruled from within.
At the time of Sadat's peace gamble, Egypt had great weight to swing at the negotiating table: It could offer Israel near-elimination of the threat of serious war. Syria had no such heft and thus risked emerging from negotiations with either an unfavorable territorial compromise or the spectacle of both a military and diplomatic failure. An overwhelming majority of Syrians then and now would consider anything less than a full return of the Golan Heights as an unacceptable outcome and the defeat of its leadership. Asad only briefly seemed to consider seriously moving beyond the relatively safe disengagement agreement negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger.
Both Sadat and Asad, by the mid-to-late 1970s, faced a growing danger from Islamic extremists, whose activism was stimulated by, among other things, elation from battlefield victories over Israel in 1973 and then rage over splits in the Arab world caused by the treaty between Egypt and Israel. The extent to which these two leaders felt politically and personally threatened by militant religious forces at key decision-making points during the critical period of the U.S. peace drive culminating at Camp David is difficult to know. But, by the late 1970s Asad was struggling with a full-blown insurgency led by the Muslim Brotherhood that threatened to turn Syria into a state akin to revolutionary Iran. As a member of a minority Muslim sect suspect in the eyes of mainstream Muslims, Asad would have incurred major personal and political risks had he followed Sadat's negotiating lead. Sadat's suppression of Egypt's Islamic extremists in the aftermath of Camp David, his subsequent assassination at their hands, and their resurgence again in the 1990s testify to the persistent danger that this virulently anti-Israeli force poses and to its importance in the calculus of Arab leaders on peace strategies.
Another major consideration for Asad was the Palestinians. The Syrian people, because of their proximity to and shared history with the Palestinians, identified much more closely than the Egyptians with the human miseries resulting from the Palestinians' displacement and from their continuing conflict with Israel. Consequently, Asad was less inclined than Sadat to pursue Syrian state interests in ways that, in the eyes of the Syrian public, could jeopardize Palestinian interests. Syria adhered to the position that it would not settle with Israel unless the Palestinians' national aspirations were satisfied; Damascus held to this promise until the Palestinians' decision to go their own way in the secret Oslo negotiations. By 1993 at the time of the famous Rose Garden handshakes, the Palestinians had done all that Asad had warned against in terms of partial solutions and separate deals. While the rest of the world celebrated a step toward peace, Damascus predicted that the Palestinians had been outmaneuvered with insubstantial promises and debilitating installment plans and had, in reality, lessened their chances of ever achieving a final peace agreement with Israel.
A CHANGE OF STRATEGY
After Camp David, Syria and Asad struggled to find a new strategy for dealing with Israel and issues of war and peace. The loss of Egypt was a fatal blow to Asad's strategy of maximizing the Arabs' negotiating strength vis-ŕ-vis Israel by maintaining a tightly united Arab bloc anchored by Cairo. Egypt's defection also led to Asad's repositioning Syria through the two most controversial diplomatic moves of his early presidency: signing a formal friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, a move he had long resisted, and siding with Iran against Iraq in order to garner favor with the region's most significant opponent of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Without Egypt, Syria needed the protection of a formal treaty with Moscow and the regional strength of Tehran.
The contest between Damascus and Tel Aviv centered on their immediate neighborhood, especially Lebanon, where the two fought a low-intensity conflict through Lebanese proxies that occasionally flared into direct battles. Israel looked for ways to fashion more bilateral settlements with Lebanon, Jordan and, through Jordan, with the Palestinians, while Syria worked just as diligently to stave them off.
With extraordinary help from the United States and the enterprise of its own sophisticated arms industry, Israel reached regional superpower status during the decade of the 1980s. It so vastly outclassed Syria and the rest of the Arabs that the notion that Damascus on its own could pursue a war strategy similar to the 1973 adventure was and remains suspect. Despite significant Soviet military support in the 1980s, Arab aid, and a determined national commitment to military modernization, Syria fell substantially behind Israel. Damascus achieved considerably increased power in relationship to its smaller Arab neighbors but did not even approach Israel's level.
Acutely aware that Syria had no viable military option and could negotiate only from weakness, Asad tried to maintain popular confidence by talking regularly in Arab conclaves and openly with the Syrian people about his vision of peace. He did so in the context of his policy of strategic parity, which was essentially a restatement of much earlier formulas for peace based on a more equitable balance of power between the Arabs and the Israelis, but this time war was not the instrument for rectifying the imbalance. In fact, over time, war and military confrontation were rarely his point of emphasis.2
The unique aspect of the policy of parity was its call for elevating Syrian and Arab society across the board to a level of economic, social and educational development similar to Israel's. The policy included military parity, but it was not, as some Middle East watchers suggest, a policy for "going it alone" against Israel or building a new war alliance without Egypt. Indeed, the opposite was far closer to the truth. Syria never tried to launch or even seriously contemplated a war against Israel in the quarter century since the ill-fated military partnership with Egypt in 1973. The importance of "strategic parity" lay in its open acknowledgment of the serious disparity between Israel's accomplished socioeconomic system and the Arabs' wholly inadequate one. Asad's strategic parity was a break with the past, in that it abandoned the once-constant blaming of the outside world, especially the West, for Arab weaknesses, indirectly at least took some responsibility for the lagging progress of Arab societies, and did so with a frankness rarely manifest in Arab political rhetoric, prescribing a heavy dose of self-help.
A corresponding commitment of resources for a major escalation of Syria's internal development, which would have been expected, never took place. Moreover, Asad's decision to join in a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and to embark on a significant program of modernization and expansion of the Syrian military completely overshadowed and certainly distracted from the seriousness of Asad's broader socioeconomic prescriptions.
A case can be made that Asad's touting of strategic parity throughout the 1980s was simply an attempt to buy time and to obscure for domestic political reasons the fact that Syria had no realistic options with regard to Israel, was vulnerable to it, and had no prospect of establishing credible military alliances or reliable partnerships to strengthen its hand in peace negotiations. Damascus was barely holding its own in the proxy wars in Lebanon and was experiencing internal political turmoil for the first time in Asad's tenure. Certainly the regime was in need of convincing the Syrian public and its wider Arab audience that the leadership had at least some sort of plan.
A stronger case can be made that Asad's call for strategic parity was a serious articulation of what he thought would be required for peace with Israel. He had long emphasized that true peace would involve more than returning land. It would take a balance of power so that fear of domination by peaceable or forceful means would not destabilize the region and genuine confidence building could take place. Shy of achieving this balance, peace agreements are little more than surrenders to Israel's regional domination, from the Syrian perspective.
Even though the centerpiece of strategic parity turned out to be a major military modernization program, the constant theme of broader societal and economic improvement appears to have been a psychological and tactical hinge between the rigidity of the five "nos" and the more flexible posture that allowed Asad to go to Madrid. Strategic parity as explained by Asad and his colleagues implied an opening up to the world beyond the Arabs, played down the efficacy of war, and all but abandoned the notion of concerted Arab strategy that underpinned the "nos" of the previous decade. To some extent, Asad was simply adapting to the realities that developed in the wake of Camp David, making adjustments based on pragmatic calculation about Syria's security and the limits of outside backing -- particularly from the Soviet Union. But his constant reiteration that a balance of power is what constitutes a durable peace and his more nuanced, less bellicose view of how to get there were a significant change in emphasis. His most dramatic moves during this decade -- signing a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in 1981 after years of refusing to do so and breaking from Arab ranks to side with Iran in its war with Iraq -- were widely interpreted as both anti-Western and threatening to Israel. But they were also attempts to amass the strategic and diplomatic backing that would match Israel's ties to the United States and the regional security that would give Damascus more gravity in a negotiation attempt with Tel Aviv.
Finally, and of greatest importance, the maturation of strategic parity as a policy framework led Asad by the mid 1980s to reconcile with Egypt, to contemplate seeking improved relations with the United States, and to pursue the balance he wanted to achieve in the broadest possible context. Syria's strength relative to Israel's in their immediate neighborhood was crucial but essentially fixed in Israel's favor, thus making a broader balance all the more important. If Asad's true objective was to level the military, diplomatic and socioeconomic playing field, Egypt would have to be let back into the Arab fold, a reentry that Syria had to approve. And, if war no longer was realistic or efficacious in the pursuit of a settlement, it would not matter that Cairo was already sitting on the other side of the peace table. Egypt could still help Syria and the others achieve acceptable terms from the Israelis and maintain a peaceable regional balance following a settlement.
However grandiose Syria's pronouncements sounded in the years it declared Cairo as unnecessary to Arab victory, Asad has always understood that Egypt, not Syria alone or in alliance with any other Arab or outside state, is the key to preventing Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.3 The special part Egypt played in the run-up to the Madrid conference, its relationship with the United States, and the role Cairo assumed with regard to assisting the Arabs were essential to Syria's participation in the process.
Most of the procedural, psychological and strategic blockades that the Syrians passed through in getting to Madrid are likely to remain behind them. Israel, as the stronger party, was never as entrapped as Syria by such barriers and has, in any case, been the unequivocal victor in the tactical and procedural struggles in the peace process. Israel succeeded in dealing with the Arabs one by one, was able to override all the other "nos" from the 1970s, and engaged Syria in productive negotiations well before Damascus reached anything close to strategic parity. These successes, however, have reinforced for the Syrians that the sequence, format and conditions of a negotiation are laden with potential disadvantage and directly affect substantive outcomes. Flexibility on these seemingly procedural matters is thus dangerous. From this perspective, Asad's unbending insistence that negotiations in 1999 resume at the point where they ended in 1996 is not just the posture of an inflexible leader trying to manipulate both a peace and domestic political agenda. His effort to reestablish negotiations based on Rabin's and Peres's conditional promise to return all of the Golan Heights comes from decades of watching Israel outflank other Arab negotiators and a desire to hold onto the only concession, albeit a hypothetical one, that Israel has ever made to Syria.
LESSONS FROM 1992-96
Unlike the Palestinian and Israeli commitment to the Oslo agreements, which bound the parties officially to further progress well into the future, Syrian and Israeli negotiations were stopped abruptly in 1996 by then-Prime Minister Peres with no formal agreements signed or charges to continue. Ironically, the break came just after the conclusion of one of the most productive periods in Syrian-Israeli negotiations.4 Palestinian terrorists had struck in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, killing many Israelis and dramatically darkening the mood in Israel toward dealings with the Arabs. Without an explicit condemnation of the terrorist acts from Damascus, Peres refused to carry on with the talks. Virulent propaganda exchanges between the two countries preceded Peres's ill-fated decision to strike back at the terrorists by attacking Hizballah in southern Lebanon. The campaign, known as "Grapes of Wrath," only exacerbated the security situation, further enflamed both Arab and Israeli emotions, and contributed to Peres's defeat in the election that followed.
Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-dominated government, following its defeat of Peres's Labor party, had no obligation to continue down the path that Rabin and Peres had cleared in Syrian negotiations. Damascus' declarations of its willingness to pick up where negotiations left off in 1996 were met with very tough rhetoric from Netanyahu, whose cabinet included parties specifically dedicated to blocking any sort of territorial concession to Syria. Netanyahu made it clear that he would not accept the basis of the Madrid peace process -- the return of land in exchange for peace -- even though he was bound to proceed on that very basis with the Palestinians. Even Israeli leaders from Labor's side of the political spectrum disparaged Syria, blaming President Asad for missing a historic opportunity offered by Rabin, assigning partial blame for Peres's electoral defeat to Asad's unwillingness to engage in public diplomacy and questioning Syria's intentions in pursuing a peace settlement. The mood in Israel turned decidedly against any contacts with Syria.
Despite striking progress in negotiations prior to their collapse, the old image of Syria as a dangerous potential spoiler with maximalist positions reemerged very quickly in Washington and Tel Aviv. That image grew even darker in 1996-97 as Israeli officials warned openly of Syria's intentions to revert to war. Even after the Israeli intelligence establishment admitted publicly that it had been fed false reports on Syria's war intentions by one of its own officers, Israeli politics remained decidedly against any effort to resume diplomatic efforts with the Syrians.
The abrupt collapse of negotiations and the rapid escalation in rhetorical exchanges between the two sides are measures of the failure of some five years of interaction to build any confidence or rapport. This failure stems in part from a substantial underestimation of the level of Syrian distrust of Israelis and their leaders and incompatible conceptualizations of confidence-building measures during the negotiations themselves.
Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's lead negotiator under Rabin and foremost scholar on Syria, captures these problems in a commentary explaining negotiating difficulties between the parties:
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| ...Our (Israel's) view was that when two parties had made a decision to seek an end to their conflict they should start the process of confidence building during and as part of their negotiations. As mutual trust grows, so does the parties' ability to make concessions and mobilize public support for them so that a compromise, which seems beyond their grasp at the onset of the negotiations, becomes feasible as they mature. As they (Syrians) saw it, no gestures must be made until the breakthrough occurs and an agreement in principle is reached. At that moment a hostile relationship can be transformed into a friendlier one. Until that moment all assets must be used in order to maximize Syria's leverage in what essentially is an exercise in power politics and a test of wills.5
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Israel's concept of confidence building throughout the Rabin and Peres period of negotiations centered on interim steps, phased implementation and active public diplomacy, all arising in part out of deep distrust of Syria and a desire to test intentions in small increments over time. Confidence building also extended to the Israeli public and enlisting President Asad and other high-level Syrian officials in the task of changing the minds of nearly three quarters of the Israeli public, which traditionally has opposed territorial concessions to Syria. In effect, the Israeli leadership was looking for a Sadat-like act from Asad that would galvanize popular sentiment in favor of peace, making concessions easier and relieving Israeli leaders of some of the politically costly burden of trying to undo the vilification of Syria that had been going on for half a century.
These needs and expectations could not have been more ill-suited to Syria, where distrust of Israel emanates from a near-universal belief among Syrians that Israelis are expansionist and have and will use "partial agreements" and "interim tests" to delay or abort the return of territory and to discredit Arab leaders by drawing the process out and magnifying their weakness. The Syrians believe that both the Wye and Oslo agreements have done this to the Palestinians. The three individuals directly involved in negotiations who have chosen to write about them all point out that confidence-building measures, phased implementation and step-by-step approaches were most contentious in the talks.
Concerning public policy as an integral part of negotiations, Asad's remote character virtually rules him out of any dramatic moves in this realm. Moreover, Asad's sense of Sadat's having betrayed Syria and the Arab cause has made Asad highly averse to replicating any of the Egyptian leader's actions leading up to the Camp David agreement. Now because of ill health in the intervening years, Asad appears only rarely in public inside Syria and would be most reluctant to do so outside his country. He has taken the position that changing the minds of the Israeli public is the Israeli leaders' job, not his, and that their failure to try to do so diminishes Syrian confidence in the seriousness of Israeli intentions. As counterproductive as that attitude seems to those schooled in "win-win" approaches and "results" orientation, it is entirely consistent with a Syrian worldview layered with distrust and finely attuned to its own vulnerabilities. It is utterly risk-averse.
The unrealistic expectations and misperceptions of each other's domestic political problems are symptomatic of more than distrust. The vast difference between the two countries' political systems and political culture is also at play. Clearly, the autocratic Asad is not a natural sympathizer for the political scramble and uncertainty that Israeli leaders must face in their unique parliamentary system. The level of Syrian understanding of the complex Israeli political spectrum and the laws governing it is unclear, although Syrians are increasingly conversant on the subject, presumably because of more straightforward information they now receive and the tutorials they have received from U.S. and Israeli participants in negotiations. Syrian officials occasionally indicate indirectly that they watch Israeli polls and are aware of the deep divide in Israeli public opinion over peace issues. Uri Savir, Israel's chief negotiator with Syria during the Peres prime ministership, felt that the Syrians followed the Israeli domestic scene very closely but attached too much importance to public wrangling within parties and the government. According to Savir, Asad asked Secretary of State Warren Christopher about such political jousting and generally conveyed concerns that the Israeli political scene was chaotic and that Peres was unable to discipline Knesset deputies.6
Syrian leaders seem genuinely uncertain about the deep divisions in Israeli attitudes toward peace and their implications for a negotiated settlement with Syria and more broadly for the durability of peace. The dramatic differences between the right and the left in Israel and the inconsistencies in policy and unreliable postures, as the Syrians see them, from one government to another are deeply worrisome to Damascus. The Syrians fear that helping one Israeli leader sell peace will not prevent another from distancing Israel from its commitments and might even deepen its erstwhile enemy's internal divide. Under these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Asad or his successors would be able to muster the conviction necessary to engage in the kind of public-relations activity that Israeli leaders and U.S. negotiators have wanted from them.
On the Israeli side, the view of Syria as wholly controlled by a monolithic regime dominated by one person has crowded out any accommodation of the political issues that confront Asad and has led to miscalculations about the attitudes toward peace among the Syrian public. There is no question that Syria is dominated by Asad and that such differences which exist within the regime and the population over issues of peace have, under the circumstances of Asad's rule, little practical policy significance. It is, nevertheless, of great importance to understand the attitudes of the Syrian public and where Asad has positioned himself with regard to popular beliefs in order to anticipate how to make another attempt at negotiations more fruitful and how a successor government will be influenced on peace issues.
Throughout the serious periods of negotiation in the Madrid process, Israelis operated on the assumption that the Syrian public was ahead of its government in its willingness to settle with Israel and that the greatest impediment to forward movement was Asad himself. There is considerable evidence that this assumption was faulty and led to unrealistic expectations about how quickly and definitively Asad was able to act at crucial junctures in negotiations with both Rabin and Peres. First and foremost, there was never in the entire six years of Syria's participation in talks any sign of discontent with the government's cautious and exacting negotiating posture, which was discussed in broad terms in the Syrian media and in great detail in the international press. Nor were there any signs of special measures by the regime to silence pro-peace sentiment. Syrians know the rules about dissent and did not need any special warnings, it could be argued. But, in fact, grumbling and protest were not uncommon over Asad's controversial policy in Lebanon during the 1970s and 1980s. Decisions with even less impact than relations with Israel or Lebanon, such as the Syrian-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1981, have elicited negative public reactions. There were not even the low-risk forms of criticism of Asad's handling of Syria's peace policy, such as graffiti or articles in the international press by Syrian expatriates. Indeed, the only displays of popular sentiment during the years of productive negotiations were against any form of concession to Israel, including peace.
All signs from the regime suggested that it was far more worried about convincing the Syrian people of the merits of peace and preparing them for the change rather than the reverse, of trying to lower their expectations. Interest group by interest group, Syrians appeared to view the prospect of peace with a mix of hopefulness and trepidation, the balance between the two sentiments determined by that group's calculus of potential gains and risks. The far greater size and competitiveness of the Israeli economy vis-ŕ-vis Syria's was of considerable concern to Syrian businessmen. The prospect of greater openness, on the one hand, and the fear of Israeli regional domination, on the other, were broad factors influencing many Syrian students, intellectuals and other elites. The diminution of size, prestige and power in an era of peace was a consideration among the upper echelons of the Syrian military. No group seemed anxious for the regime to pursue a speedier or more risk-laden approach. After eight years of on-again, off-again negotiations, there has been no criticism inside Syria of Asad's handling of negotiating strategy or failure to achieve a settlement and virtually no sign that the government has been concerned about such criticism.
While this does not make a conclusive case, it strongly suggests that the Israelis' assumptions about Asad lagging behind the Syrian public's desire for peace were incorrect. It is more likely that Asad's approach to the peace issue is rooted at the front and center of the views of the Syrian populace. Syria's chief negotiator, Ambassador Walid al-Moualem, who has been the only Syrian leader to speak authoritatively on the subject, complained that the Israeli side was insensitive to Syrian public opinion, noting that almost all Syrian households have lost someone on the battlefield with Israel and thus needed more time than the Israelis were willing to wait during the negotiations under Peres to absorb the transformation of Israel from enemy to peace partner.7 Popular and elite opinion was almost certainly a major factor determining Asad's pacing of talks and a powerful force for the conservative, judicious positions his negotiators struck.
Part of the cause for these misperceptions is the significant difference between Israeli and Syrian leaders' concepts of peace. In the last productive phase of negotiations between the Peres government and the Syrians, the two sides shared views on peace, the effect it would have on the region and the steps necessary to get there. According to Israel's chief negotiator at the time, Uri Savir, they found some common ground.8 But fundamental differences also were exposed over the course of negotiations. Savir describes these as centering on security issues, with Israel seeing peace insured by a strong security regime, while the Syrians' concept was just the opposite: peace being the guarantor of security. 9
In practical terms, Israel sought an extensive security regime to protect against any and all threat scenarios, with requirements that often ended up being an affront to the Syrians, who felt their sovereignty was endangered by such provisions. Savir, who is admirably honest in analyzing his own side, admits that Israeli negotiators came at the security problem with a worst-case mindset toward every possible contingency and thus may have overreached in their demands on the Syrians. While on matters of normalization, Savir describes the Israelis as taking a best-case approach, as if their former enemies could easily forget decades of enmity and peace could be an expression of affection rather than an acknowledgment of durable mutual interests. The Syrians he characterizes as viewing peace as little more than the absence of war and thus not wanting to offer much beyond the bare essentials on either security arrangements or normalization.10
Rabinovich also speaks to the differences between the two sides in terms of the peace packages each hoped to achieve. "Rabin's package and his procedural concomitants were designed to guarantee that Israel ended up with a genuine peace, that the political and security risks were minimized, and that a political base of support for it could be built in Israel."11 This, of course, would require Asad to engage in helping to convert the Israeli public and also to provide extensive concessions on both security and normalization. Only with this sort of package deal could Rabin justify relinquishing the Golan Heights, a price demanded by Asad but one Rabin was most reluctant to pay. Rabinovich, like Savir, describes Syria's conceptual approach and procedural needs as being the opposite of Israel's. In Rabinovich's view, Asad's goals of regaining the Golan and building a new relationship with the United States were what brought Asad to the negotiating table, not a deep desire for peace itself.
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| He [Asad] saw the conflict with Israel in geopolitical terms and he saw its resolution through the same prism. Israel remained a rival, if not an enemy, and the terms of the peace settlement should not serve to enhance its advantage over the Arabs -- Syria in particular -- but rather to diminish it. In a similar vein, the peace that Asad had in mind would be congruent with Syria's dignity and sense of dignity. From both perspectives modest and unobtrusive security arrangements were called for.12
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Again, the practical translation of these conceptual differences was, in Rabinovich's account, an often frustrating exercise of Israel preparing extensive, detailed proposals on virtually all aspects of bilateral relations and Syria being overly cautious, slow and often altogether unresponsive. Negotiations on security were especially arduous and often unproductive, causing mistrust to develop between Rabin and Asad. Rabin's risk taking and innovation in his approach came up against Asad's suspicion and resort to ambiguity, according to Rabinovich, who, although not quite saying so, questions Asad's commitment to concluding an agreement with Israel. He seems genuinely mystified as to why Asad was not more responsive and positive about the now controversial "hypothetical" offer of full return of the Golan Heights that Rabin put forth in 1993.13
Unfortunately, Syria's negotiators have not provided the candid and useful insights on the differences that emerged during peace talks that Rabinovich and Savir have published. Chief Syrian negotiator Walid al-Moualem's interview in the Journal of Palestinian Studies is the closest the Syrians have come to providing any account of the talks from their perspective, and that interview adheres strictly to the particulars of negotiation with no attempt to provide perspective on the conceptual impediments that remain.
What we are left with, then, to flesh out an understanding of the Syrian experience in the talks are the views of Patrick Seale, who has unrivaled access to Syrian leaders and an especially keen sense of their viewpoint. He goes well beyond the observations of Rabinovich and Savir in characterizing the Syrians as suspecting Israel of having further territorial and hegemonic ambitions in the region and manipulating the peace process to achieve those ends. The peace process, from Syria's viewpoint as described by Seale, was a manipulative exercise in power politics by Israel and possibly the United States, on the one hand, and a risky and near-solitary effort by Syria on the other to contain Israel's expansionist and hegemonic designs.14
Seale's latest claim with regard to the negotiations in the early 1990s is that Prime Minister Rabin went beyond a verbal, merely hypothetical pledge to withdraw to the line Israel held on June 4, 1967. Asad's British biographer contends that documentary proof exists that Rabin and Peres together reaffirmed the pledge three times between 1993 and 1995 with President Clinton and Secretary of State Christopher conveying the promises in all instances. During a presentation at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London in late 1999, Seale revealed that he had seen documentary proof of the pledges in communications between the United States and Syria. Seale believes the Rabin "commitment" was a duplicitous cover meant to neutralize Syria in order to affect a subsequent shift by Rabin from the Syrian negotiating track to concluding agreements with the Palestinians and Jordan.
This excessively dark view of Israel probably does exist within the Syrian establishment and may be a transient fear of Asad's. The controversy over Rabin's moves has almost certainly reinforced Asad's penchant for caution and his aversion to secret diplomacy. From a broader perspective, Syrian conduct of negotiations over the years of the Madrid process certainly suggests that Asad and his colleagues have been far more concerned about being judged to have failed in protecting Syria from Israel's designs than in failing to deliver expeditiously the return of the Golan Heights and a peace treaty. Judging from the Syrian press, Israel's successful efforts to consolidate its ties with Turkey, to draw Jordan closer, to influence U.S. policy on Iraq, and to manipulate the Palestinian negotiating track have deepened Syrian concern about Israeli intentions in the region.
From another perspective, the differences between the two sides exposed during their talks were an extension of their earlier struggle over negotiating strategies -- Syria holding out for a joint Arab approach to peace long after it was advantageous to do so and Israel finally succeeding in dealing one by one with its erstwhile enemies. Ironically though, when Israel at last succeeded in its negotiating strategy and looked across the table at just Syria, it saw the larger Arab world and sought security terms in that context. In contrast, Syria, having been abandoned by its Arab allies during the struggle to maintain a united negotiating team, saw itself as quite alone, far weaker than Israel, at much greater risk, and thus not about to accede to any of Israel's worst-case thinking.
Both Israeli and Syrian leaders also seemed insensitive to one another's vulnerabilities in the face of a common enemy: Islamist extremism, the body of sentiment in the Middle East that is anti-Israeli and anti-Western, that can wear a terrorist face and has had the energy to foment instability and political change throughout the region. Israel is seen by militant elements of this Islamist movement as an impediment to a truly Islamic way of life and therefore the ultimate but not necessarily the first target of their campaign. To a large extent, militant Islamists hold Arab leaders responsible for allowing Israel a place in the heart of Islamic culture along with a host of other sins associated with secular rule and modernization.
Israel, understandably, sees Syria as at least a manipulator and exploiter of this sentiment in Lebanon in the form of support to Hizballah and in Syria's much more modest connections with Hamas. Savir expressed the Israeli view of Syria in exceptionally clear and dispassionate terms when describing his own reactions in the immediate aftermath of the Arab terrorist attacks on Israelis in early 1996 that effectively ended Syrian-Israeli negotiations:
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| I knew that the Syrians, situated somewhere between the forces trying to build a better future and those bent on stopping them, had, at best, done very little to prevent these attacks. It was exactly this ambivalence that made the Syrians so important in regional peacemaking. For, once they decided to join the peace camp, they could draw the more hesitant regimes in their wake. In the meantime, however, by a process of default, they were aiding the forces of destruction.15
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Israeli public opinion is far less measured than Savir in its accounting of Syria's role in terrorism. The popular view among Israelis of Syria as one of the most virulent and enduring sources of anti-Zionist prejudice is, of course, fed by terrorism and Damascus' equivocal approach to it. It is this popular view that impelled both Rabin and Peres to seek a significant public effort from Asad in reshaping Syria's image. Syria's equivocation on terrorism and Asad's refusal to take any responsibility for Israeli sentiment almost certainly contributed to Israeli skepticism about the Syrian leader's commitment to a settlement and to fateful decisions by Rabin -- to slow the Syrian track in favor of the Palestinian talks -- and by Peres -- to call early elections and later to formally suspend negotiations with Syria.
Syria's posturing during negotiations that Israeli popular attitudes were not Damascus' problem and that what Israel calls terrorism is a legitimate struggle against an occupier was self-defeating at best. Even most casual, disinterested observers recognized the cynicism of Syria's manipulation of Hizballah's activity in southern Lebanon against Israeli troops. This activity has been a tool to inflict a measure of pain on Israel in order to reshape its negotiating demands and to forge an inseparable link between returning the Golan and ending the fighting in southern Lebanon. But in so doing, Damascus has deepened the view among many Israelis that Syria is an implacable enemy. Asad has been slow to recognize that this exercise, while perhaps tactically useful at times, has become a case of the "means" thwarting realization of the "end," possibly irretrievably. At bottom, it reflects Asad's imperfect understanding of the workings of politics and popular opinion in a democracy. It also reflects the reality that Syria's settlement with Israel will in the end have to be a settlement with a substantial portion of the Israeli public, one which has been deeply traumatized by terrorism.
Israel has been tactically blind on this issue as well. The six years spanning the mid-1970s and early 1980s, when the Syrian regime struggled with the Muslim Brotherhood, were the most unstable in Syria's post-independence history, the greatest danger to the secular nature of Syrian governance, and the most direct challenge to Asad's regime. Analysis at the time and retrospectively has concentrated on three aspects of the struggle: the Sunni challenge to Alawi minority rule; the grass-roots challenge to an authoritarian regime; and the brutal government attack on the Brotherhood stronghold in the city of Hama that brought the struggle to a decisive end in favor of the regime. Somewhat lost in this approach is acknowledgment of the powerful anti-Israeli, anti-Western character of the Syrian Brotherhood, whose members are the ideological and organizational kinsmen of Hamas in the West Bank, Gamat al-Islamiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the Brotherhood in Jordan -- some of which are the most virulent anti-Israeli forces operating today.
Also lost in this emphasis is acknowledgment that the Asad regime's struggle with the Brotherhood took place simultaneously with the showdown between the shah of Iran and radical Islamic political forces spearheaded by Ayatollah Khomeini and the imposition in Iran of an Islamic republic. Iran's experience and Syria's own turmoil for over five years have had a seminal impact on the Syrian government and its policies. Asad's management of radical Islamic challengers in the 1980s and his management of similar regional elements now may have a cynical, self-serving character by some measures. But his leading purpose has been the protection of Syria's secularism, a central tenet in Baathism and one especially important to Asad, not just protection of his own Alawi sect. He has wanted to protect the stability of the country, not just perpetuate his own regime. Certainly, both secularism and stability were at stake.
All this became important in peace negotiations because the persistence of Islamic radicalism throughout the region set limits on Asad's flexibility to take steps that might rile Islamic elements already agitated by the mere fact of negotiations between Arab states and Israel. Any perceived capitulation or public demonstration of openness toward Tel Aviv is a risk in such circumstances, as the Sadat assassination amply demonstrated. For Asad, the threshold for danger is lower than for any of the other Arab leaders negotiating with Israel, including Sadat. As an Alawi, Asad's credentials as a Muslim have been clouded in the eyes of many mainstream Muslims, a situation made worse by his championship of secularism. Although he tried accommodation, co-optation and police action for some five years, in the end Asad employed Draconian measures against the Islamic movement in Syria, ending its challenge virtually overnight but earning himself a special hatred among radical Islamists and their sympathizers.
Finally, Asad and Syria are not negotiating with Israel over territory of major religious significance to Muslims. Damascus, however, is closely engaged with the Palestinians in a competitive choreography of the final stages of negotiations, which could influence the outcome of a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. This close engagement arises not only from the timing of this final three-party negotiating effort but from Syria's long and vocal championship of the Palestinians' cause and Damascus' refusal for years even to talk with Israel prior to Palestinian satisfaction. Now, ironically, in the endgame of negotiations, only Syria and the Palestinians remain, and many believe one will fare better at the other's expense. Should Syria be perceived as achieving success on the backs of the Palestinians, Asad risks being blamed directly for the loss of Jerusalem and other likely Palestinian disappointments that will almost certainly give rise to invigorated terrorism. Israelis rarely acknowledge these risks and constraints on Asad or the unique relationship between Syria and the Palestinians that give rise to them. They emphasize instead Syria's connection with terrorist groups and engineer for Israel's own purposes the competitive pacing of the two negotiating tracks.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Positive indications have come from both Syria and Israel with regard to their hopes for a successful renewed effort to achieve peace. Prime Minister Barak has been very clear about his deep desire to complete the work of his fallen mentor, Yitzak Rabin. Despite the years of Netanyahu's refusal to deal with Damascus, Asad never stopped repeating Syria's interest in resuming negotiations, and his public reception of the newly elected Barak was unusually positive and direct by Syrian standards. Charges that Asad has not made a firm commitment to a negotiated peace have had no real foundation for years and have confused his difficult negotiating tactics with his ultimate aims.
Developments throughout the region have reinforced the sense in both capitals that time is not limitless in this pursuit. Leadership throughout the Arab world is in transition. The issue of succession and stability in Syria is a major preoccupation of Syria watchers. Barak is only the second leader in a generational change in Israel that got off to an uneasy start. Iran, Turkey and Jordan have experienced political change and ferment that makes their futures less certain. In Syria's case and Israel's as well, a sense of greater urgency is not necessarily going to be a stimulant for greater compromise and concession, but it is likely to be a force for greater directness and speed.
These positive factors play against three fundamental challenges that the peace effort must manage: (1) negotiations that deliver total restitution of Syria's territory and sovereignty and guarantees of Israel's security and acceptance; (2) a substantial portion of the Israeli public set against such a settlement and formidable tools of democracy to try to thwart it; and (3) contentiousness surrounding the role of the United States in the peace effort.
Israeli leaders have, since the beginning of the Madrid process, asserted that Syria's leading purpose for engaging in peace talks has been to improve Syria's relationship with the United States. Peace with Israel is for Syria, in the Israeli optic, a means to this end. Syrian motives, as the Israelis describe them, are to get off the U.S. list of countries supporting terrorism and out from under the sanctions associated with this list, to gain economic benefits similar to those Egypt received as a result of signing the Camp David accords, and to achieve some form of endorsement from the world's reigning superpower of Syria's regional standing. This view of Syria is consistent with high-level Israelis' characterizations of Asad as a consummate tactician with no real driving desire for peace who, seeing Israel as a rival even after a peace settlement, would work to complicate, if not diminish, Israel's strategic relationship with the United States. It is hard to know whether Israelis truly believe this characterization or are using the portrayal to manage the United States. Whatever the case, Israelis are especially sensitive about what they have called the "exaggerated" role of U.S. negotiators in Syrian-Israeli talks.
The Syrians have, indeed, rebuffed all attempts by Israel to shrink down to a bilateral negotiation between Syria and Israel what have been three-way talks that at Syria's insistence always include the United States. Damascus clearly sees Washington not just as guarantor of a peace treaty but as witness and judge of the regular, almost daily work of negotiations. Distrust of Tel Aviv drives Damascus' attitude toward the U.S. role, and so does Syria's alarm over the "poor" terms of the agreements negotiated by Palestinian and Jordanian leaders in one-on-one secret talks when the United States was not directly involved.
Another factor contributing to Syria's need for deep U.S. engagement in the peace process is Asad's concern about the volatility of Israeli politics. He will have faced five Israeli prime ministers during the course of negotiations, from two different political parties with vastly different ideologies and visions of peace. One was assassinated in an atmosphere of vitriolic political strife; the others were elected amidst political tensions generated by controversy over Israel's peace policy. From this perspective, Asad and his colleagues see the special relationship between the United States and Israel as a positive factor that can help stabilize what Syrians see as a seriously divided and undisciplined Israeli political culture. In the years while Syrian-Israeli talks were in abeyance, Netanyahu's resistance to implementing agreements with the Palestinians already signed by Labor governments has almost certainly reinforced this view of Israel and the necessity of a broad U.S. role.
Selling a peace treaty with Syria to the Israeli public may be more difficult for an Israeli prime minister than negotiating the deal itself. There are Israelis intractably opposed to a settlement with Syria for ideological reasons, geopolitical reasons or politically expedient reasons. Rabin promised and Barak reaffirmed the commitment to submit a treaty to a popular referendum, an exercise unprecedented in Israeli law and politics and a test to which no other treaty in the country's history has been subjected.
Finally, there are terms of an agreement that present special challenges. While territorial return and give and take over boundaries may seem straightforward enough, sovereignty and security, while having their concrete aspects, also have elusive, intangible qualities. In this particular relationship these are of great importance and capable of confounding the best intentions. In this realm Syrians and Israelis are very much alike, in that they both believe deeply in the morality of their positions and attach great value to acknowledgment of them. The world has often witnessed this in Israel and understands the importance to Israelis of acknowledging their heritage and national pride, practically and symbolically. Few outside the Middle East know much about Syria's reputation as the conscience of the Arab world or the reasons for its near obsession with territorial integrity. The potential stumbling blocks ahead are no less manageable than those peace negotiators have already successfully navigated. Another of the unsung successes of the past round of Syrian-Israeli peacemaking was a general agreement that a Syrian-Israeli settlement would be the final resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Encouraged by the United States, all other Arab states would be brought directly into the process of normalizing relations with Israel, ending a half century of this conflict. No other treaty -- not Camp David, Oslo, Wye or the Israeli-Jordanian agreement -- has held this promise.
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1 While Israel is generally regarded as the only state with its existence hanging in the balance in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syrians also have acted out of existential fears -- theirs bred by territorial dismemberment during the colonial withdrawals in the 1940s and instability caused by foreign interference in the 1950s. Having lost parts of historic Syria to Turkey and Lebanon and then in 1967 losing the Golan Heights to Israel, Syria more than any other Arab state has viewed the struggle with Israel in catastrophic terms.
2 Asad speeches from the 1970s and 1980s, Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Moshe Ma'oz in Asad: The Sphinx of Damascus provides an analysis of the policy of strategic parity that emphasizes Syria's military build up and efforts to reconstitute an Arab alliance.
3 The articulation of Syrian policy has often been grandiose and at odds with the actual behavior of the Asad government. Asad's practicality has somewhat restrained the Syrians' traditional love of verbal imagery, but he has also used the power of language when he has needed it. Such was the case in the late 1970s when Egypt settled with Israel, Syria became mired in Lebanon, and the regime faced a potent Islamic extremist threat at home and was thus at its most vulnerable.
4 Helena Cobban, Syria and the Peace: A Good Chance Missed, (Carlisle,Pa.:Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1997), p.23-25.
5 Itamar Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace: The Israeli-Syrian Negotiations, (Princeton, New Jersey: 1998), p. 101-102.
6 Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East, (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 281.
7 Walid Al-Moualem, Interview in Journal of Palestine Studies, 1996, (University of California Press), Vol. XXVI, 1997.
8 Savir, The Process, p.283.
9 Ibid., p.276.
10 Ibid., p.273
11 Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace, p. 236.
12 Ibid., p. 168.
13 Ibid., p. 239-241.
14 Patrick Seale, presentation to the United States Institute of Peace, October 28, 1998.
15 Savir, The Process, p. 285.
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