Syria: A History of the Last Hundred Years by John McHugo

Author:John McHugo [McHugo, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Middle East, General, World, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781620970454
Google: HJTCBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1620970457
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2015-03-02T21:00:00+00:00

death of Hafez al-Assad, Israel finally cut its losses and withdrew unilaterally. Since then,

Israel has returned to bomb and devastate Lebanon several times, but a kind of balance of

power – or, as it is sometimes called, a balance of terror – has been achieved between it

and Hizbullah, which has shown on a number of occasions that it can retaliate effectively

against Israel with rockets fired over the border. Hizbullah also sometimes provokes

confrontations itself.

By playing his cards skilfully after the Lebanese state broke down in the mid-1970s,

Hafez al-Assad would almost turn Lebanon into a Syrian protectorate. Yet the role Syria

played in Lebanon can only be understood if it is put in the context of Syria’s continuing

struggle with Israel. The reasons for that struggle and the bitterness behind it become clear

if seen in the light of the original partition of Greater Syria by Britain and France – of

which the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration into the Palestine Mandate had been an

important element. The Arab-Israeli dispute and the politics of the Cold War had made the

wounds caused by that partition fester. This distracted Syria from the most urgent tasks

before it: confronting the problems in its own society, developing a clear sense of

nationhood, and creating an economy that would make its people prosperous and part of

the modern world.

V

While Hafez al-Assad’s troops were evicting General Aoun from the Lebanese

presidential palace and occupying Lebanese ports to make sure that no fresh munitions

reached him, the Syrian president was also given an opportunity to rehabilitate himself

with the West. In August 1990, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and

claimed it as an Iraqi province. As a US-led coalition was put together under UN auspices

to evict him from this small but very rich land, Hafez al-Assad offered his full support. It

was a prudent hedging of bets since the Soviet Union, the source of Syria’s weaponry and

diplomatic and much other support, was in the process of collapsing. Benefits followed for

backing the right horse. These included the discreet reassertion of Syrian hegemony over

Lebanon.

Once the Iraqis had been driven from Kuwait in January 1991, President George H. W.

Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker made America’s first concerted effort to

bring peace to the Arab-Israeli dispute since the days of Jimmy Carter. However, the new

diplomacy did not succeed in achieving peace between Syria and Israel. The divisions

between Arab parties enabled Israel to succeed in one of its major tactical objectives in

negotiations with the Arabs: all Israel’s significant dealings with its Arab neighbours were

to be bilateral. This enabled the Israeli government to pressurise its negotiating partners by

switching its engagement from one party to another whenever it found this convenient. In

this way, it dangled the prospect of a settlement (on Israel’s terms) before Syria or the

Palestinians, but with the implicit threat that even this might be lost if it was rejected.

Two sets of bilateral negotiations led to results. The first was the Israeli-Palestinian

Oslo Accords which were negotiated under Norwegian auspices in 1993. The other was

the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan the following year. No serious territorial issues

were at stake between Israel and Jordan, so the negotiation of that treaty proved fairly

unproblematic. In the case of the arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians,

however, there was a structural weakness in the Oslo Accords which became ever more

apparent as time passed. Although the Palestinians had accepted the existence of Israel,

Israel made no corresponding acknowledgement of Palestinian rights. That is the

underlying reason why, for the next twenty years, the deadlines for the process Oslo

initiated came and went.

On the other hand, nothing came from the negotiations between Israel and Syria –

although they were the first face-to-face peace negotiations conducted between the two

countries since 1949. The first set of negotiations seems to have been triggered by an

approach from Hafez al-Assad which was communicated through the Americans and

Egyptians. Talks took place between 1992 and 1995, but there was a hiatus starting in

September 1993 when Israel slowed progress down while it turned its attention first to the

Palestinian, and then to the Jordanian, track. Hafez al-Assad was all too conscious of the

perils of weakening his position without being sure that he would gain something in

return. This also meant that he was reluctant to negotiate at all if his position was weak,

since this might enable his adversaries to wring something out of him. 15 Syria’s position was therefore that full withdrawal and full peace should be reciprocal, and that it was

necessary for this to be agreed as the starting point for negotiations. This meant that Israel

would have to prepare to return all the territory occupied in 1967 and make a prior

commitment to this effect.

Return of all the occupied territory would have allowed Syria access to the eastern

shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Syrians believed, on the basis of discussions relayed to

them through Warren Christopher, the US secretary of state, that Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli

prime minister, had agreed to this in principle. However, if he did so it seems he had not

informed the Israeli negotiator, the chief of staff, Ehud Barak, with the result that the

Syrians became suspicious of Israeli intentions. The public Israeli position was that the

border between the two countries should reflect the old line between the French and

British Mandates which, they maintained, would have run just east of the lake and not

allowed Syria access to it. There were also other matters to be agreed: security,

normalisation of relations between the two countries, and transitional arrangements. But

the negotiations did not run their full course, and ended only a little over a month after

they had begun when Rabin was assassinated by a Zionist militant on 4 November 1995.

Shimon Peres took over as Israeli prime minister after Rabin’s assassination. Talks

resumed at the end of December 1995, but there

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