As the leaders of Egypt and Israel beat a path to Washington amid reports that the US is poised to unveil a new Middle East peace initiative, the Beirut daily As-Safir highlights news that Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa has also scheduled a trip to the American capital.
It expects the focus of his mid-month visit ­ his first in two years, when he held preliminary talks with then-US President Bill Clinton and Israel’s then-premier, Ehud Barak, ahead of the inconclusive peace negotiations held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia ­ to be the regional peace conference that the US is proposing to convene (probably next month in Turkey). Israel wants Syria excluded from the meeting and Damascus continues to voice deep skepticism about it.
Sharaa will first travel to New York for meetings of the UN Security Council ­ Syria holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member Council for the month of June ­ and is due to hold a series of talks with US officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, As-Safir reports. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem, the former ambassador to the US and peace negotiator, has been in Washington for several days holding preparatory discussions.
Mouallem last month led his country’s team at a three-day seminar at Houston’s Rice University, which was being hosted by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, set up by and named after the former secretary of state.
While those discussions were informal and were not specifically aimed at reaching any agreement, As-Safir says they concentrated on the two sides’ major policy differences over such issues as terrorism, the Arab-Israeli peace process, the “total paralysis” on the Syrian track, and the question of Iraq. The Americans objected to Syria’s burgeoning economic ties with Iraq, and especially the use of Syrian territory as a conduit for the export of Iraqi oil.
As-Safir says the Texas parley, which is to be followed by a similar meeting in Syria later this year, created a “positive climate for the resumption of a direct dialogue at a higher level” between Washington and Damascus, and both sides hope Sharaa’s visit will get that off to a “promising start.” But both sides are also keenly aware that any improvement in US-Syrian relations is in effect “hostage” to the stalled peace process, given the clout Israel’s supporters in the US wield over the Bush administration and Congress.
As though to underline this point, As-Safir writes that when Sharaa arrives in Washington he will find himself in the midst of an ongoing debate between pro-Israel congressmen who are seeking to impose a new package of binding sanctions on Syria, and administration officials who argue that such a move would be viewed as one-sided and complicate Washington’s diplomatic endeavors.
In Damascus, the government-run daily Tishrin reiterates its qualms about the proposed peace conference, reporting in its leader that President Bashar Assad stressed to visiting US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns that any international drive to revive the peace process needs to uphold the ground rules set at Madrid in 1991 and the land-for-peace principle.
“It is essential to know what the aim, and also the usefulness, of a new international conference would be, in light of the experience of Madrid which for the past 10 years has failed to achieve any progress,” the paper says. The peace process stalled and then ground to a complete halt due to the advent in Israel of successive governments that were opposed to peace and rejected the relevant UN resolutions, Tishrin says. The Netanyahu government reneged on the Rabin government’s commitment in principle to withdraw completely from the Golan Heights as part of a peace agreement; the Barak government “made no serious effort;” and the current Sharon government “declared all-out war on the entire process of peacemaking.” All three Israeli administrations deliberately sought to heighten tensions in the region, particularly with Syria and Lebanon.
“In such circumstances, it is natural that Syria should have legitimate questions about any new moves. Successive US administrations have, despite reiterating their commitment to the peace process, failed to put any pressure on Tel Aviv to accept and comply with UN resolutions, and went so far in indulging Israel’s leaders that they reneged on their undertakings,” the paper writes. The Bush administration has “embraced” Israel’s Ariel Sharon and “adopted” his policies as its own, to the extent of “absolving the butcher of his crimes and criminalizing his victims.”
“Syria is certainly not interested in plunging into new negotiations that are aimless and futile, or participating in a new international conference unless it is an offshoot of Madrid and its terms of reference, and incorporates an appropriate mechanism for the effective implementation of UN Security Council resolutions, especially 242 and 338,” Tishrin writes.
No one should underestimate the degree to which Israel’s behavior in recent years has cast a “dark shadow over the peace process,” the paper counsels. “Revival of the peace process, and the restoration of Arab confidence and international credibility, is contingent on a serious international stand being taken” that secures a full and prompt Israeli withdrawal from the Arab territories it captured in 1967.
“We say ‘prompt’ withdrawal because over the past decade the Arabs have reaped nothing but disappointment, as Israel has employed every ruse of intransigence, procrastination, time-wasting, and deception imaginable, while seeking via separate deals ­ all of which fell flat ­ to undermine the unity of the Arab position, play the tracks off against each other, and provoke contradictions between advocates of the same cause,” the paper states. “President Assad made clear to Burns that only peace can guarantee security, and to discuss Israel’s security requirements in isolation would only be a waste of time and effort,” Tishrin says.
Elsewhere, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s talks with CIA director George Tenet about reorganizing the Palestinian Authority security services draw much disapproving press comment, including from the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi. It says Washington’s chief spook has “been transformed into a postman” conveying Sharon’s demands to Arafat. It writes that Sharon has been openly demanding that Arafat appoint a prime minister, reduce his Cabinet ministers to 20, and exclude people like Tewfik Tirawi and Rashid Abu-Shbak from the revamped PA security services because Israel suspects them of having “terrorist” sympathies.
“The calamity is that the PA is keeping silent in the face of all these insults and this blatant meddling in purely internal Palestinian affairs,” in order to avoid incurring Sharon’s wrath, Al-Quds al-Arabi remarks.
Why, it wonders, doesn’t the PA stand up and say it won’t negotiate with Sharon until the murderers of PFLP leader Abu-Ali Mustafa have been put on trial, or demand that Israel reform its own political system that systematically discriminates against Arabs? Who gave Sharon the right to decide how the Palestinians should manage their affairs and who they should appoint to what office? “What kind of coexistence will this be, based on a mentality which seeks … to subject the Palestinian people to trusteeship, and choose their leaders and security chiefs for them?”
“An immediate end must be brought to this farce of interference in internal Palestinian affairs ­ by anyone who feels like it, including by fellow Arab governments,” Al-Quds al-Arabi writes. “Reform is a Palestinian popular demand and must serve Palestinian national goals of liberation, sovereignty and independence. The reforms that others, including brethren, are demanding are designed to serve and perpetuate the occupation.”
The UAE daily Al-Khaleej wonders how the PA can talk of “reform” while at the same time refusing to comply with a High Court order that it release PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat, and argues that, by citing Sharon’s threats of retaliation as justification for keeping him behind bars, “the PA has effectively acknowledged that the final say in Palestinian political and judicial decisions is Israel’s.” This constitutes abandonment of an absolutely fundamental Palestinian right, “the right to have an independent and sovereign judiciary like all other peoples of the world,” the paper says.
The same applies to the deal the PA struck to end Israel’s siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in which it agreed to deny Palestinian citizens the right to remain in their native land by accepting Israel’s decision to send them into exile. That was followed by the equally grave concession of agreeing to jail six Palestinian activists under British and US guard with Israel’s approval.
“In short, over the past few weeks the PA has shown itself to be astonishingly submissive to violations of the very fundamentals of Palestinian citizenship and sovereignty. This, God forbid, could foreshadow even graver political concessions, which the Palestinian people have shed much blood and made many sacrifices over the past two years in order to avoid,” Al-Khaleej warns.
By heeding Israeli demands to ignore the High Court order freeing Saadat, the PA has shown that it is incapable of respecting the principle of separation of powers that is supposed to be the mainstay of any reform process, the Gulf paper says. The incident makes clear that what Israel and the US mean by “reforming” the PA is to turn it into a vehicle for serving Israel’s security interests, “thus enabling Israel to perpetuate its occupation of the Palestinian territories for as long as it likes.”
Liberal Kuwaiti commentator and politician Ahmed al-Rabi agrees, writing that it will be impossible for Arafat to justify to his people and the world his refusal to comply with the High Court order releasing Saadat, who never committed any crime and whose arrest was indefensible in the first place.
“Arafat will be making a big mistake if he doesn’t free Saadat. He must not listen to the Israeli defense minister’s threat to reimpose the siege on him. For there is a Palestinian people who must be appreciated, and their sacrifices must be respected,” Rabi writes in his column for the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.
Referring to Arafat’s meeting with Tenet, Rabi calls it “ridiculous” for the Americans to berate the PA for failing to prevent suicide operations against Israel when its territory is under occupation and the Israeli Army has been throttling its security forces. “Is Arafat expected to be Israel’s high commissioner in the occupied Palestinian territories, with the task of protecting Israel and arresting any Palestinian that falls under its suspicion,” he asks. Israel’s overwhelming might and ruthlessness makes it right and necessary for the Palestinians to make some concessions and tactical climbdowns, “but some concessions conflict with the most important principles of legitimate Palestinian resistance, and if the PA starts making them under Israeli pressure, it will find itself embarking on a long path of giving way until it reaches the point that Israel wants it to: with the Palestinian leadership confronting the Palestinian resistance while Israel looks on.”

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