Israeli Soldier Injured by Bullet Shot from Syria

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Date: 2013-01-27 06:05:16
By: Ericcosto

Syria comes in from the coldMARK MACKINNON November 26, 2007JERUSALEM When U.S. President George W. Bush convenes a Middle East peace cfcoerenne this week at the naval port of Annapolis, Md., most of the cameras will be focused on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas. It\'s peace between their two peoples, after all, that the summit meeting is purportedly about.But neither man will be the most important person in the room, it can be argued, nor even Mr. Bush himself. Instead, it\'s the relatively unknown deputy foreign minister of Syria, Faisal Mekdad, and more importantly the regime he represents, who holds the keys to real peace in this blood-spattered region.After long hesitation, Damascus finally announced yesterday that it would send a delegation headed by Mr. Mekdad to the cfcoerenne.That cfcoerenne begins today with a dinner in Washington where Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will act as hosts, and continues tomorrow with a single day of negotiations in Annapolis and follow-up meetings Wednesday.Print Edition Section Front Enlarge Image More World StoriesSharif home, taunts MusharrafSyria comes in from the coldPolice crack down on anti-Putin demonstratorsE-tailers set for Cyber MondayFake epilepsy, or get arrested, or pay a bribe, or Pepper spray, hives fail to deter beauty contestantGo to the World section Finding an agreement between Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas is one thing. Negotiations prior to the summit toward creating a Palestinian state quickly ran into the same roadblocks that scuppered every previous peace effort namely the borders of such a state, the future of Jerusalem and the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendents who were driven from their homes by successive Arab-Israeli wars.Though optimists are few and scattered, an agreement of some sort between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization is possible, if not at Annapolis, then in the year that remains for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Abbas in office. Mr. Olmert may have even less time, and all three men are considered weakened leaders who are desperate for some sort of breakthrough in order to reverse their sagging political fortunes.But it would be a false peace, likely doomed to prove even less meaningful than the Oslo Accords that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed at another peace summit presided over by the United States 14 years ago. Things have grown dramatically more complicated since then, with the rise of political Islam and the parallel decline in U.S. influence on what\'s known as the Arab street. All is not yet lost, however, as the gathering of Middle Eastern leaders at Annapolis proves simply by taking place. The decision by Syrian President Bashar Assad to send Mr. Mekdad opens the door for something real to come out of this process. But for that faint promise to be realized, it will require a rapid defrosting of relations between the United States and Syria, which Washington has for years treated as a pariah state, accusing it of supporting terrorists in Iraq and around the region.Syria\'s demands are well-known. It wants the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967. It would prefer that the coveted plateau come gift-wrapped in something resembling the billions of dollars in annual military and economic aid the United States pays to Israel and Egypt as an incentive for sticking to the terms of their 1979 peace deal.The issue of the Golan Heights isn\'t formally on the agenda for Annapolis, but Syria agreed to attend after receiving assurances that it would be discussed at a plenary session on the sidelines of the main meeting.Privately, top Israeli officials say that making peace with Syria is far easier than doing a deal with the Palestinians since the issues involved are clearer and less emotionally charged. It\'s far easier for Mr. Olmert to sell Israelis on the idea of surrendering the Golan in exchange for peace with Syria than it is to convince them that Jerusalem needs to be divided and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers removed from the West Bank.And Syria has something to give in return. Unlike all the other attendees at Annapolis, Syria holds real influence over Hamas, the militant Islamist group that trumped Mr. Abbas\'s Fatah movement in the parliamentary election last year and then trounced them militarily six months ago, seizing control of the Gaza Strip, half of the putative Palestinian state. Despite its central role, Hamas didn\'t receive an invitation to Annapolis, leading many to question how serious Mr. Bush\'s peace initiative really is.If Hamas actively opposes any deal, it will be worth nothing in Gaza, where the group has more popular support than Fatah, and little in large swathes of the West Bank. Among the attendees, only Syria, which plays host to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, can put any pressure on the group. In many ways, Mr. Mekdad represents not only Syria, but Hamas, at the talks.Syria has another card to play in Lebanon, where if it chose it could cut off the flow of arms to Hezbollah, another Islamist group sworn to Israel\'s destruction. So if Damascus gets what it wants, it can make life easier for Israel on both its southern and northern flanks. And if the real point of Annapolis, as many analysts contend, is about building an anti-Iran alliance as much as it is about securing Israeli-Palestinian peace, then flipping Syria, Tehran\'s staunchest ally, would be the biggest prize of all.But on Lebanon is where the negotiations get truly complicated. Many Lebanese who support Prime Minister Fouad Siniora\'s pro-Western government which is currently locked in an volatile power struggle with Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian parties are terrified that Syria will demand a free hand to restore its hegemony over its smaller neighbour as the price for any deal. A similar deal was cut in exchange for Syria\'s participation in another peace gathering, the 1991 cfcoerenne in Madrid, when Mr. Bush\'s father, George H. W., was U.S. president and Mr. Assad\'s father, Hafez, ran Syria.When Lebanon\'s Syrian-backed president, c9mile Lahoud, left office on Friday after his term ended, no successor was appointed and Mr. Siniora assumed presidential powers on an emergency basis. Mr. Assad won\'t tolerate that for long. He wants to see someone with whom Damascus can get along installed as soon as possible, putting an effective end to the so-called Cedar Revolution that drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon in 2005.And so tonight\'s dinner and the meetings that follow will be watched nervously by the uninvited parties in Gaza City, Tehran and Beirut. The truth about how the cfcoerenne went will not be found in the wording of any final communique9 issued from Maryland, but by the number of rockets launched from Gaza in the days that follow, and whether calm or chaos prevails in Lebanon.Mark MacKinnon, The Globe and Mail\'s Middle East correspondent, has covered the region since 2001 reporting on all the major events, from the Iraq war to Israel\'s pullout from Gaza to the ouster of Syrian troops from Lebanon.Print E-mail Share License Letter to Editor 0 0