Syria coordinating its strategy with Iran, other neighbors

Thursday, December 16, 1999

NICOSIA -- The Syrian regime is already coordinating communications with Iran and other Arab neighbors and with its own public in preparation for its possible accord with Israel.

In an unusual move apparently designed to increase support for any peace treaty and foreshadow official policy, the government of President Hafez Assad has allowed criticism of Syria's decision to resume negotiations with Israel.

A Syrian writer has warned that Israel stands to gain more from a peace accord than Syria and warned against normalization of relations with the Jewish state. This could harm Syria's relations with the Palestinians and Arab regimes in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, the Beirut-based A-Safir daily said Syria will send an envoy to Teheran after the conclusion of the current round of talks with Israel. On Saturday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is scheduled to begin a Gulf tour to urge Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to support Damascus in peace talks. Diplomats said the focus is to renew financial aid to Syria.

Ali Orsan, chairman of the Syrian Arab Writers Association, said Damascus has signalled that it will make significant concessions to Israel in return for the Golan Heights and allow full Israeli control of the Sea of Galilee and an Israeli presence in an early-warning station on Mount Hermon.

"The success of these negotiations will facilitate many dangerous Arab changes regarding the Arab-Zionist conflict,'' Orsan wrote in the Al-Usbu al-Adabi magazine released on Saturday. "The Zionist occupier will have recognized borders, water, normalization and a reputation for striving for peace. We, on the other hand, will remain with thorns stuck in our throats."

Orsan is regarded as heading an organization subservient to the Syrian regime and excerpts of his article were also published in the London-based Al Hayat daily.

Western diplomats said the criticism voiced in Syria was meant to prepare Syrians and other Arabs for normalization of relations with Israel that would include full diplomatic ties, open borders, tourism and trade. Another aim, they said, was to signal Syria's pledge to help the Palestinians after a peace treaty is signed by Damascus and the Jewish state.

"Orsan presents a catastrophic picture of the possibility of success in the Syrian-Israeli negotiations," Al-Hayat said in introducing the excerpts. "Such a success, if it leads to a Syrian recognition of the Zionist entity, will be, in his words 'a victory of the Zionist movement and the fulfillment of the goals it set for itself 102 years ago."

In Jerusalem, a senior Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday that his ministry is drafting plans for relations with Damascus. "We hope that the peace agreement that we have with Syria will allow us to have peace with the entire Arab region," Foreign Ministry director-general Eitan Bentsur said. "Israel has some sort of negotiations with just about all of the Arab states. In the Gulf countries, there will be an upgrading of contacts."

On Wednesday, Arab diplomatic sources and report asserted that Syria has rejected the opening of embassies until the "last Israeli soldier" leaves the Golan Heights. The Al Hayat daily said Syria has also rejected an Israeli proposal for an exchange of territory to ensure that Israel maintains the Hamet Gader outpost, which oversees the Yarmouk River.

Orsan said Syria won a "political victory" when Israel agreed to resume negotiations at the point they were suspended in 1996, an implicit recognition that the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pledged a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. But this does not mean that Israel will honor such a commitment.

"This omission does not mean Syria failed to learn the lessons of the past, when Zionist deception was revealed on several occasions," Orsan wrote. "It is sufficient to mention the American attempts to evade Rabin's deposit in order to force Syria to resume the negotiations without mentioning the progress that was achieved at the Wye Plantation. It is possible that Syria received a written American guarantee for a withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 border, but the question remains whether this issue has become inevitable from the Israeli perspective? I seriously doubt it."

"It seems that this issue will become one of the obstacles the negotiators will face, but will not lead to the breakdown of the new negotiations, nor will it prevent the forging of some mutual understanding," he added.

Orsan appeared to confirm reports that Syria has agreed to an Israeli presence in the establishment of an early warning station on Mount Hermon, the highest point in the region. He said security arrangements and water-sharing, particularly Israel's insistence of full rights to the Sea of Galilee, have been obstacles to a peace treaty.

"It is plausible that security, emphasized by the Zionist entity, achieved the understanding of the Syrians regarding the early warning station in the Hermon," Orson said. "The Syrian side will also consider the Zionist entity's need for water. We may not be able to legally drink from the water of Tiberias [Sea of Galilee] but we would be able to fish in it, using long arms. There may be some merely cosmetic modifications to the border that would connect the principle of the June 4, borderline with the so-called international border, drawn by Britain and France in 1923."

But Orsan, in what could forshadow the intentions of Damascus, said after a peace treaty, he will focus on ending Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

"The Arab-national aspect of the Palestinian problem is stronger within me than all the marginal [interests] of [one Arab] country," Orsan wrote. "The problem of Palestine will remain an existential conflict with the Zionist occupiers, until victory, the removal [of the Zionists], and the liberation, even if it takes a hundred years."