July 15, 2008 4:11

'Security threat' turns Blair back from Gaza

So what was the “specific security threat” that kept Tony Blair out of Gaza today? The visit by ex-British prime minister and special Middle East peace envoy Blair would have been a boon for Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. Blair was pointedly not seeing any Hamas officials --only traders and UN officials and touring a sewage plant-- but he would have been the highest profile diplomat to visit the blockaded Palestinian territory since Hamas seized it in June 2007.

Let’s see…who didn’t want Blair going to Gaza? The Israelis can’t have been too enthused about his visit; any visitor is struck by the devastation and poverty of the besieged enclave. But the Israelis aren’t the only ones. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can’t have been too pleased about it, either. Abbas is already playing second banana to Hamas in Gaza and is sulking over the fact that Hamas in large part has managed to keep up its end of the bargain and stop militants from lobbing rockets into southern Israel –-upping their credibility among Palestinians and Arab states. Abbas’s Fatah militia still has many sympathizers in Gaza capable of carrying out mischief –-or worse-- against Blair.

It was the Israelis, Time was told, who warned Blair’s delegation to cancel the trip because of the vague and all-encompassing term "security threat". The UN security experts had previously cleared the visit, and examined every step that Blair’s convoy would take as it moved through the blasted-out rubble around Erez crossing into northern Gaza where he was to inspect a waste water project and talk to traders about how the year-long economic-blockade has crippled them. The security team encountered nothing suspicious.

Hamas didn’t mind that Blair snubbed them. It was good PR to have him in Gaza, so Hamas went all-out setting up checkpoints and security patrols along the route that Blair was to travel inside Gaza. A Hamas spokesman said it knew of no security threat to the ex-prime minister and blamed “Israel and other parties” who didn’t want Blair to witness “the catastrophe of the siege on Gaza”.

I'll bet that Blair won’t be knocking at the gates of Gaza any time soon, no matter if the threat is real or invented.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

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July 15, 2008 12:04

The Syrians Take Paris

For the head of state of a former French colony, an official visit to Paris is always a good chance do a little shopping, take in some culture, and impress the folks back home. So it was for Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria (which was once ruled by France under a League of Nations Mandate.) Over the past weekend, Syrian state television has been beaming round the clock images of the Syrian President and his tres chic First Lady making the scene in the City of Light: Bashar at a summit for Mediterranean leaders, Asma at the Louvre and Centre Pompidou, and both of them as official guests of French President Nicholas Sarkozy at Bastille Day celebrations on Monday. From all the high wattage smiles, it's clear they're having a blast.

And well they should. Not so long ago the Syrian First Couple were personae non gratae in Western capitals. The U.S., which accuses Syria of sponsoring terrorism, led an effort to isolate the country diplomatically and economically. And in a rare instance of Franco-American harmony, France had its own grudge against Syria: the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hiriri, the former Lebanese prime minister and close friend of former French President Jacques Chirac, an act for which many in the West blamed Syria.

But now Syria is back in style. The invitation to Paris is ostensibly a reward for the the start of indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel (through Turkish mediation.) But it's also recognition that attempts to isolate Syria have failed, and that the West needs Syrian help for resolving some of the biggest problems in the Middle East. For its part, Syria wants to come even further out of the cold. While in Paris, President Assad told French television that in the event of direct talks under American sponsorship, there could be peace between Syria and Israel within two years. So on the Fourth of July 2010, will Bashar be celebrating Independence Day in Washington?

Maybe, but maybe not. Of all the Middle Eastern conflicts, the rift between Israel and Syria would appear to be the easiest to mend. Israel would just have to return the Golan Heights, a rocky Syrian plateau that Israel captured in 1967. If Israel had a strong leader with a popular mandate (admittedly a big if) this wouldn't be impossible given that Israeli settlement in the Golan is relatively sparse and the Heights are no longer so strategically important thanks to advances in Israeli defense technology. But the tougher question is what Israel should get in return for the Golan.

Israel and the U.S. want more than just an end to a state of war between Syria and Israel. They also want Syria to stop supporting anti-Israeli militant groups in Palestine and Lebanon (Hamas and Hizballah respectively.) In other words, they want Syria to break away from its strategic partnership with Iran, the senior member of what's sometimes referred to as the Rejectionist Crescent, the arc of governments and militias stretching from Teheran to Gaza that opposes American and Israeli dominance in the Middle East.

But Syria isn't going to abandon Iran, according to figures close to the Assad regime here in Damascus. It's not just that the elite of Iran and Syria have a long history of cooperation going back to 1979 when Syria was the first country to recognize the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. It's also because Syria has no reason to switch sides just when its team is winning. From the fiasco of America's invasion of Iraq, to Hamas' victory in Gaza, to Hizballah's victory in Lebanon, Iranian and Syrian power is on the rise in the Middle East. Defying America and Israel is the most popular position in most of the Arab world, and has helped keep the Assad regime in power all these years. Why change now?

The Assad regime only wants a package deal, a grand bargain between Syria and Iran on the one hand, and America and Israel on the other, that would settle the cold war for the Middle East. This means that the United States would have to give up once and for all its project for a "new" Middle East, and its penchant for regime change. That might happen on its own in November if Barack Obama becomes president. But a package deal would also have to solve the Iranian nuclear issue, map out the future of post-American Iraq, solve the Syrian-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese-Israeli conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict all in one go. Would any American president, or any world leader, be able to pull that off in two years? Despite President Assad's rosy prediction, it's hard to imagine him shaking hands in the Rose
Garden anytime soon. But at least he'll always have Paris.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus

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