Assad’s Checkmate May Prove to Be a Losing Move

It was Bill Clinton himself, with his own White House advisors, who decided to add a last-stop Geneva meeting with Syrian boss Hafez Assad to the long-planned visit to the Indian subcontinent.

Syria is still on the state-terrorism embargo list, and Clinton believed that he was making a concession to Assad just by agreeing to meet him. It was thought in the White House that the secret talks between Israel and Syria had made good progress, reaching agreement on most major issues. The clear implication was that Assad only wanted a prestige-enhancing excuse to resume overt negotiations that would quickly lead to a peace treaty.

Specifically, U.S. officials had been told that the Syrians were satisfied with having won Israeli agreement to withdraw from the Golan Heights to the June 4, 1967, pre-war lines, with minor exceptions.

And the White House was told that the Syrians finally understood that no Israeli government could ever hope for a successful public referendum to withdraw from the Golan Heights if the Sea of Galilee (also known as Lake Tiberias)--the source of 40% of Israel’s water--did not remain under full Israeli control. What remained at issue was only the depth of the Israeli security strip on the Golan Heights side of the lake. Clinton believed that his priority in Geneva was to secure Assad’s agreement to a strip broad enough to ensure that the Golan referendum would pass once the peace negotiations were concluded.

On the face of it, that was a very reasonable assumption because Assad was hardly in a strong position. Syria is not only economically distressed, it is also increasingly isolated. Having lost its Soviet patron long ago, its only ally is Iran, whose reformers want to disengage from the conflict with Israel, stop funding Hezbollah of Lebanon and end the Islamic activism of the ayatollahs.

By contrast, the Israel-Turkey military alliance continues to develop with the support of the Turkish public and most political parties. This leaves Syria squeezed between two much stronger neighbors, north and south. And so long as Saddam Hussein is in power, Syria faces a relentlessly hostile Iraq on its eastern border as well.

Even in the rest of the Arab world, Syrian isolation is increasing. Yemen is the latest Arab state that is tired of waiting for the Syrians to join Jordan and Egypt in signing a peace treaty: It has just started to admit Israeli tourists, joining the long list of Arab countries that have substantive dealings with Israel even without formal diplomatic relations.

Given the balance of power between Israel and Syria, Syrian negotiators did very well in the secret talks. Syria was to have sovereignty over the entire Golan Heights, though its military access would be restricted by demilitarized zones and force limits. Israel would have to evacuate all its settlements in exchange for full diplomatic and economic relations, including transit by Israeli tourists on their way to Turkey and Europe. Israel also would lose its very valuable radar and electronic surveillance station on top of Mt. Hermon, though it would continue to be operated on its behalf by the U.S. or others. In exchange for being removed from the United States’ terrorist list, Syria agreed to stop sheltering the anti-Arafat Palestinian groups still based there. An Israel-Lebanon peace negotiation was to follow directly, and this in itself was a recognition of Syrian sovereignty over Beirut’s government.

When last year’s Israeli-Syrian negotiations were interrupted by Assad, observers theorized that he had recalculated gains and losses and concluded that his power would be more secure without a peace treaty. Moreover, it also was noted that peace with Israel would fatally weaken Syrian control of Lebanon--which is far more valuable for the Assad regime economically than regaining the Golan Heights could ever be.

What happened next was a kind of geopolitical chess game:

Having stopped the peace process, Assad supplied a large number of bombardment rockets to Hezbollah, encouraging the guerrillas to launch them into Israel (to remind the Jews why they need peace).

The Israelis responded sharply by bombing power stations in Lebanon to damage Assad’s prestige by undermining his claim to be that country’s protector. The Israelis also told the Syrians privately that if more rockets were given to Hezbollah, they would attack Syrian army camps in Lebanon. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak added soft words to hard actions: He restated his willingness to resume negotiations.

Assad responded by stopping Hezbollah rocket attacks and restarting the peace talks in secret.

That was the sequence that led to Clinton meeting Assad in Geneva. Expecting some frank bargaining to overcome the remaining minor obstacles to a peace treaty, including the exact width of the Israeli strip on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the president instead was shocked to hear Assad demanding half the lake as the precondition to any peace. Assad went on and on, claiming that before the 1967 war the Syrians had habitually “swam, fished and sailed in the lake,” that he himself habitually went there for beach picnics, that Syrian farmers had worked fields down to the waterline. And then he demanded the restoration of Syrian rights over the lake, as he put it. In effect, Assad asked for much more than a return to the pre-1967 status quo, minutely recorded in 40 years of reports by the U.N. Mixed Armistice Commission.

Clinton responded by reiterating the impossibility of a peace agreement if Syria made any demands on the lake, but initially he treated Assad’s demand as an opening negotiating gambit. When Assad would not retreat, Clinton concluded that he had been tricked into a meeting that was a pure loss for him but valuable for Assad. Had the Syrians indicated beforehand what Assad would ask for, there would have been no meeting. The White House reaction came within hours: The official spokesman made the unprecedented declaration that Israel and Syria should not resume negotiations, dispelling any Syrian illusions that the U.S. would pressure Israel to accept Assad’s demand.

The optimistic theory is that Assad only wanted to show off to Arab public opinion before returning to the negotiating table. If this explanation is correct, secret talks should restart very soon, followed by a resumption of overt negotiations.

The pessimistic scenario now seems more probable: Having decided that peace is too risky for his military dictatorship, Assad will not drop his utterly non-negotiable demand. There will be no talks, secret or otherwise. The Israelis will complete their unilateral withdrawal from the security zone in Lebanon by July 7. This will deprive Syria of its most effective weapon against Israel: Hezbollah attacks in the security zone. The Syrians will supply longer-range bombardment rockets to Hezbollah guerrillas, who then will duly start launching them into Israel proper. Israel will react by attacking suspected Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, and it will escalate by bombing major infrastructure targets in Beirut. At that stage, unless a new cease-fire agreement interrupts the escalation, it could intensify with more Hezbollah rockets and Israeli attacks on Syrian bases in Lebanon, eventually leading to a full-scale war.

Events may well follow a less dramatic middle course, but that is not how geo-political games typically are played in the Middle East. Assad was visibly happy at the Geneva airport as he prepared to board the Boeing 747 of his bankrupt Syrian Airlines. He had just trapped Clinton into a humiliating checkmate, and that was clearly more important to him than getting back the Golan Heights.

To stay happy, he will now have to control Hezbollah or face the consequences. Israel has negotiated in earnest to no avail. It has political unity at home, as well as more solid support from Washington than ever before. Once the Israelis withdraw from Lebanon, they will make Syria pay heavily for any further Hezbollah attacks, with the world’s blessings.