Syria Rejects US Call for Lebanon Pullout

“Syria has national interests which must be fulfilled before it can withdraw from Lebanon and this has been relayed to American members of Congress, the Senate and the State Department,” Nour said. “If the United States uses its leverage and pressures Israel fully to return the Golan Heights, only then can Syria fully withdraw from Lebanon.”

SYRIA has defied American demands to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and to disarm Hezbollah militants, insisting that Israel must first pull out of the Golan Heights.

The government in Damascus has been under growing pressure from Washington since last week’s assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister and forthright critic of Syria’s military presence in his country. President George W Bush recalled the US ambassador to Syria and demanded an international investigation of the killing.

Ayman Abdel Nour, a leading Syrian analyst, said yesterday that Damascus had now told senior American officials that a unilateral withdrawal of its 15,000 troops was out of the question until Israel ended its occupation of the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed 14 years later.

“Syria has national interests which must be fulfilled before it can withdraw from Lebanon and this has been relayed to American members of Congress, the Senate and the State Department,” Nour said. “If the United States uses its leverage and pressures Israel fully to return the Golan Heights, only then can Syria fully withdraw from Lebanon.”

Nour also said Syria was concerned that if its forces were driven out of Lebanon in a humiliating manner, it could lead to a rift between the peoples of the two countries which would “last for generations”.

The Syrian army and intelligence services have dominated Lebanon since they were first invited into the country by Lebanese Christian leaders in 1976. The troops have remained despite the end of the 15-year civil war and an agreement in 1989 that called for their withdrawal to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.

Hariri’s killing has refocused attention on the continued Syrian presence. Supporters of Damascus claim that its forces stabilise Lebanon and that their removal would push the country back to civil war.

Opponents say that after suffering countless deaths and injuries, the Lebanese are capable of maintaining their own security and are unwilling to allow themselves to be dragged back into conflict.

To Lebanese opposition leaders, the assassination appears to have been a deliberate attempt to intimidate and silence them. Instead, they say, it has rallied the country around them.

As Hariri was laid to rest the once warring Druze, Muslim and Christian factions, who used to slit each others’ throats, stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer for their former prime minister and against Syria.

In an interview Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader and most prominent face of the opposition, was quick to blame Syria for the killing — but warned it would backfire.

“The fact that hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths and walks of life marched and stood together to say their last farewell to Hariri only proves that the Lebanese people are united,” he said.

Jumblatt — who announced only a few weeks ago that the Syrian Ba’ath party had been reponsible for the killing of his father Kamal, the former Druze leader, in 1977 — shrugged his shoulders when asked if he thought that he would be the next victim.

“I am just following the path of my father and I am proud of that,” he said.

The strength of Jumblatt’s rhetoric has surprised many in Syria. Speaking openly in a cafe in Damascus yesterday, a group of Syrians questioned why he had turned so openly against a country in which he had spent a lot of time and with which he had long enjoyed close links.

Although life continued as normal on the city’s bustling streets, there was growing apprehension about American intentions. Some people also expressed concern about possible threats to Syria’s own security from Lebanon if it were to pull out its troops.

“People are very worried,” said the manager of an internet chat forum. “They hear America using the same rhetoric as they employed against Iraq before the invasion and they wonder if we are next.”

Nour said Syria was playing an increasingly important role in the war against terror, passing on vital intelligence not just to America and Canada but also to other Arab countries, yet was receiving little credit in return.

“Unlike with other states, where a carrot and stick approach is used, with us it is just sticks,” Nour said. “The fact that Syria borders Israel means that it will never be seen to be doing enough where Washington is concerned.”

Hala Jaber, Damascus
Times Online

How Israel Is Once Again Redefining the Terms of Peace

Sharm el-Sheikh failed to address the major grievances that defined the Palestinian national struggle for generations: an end to occupation, the right of return, and the removal of the settlements, among others. The summit was almost exclusively reserved for talks about Israel's security: since when was it acceptable for an occupying power to demand security from its captives?

The recent and supposedly 'successful' Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt on February 8 was anything but a triumph, as far as Palestinians, the occupied party, and genuine peace-seeking Israelis are concerned.

Leave out the spectacular view of the Red Sea resort, the impressively meticulous Egyptian hospitality, the heart-rending speeches and the touting of the media thereafter, and you'll have an off-putting view of the upcoming weeks and months: relative calm followed by the typically disproportionate violence the region has known for years.

But before we cast judgment on the summit's initial outcome – as laying the ground for a lasting peace vs. presenting an interval of calm before the resumption of war – we are dually obliged to examine the relative historic context of the present Palestinian uprising. Only then, one can begin to offer an educated and critical analysis of what is likely to follow.

Israeli governments have mastered the technique of pushing Palestinians to the brink, through collective punishment, brutal military policies, house-destruction and so on. However, the implicit objective of the Israeli policy has not been exclusively aimed at subduing Palestinians. Its ultimate aim has been the expropriation of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories of the 1967 border.

Being pushed to the brink, Palestinians resisted, violently and otherwise. Their resistance has occasionally produced a campaign of collective action, mostly spontaneous, but was often galvanized by local political movements to articulate a well-defined program.

Both Palestinian uprisings in 1987 and 2000 articulated a message that largely reflected the political aspirations of most Palestinians: a truly sovereign Palestinian state in all territories illegally occupied by Israel in 1967, including occupied East Jerusalem.

One must also remember that even in the most radicalized and revolutionary phases of their modern history, Palestinians demanded barely 22 percent of the total size of historic Palestine as was defined prior to the creation of Israel.

These demands frustrated Israel, who continued to infuse false and outlandish claims throughout the Western media that the lightly armed Palestinian uprisings (the 1987 Intifada's most universal weapons were slingshots hurling rocks at Israeli attack-helicopters) posed a threat to the very existence of the state of Israel.

One can hardly claim that Israel's position remained static throughout the years. But it would be harder to argue that Israel's change of position was anything but cosmetic, symbolic and rhetorical. Without a doubt we've come a long way since the days where the overriding consensus in Israel was to eradicate Palestinians as a nation by any means necessary. Also, long gone are the days where top Israeli officials labored to omit the historic imperative that a people called Palestinians even existed.

Nonetheless, reality on the ground still serves the same set of beliefs carried by past Israeli governments as reflected in their policies. For example, despite the frequent utilization of the term "peace" by Israeli officials, on both sides of the political spectrum, especially after the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993, there was an intensive Israeli campaign to drive Palestinians out of their land, to expand the settlements, to expropriate large chunks of the West Bank as "security zones" and to further alienate and completely fence off occupied East Jerusalem. According to the records of Israel's Peace Now movement, the number of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories has at least doubled since the signing of the "historic" Oslo agreement.

Israel has never changed its ultimate objective. We know this because Israel's illegal practices on the ground have continued unabated. Granting Palestinians long-denied rights, cohesive territorial sovereignty and honoring international law was never on the Israeli agenda. Most likely these issues will continue to be disregarded until the political imbalances (read the US government's dishonest role in the conflict) are rectified.

Then, why bother talking peace to begin with?

Israel has long reverted from its past policies of mass expulsion. Such policies were simply bad publicity for Israel. They embarrassed devoted benefactors in Washington and helped Palestinians garner international attention, significantly slowing down Israel's expansionist designs in the region.

The 1993 Oslo accord thus intended to serve the particular purpose of removing the Palestinian-Israeli file from the more critical list of international conflicts, buffing up Israel's tainted reputation and giving rise to a corrupt and self-consumed Palestinian leadership, under the banner of "fighting terror." And while Palestinian negotiators were pitifully lost in an awesome edifice of detailed proposals containing thousands of pages of legal rhetoric describing in unfathomable language every trivial "deployment" Israeli tanks were to make, Israeli bulldozers dug out the West Bank to erect new Jewish settlements.

In 2000, the year of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, two major factors once again hampered the Israeli design. First, late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat diverted from the role to which he was entrusted and abruptly, yet decidedly refused to sign off Palestinian rights to the last one. Second, Palestinian masses – the dual victim of Israeli occupation and of the utterly corrupt PA elite – rose in rebellion. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proved merciless in his response to both, and the rest is history.

Arafat's death on November 11, 2004 has indeed "revived hope," as the media has since parroted. The "hope" extracted from the death of frail Arafat however, was the hope of returning to the Oslo legacy and returning to the status quo that defined the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for years. This yielded nil – save a few symbolic gestures – for the Palestinians. On the other hand, it won time and vigor for Israel's unilateral expansionist project.

Thus, welcome to Sharm el-Sheikh, another Oslo but with an Arabian scent and flavor. Palestinian political elite shall rule once more, reclaiming their rightful position in society while the vulgar Philistines shall be pushed back to the gutter where they were suppose to remain. Israeli bulldozers shall carry on with the construction of the mammoth, illegal wall, and illegal settlements shall "naturally expand." Israeli troops shall "redeploy," but snipers must maintain their positions at tall buildings adjacent to every Palestinian town, village and refugee camp. Diplomatic life shall be restored between Israel and its immediate neighbors – and maybe a few others – and Sharon shall be King of Israel, for only he has triumphed in war and in peace.

The Sharm el-Sheikh summit was a "success" because it kowtowed to the expectations of Israel and its American client. It fell short of making any serious effort to bring peace that is defined in accordance with the principals of justice as entrenched in international law and a long list of relevant United Nations resolutions. It demanded Palestinians to overcome their violent tendencies and expected the long-victimized nation to provide Israel, a nuclear power with an army ranked with the top five, with the security it "rightfully needs and deserves." Not once was the term "occupation" mentioned throughout the whole conference, says Robert Fisk, writing for the Independent.

Sharm el-Sheikh failed to address the major grievances that defined the Palestinian national struggle for generations: an end to occupation, the right of return, and the removal of the settlements, among others. The summit was almost exclusively reserved for talks about Israel's security: since when was it acceptable for an occupying power to demand security from its captives?

The summit was a failure, infested with all the symptoms of Oslo, and with no doubt, it will garner the same fate. But by the time such a failure is recognized, Israel's imperial project, the wall and settlements and the calculated annexation of most of the West Bank, shall become accepted as "facts on the ground." Maybe then, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the co-author of Oslo, will understand the extent of his self-defeatist pragmatism. But then, will it even matter?

Ramzy Baroud
Antiwar.com