Small signs to a larger picture, or the wisdom of elders

Friday, December 03, 2004

The State Department issues a statement saying that the U.S. is ready to help Israel and Syria engage in direct talks. Considering that one of the more cynical excuses Israeli officials have been offering about why it is not ready to talk with Bashar Assad yet is that the Americans aren’t interested in such talks, the State Department comment is somewhat surprising.

But perhaps not. Yesterday, Sharon said he was ready to meet with Bashar Assad ‘under certain conditions,’ which he more or less specified as ‘the smallest sign’ that Assad is taking steps to shut down anti-Israeli terrorist group offices in Damascus. Today, Yedioth Ahronoth military correspondent Alex Fishman reports that Israeli assessments are now that Assad is planning to ‘give a present” to PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas when he pays an historic visit to Damascus this week: Assad will shut down the offices of the Palestinian opposition groups based in the Syrian capital, including the powerful Damascus-Hamas office. It’s just the sort of ‘small step’ that Sharon says he is waiting for.

eanwhile, as Sharon was saying that a cessation of Palestinian violence would be met by a cessation of Israeli incursions and operations against Palestinians – and noted that there had been a decline in anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic ‘incitement’ in Palestinian media, Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader in Gaza said after yet another meeting with Abbas in Gaza that Hamas is ready to discuss a new hudna ceasefire, ‘through negotiations with Fateh, if Israel ceases its aggressive actions.’ The Zahar comment seems to be part of a general trend toward moderation in Hamas in recent days. Last week and this, a leading Hamas figure on the West Bank, Hassan Yusuf, recently released from two years in Israeli detention as a suspected financier of terrorism, also spoke of a hudna – with Israel – that could last as long as 10 or more years. He told several Israeli interviewers that any hudna implies recognition of the other side, and as such, for the first time, Hamas leaders are speaking about some form of acceptance of Israel, even if not formally.

By the way, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak made a rare pro-Sharon comment yesterday, saying that the Palestinians better make a deal with Sharon. ‘Only Sharon can lead the region to peace and find a solution for the conflict, if he is interested in doing so,’ Mubarak told Egyptian reporters. ‘If the Palestinians are not capable of reaching an agreement with Sharon they should know it will be much harder to to reach an agreement with someone else. The prime minister said he is ready to do what the Palestinians are asking to make it easier for them to have their election and to help take down the checkpoints. What is Sharon asking for? Only one thing: that they stop the terror attacks.’

Sharon pointedly noted yesterday in response to questions about whether reports in Maariv this week were true that Assad was ready to visit Jerusalem to make his pitch for peace, that ‘the Sadat visit was prepared comprehensively’ before it took place in 1977. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom already conceded this week that there were secret talks between Israel and Syria (though it is unclear if the talks were direct or through a mediator) last year but they ended when the talks became publicly known.

There are no signs any such secret talks are now underway -- and truth be told, the Syrians denied that Assad had told outgoing UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed Larsen that Assad was ready to talk with Israel without prior conditions. And Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara said yesterday after hearing of Sharon’s comments, that the Israelis were putting up conditions for new talks, and did not really want peace. Perhaps he did not notice that Sharon pointed out that while most Israelis love the green open spaces of the Golan, when it comes to talking about peace with Syria, ‘those sentiments’ should be put aside.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Israel’s domestic political arena can’t cope with a two-front peace process, both with the Palestinians and the Syrians. But Sharon smashed one of the biggest conventions of all when he announced his plan to quit all of Gaza and the northern West Bank, giving up settlements and psychologically more important than that, conceding the Jewish right to biblical homelands. Perhaps the most telling remark Sharon made this week was when he said to the editors’ committee luncheon on November 28th – the anniversary of the UN partition decision – that ‘The people of our generation have on their shoulders the responsibility to resolve the conflict … We were around to see Israel at the beginning when things were different, and we are the ones to take care of everything now.’ Between the two of them, Sharon, 76, and Peres, 81, right now seem to have more political vision – and courage – than the rest of the entire political arena in Israel, at least. Perhaps we will yet see a new Middle East.

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