After meetings with the President of Syria and Prime Minister of Israel in late February and early March 2011 I was, for the first time, hopeful about the prospects for peace between those bitterest of enemies. Since the autumn of 2010, after my colleague Dennis Ross had opened direct contact for me to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I had been shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus with a draft treaty of peace I had written with Dennis’ assistance. Now Assad (with whom I met privately) was agreeing with great specificity to remove from Syria and erase from Syria’s relationships all threats to the security of Israel; this in return for the phased recovery of all land lost during the June 1967 War and the gradual lifting of American sanctions. An understandably skeptical Bibi Netanyahu, briefed two days later, sensed real opportunity to change Syria’s strategic orientation decisively. Much work remained, but by the end of the first week of March 2011 much had been accomplished.
Indeed, the discussion in Jerusalem with Netanyahu and his small, hand-selected team, was followed immediately in Washington by Ross and I engaging senior Israelis to draft a U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding; one that would have taken effect once a treaty of peace was signed. Although neither Dennis nor I could not predict whether Assad and Netanyahu—one, or the other, or both—would see matters through to formal peace (or falter along the way), a leak-free process brought to life initially by an informal statement of intent obtained from Assad by Senator John Kerry and shared with Ross gave every indication of being taken seriously by all concerned, and was producing positive results. If it had all held together, Iran and its Lebanese franchise (Hezbollah) would be the biggest losers: something I believed to be a major rationale for an effort I had been making since April 2009 as a deputy to Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell in the State Department.
And then, with alarming suddenness, all was in peril. Peaceful Syrian demonstrators in Deraa and Damascus, protesting police brutality and child abuse, were set upon by regime security thugs shooting to kill. Teenagers spray-painting anti-regime slogans in Deraa had aroused the ire of regime enforcers, who rounded them up, beat them, and denied their panicking parents access to them. The parents, their neighbors, and Syrians everywhere thought this would be a perfect opportunity for their promising (if underperforming) young President to crack down on brazen official lawlessness. They thought it was the least he could do, given the chronic unemployment and underemployment over which he presided.
It was, in fact, a situation tailor-made for Assad to demonstrate leadership to a patient citizenry sorely tried by assaults on their dignity. He and his first lady could have defused matters quickly and bloodlessly by traveling to Deraa, meeting with terrified parents, delivering to them their children, and promising protection while demanding law and order. He might have been crowned emperor of Syria had he behaved with dignity, humility, justice, and firmness. Instead he defaulted to state terror. Images of government gunmen running amok shooting protestors dominated social media in Syria and around the world, sparking a nationwide uprising. How could the former head of Syria’s computer society think that images of mass murder in one place could be hidden elsewhere, as it was in Hama in 1982?
With the notable exception of Dennis Ross, the prospect of diplomatic failure on the Israel-Syria peace track seemed to disturb none of the Obama White House denizens. Perhaps they thought that Netanyahu coming to closure with Syria (perhaps followed by Lebanon) would avoid dealing creatively and flexibly with the Israel-Palestine track: the centerpiece of the Arab-Israeli dispute and George Mitchell’s efforts. Perhaps they thought it would be politically damaging to be seen reaching out to an Arab leader who had reacted violently to peaceful protests. Whatever their fears, they would not authorize me to fly to Damascus to try to rein in Assad: a low-percentage play for sure, but surely one worth trying if Syrian-Israeli peace was desired. Not even Robert Ford, the capable American Ambassador to Syria, was authorized or directed to warn Assad that state terror would end the peace mediation and perhaps lead to widespread insurrection. Ross tried hard but could not get the green light to engage Assad with a tough, blunt message on the consequences of state violence.
That was then. Donald Trump’s recent decision to intervene in Israel’s national election by trying to gift the occupied Golan officially to Bibi Netanyahu inevitably inspires memories of opportunity lost eight years ago: a sadly perennial theme of Arab-Israeli interactions. As short-sighted, ill-considered, and potentially damaging as Trump’s gesture is, it does not herald the apocalypse. Indeed, as Syria descended into unfathomable chaos and humanitarian abomination beginning in March 2011, I concluded that Bashar al-Assad had completed the ceding to Israel of the Golan Heights initiated 44 years earlier by his father.
In June 1967, when the heavily fortified Golan Heights fell quickly (though not effortlessly) to Israeli forces, Hafiz al-Assad was Syria’s minister of defense. An air force officer with a taste for politics and little grounding in military science, Assad had demonstrated his worth to his Ba‘athi superiors by purging Syria’s army of capable professionals not deemed politically correct. He gutted the Golan’s defenses. In 1973, as Syria’s President, he tried but failed to retake the plateau during the Yom Kippur assault. The decision of his son and successor in March 2011 to trade a promising peace mediation for a career in war crimes and crimes against humanity probably sealed for all time the question of who would possess the Golan Heights.
If Hafiz never cared enough about the Golan to defend it and Bashar preferred to destroy all of Syria rather than negotiate its return, this beautiful and largely undeveloped tract of rolling, once volcanic plateau appeals greatly to Israelis. Although it is hardly Colorado, the Golan gives the citizens of a cramped country the feeling of wide, open spaces. That many of these spaces remain littered with land mines reminds Israelis also that their country’s 1949-1967 struggle with Syria to dominate militarily a Jordan Valley 1949 armistice demilitarized zone sometimes drew Syrian artillery fire down from the Heights upon Israelis living in or near the disputed acreage. Given that peace with Syria these days is somewhere between remote and illusory—especially considering Assad’s staying power and his dependence on Iran—most Israelis are strongly and understandably disposed to hold the Heights forever.
Still, it is off-putting to hear Trump’s decision justified by the specter of Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists perched atop the Golan preparing to lay waste to Israeli towns and cities below, as if that outlandish scenario is the alternative to formal annexation. Annexation would not increase the defensive capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces; and no one of any seriousness suggests that Israel abandon the Heights under current circumstances. Continued, open-ended occupation—fully justified by Assad’s subordination to an Iranian regime committed to Israel’s destruction—more than suffices for defensive purposes. Land for peace and security in the Syrian context would require a stable, legitimate government in Damascus breaking military ties with enemies of Israel and agreeing to the long-term, supervised demilitarization of the Golan. It was this very prospect that attracted the interest of Bibi Netanyahu in 2010 and 2011.
Syrians hoping to be rid of the Assads, Iran, and Hezbollah may, in the fullness of time, be able to produce a government and a political system strongly inclined toward peace with Israel. Indeed, Israel’s humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians and its willingness periodically to smack Iran and Hezbollah have changed for the better the attitudes of millions of Syrians toward the Jewish State. If there is nothing of substance—nothing militarily, economically, or socially—to be had by declaring the Golan to be part of Israel proper, why risk alienating those Syrians who have resisted Iranian hegemony, opposed Assad, and welcomed Israeli help in doing so? Indeed, why force Arab leaders not questioning Israel’s control of the Golan with Iran and Hezbollah operating in Syria to take public positions that inevitably will oppose the formal transfer of territory they deem Arab?
If the alienation of freedom-seeking Syrians and other Arabs is bad, the encouragement annexation would provide to Israel’s enemies is worse. Iran and Hezbollah, seeking popular Syrian support for the opening of a new ‘resistance front’ at the base of the Golan, will welcome gratuitous annexation declarations; they will help them make their case. Changing the subject from drug running, money laundering, and war crimes to an annexation violating UN Security Council decisions will also gratify Iran’s supreme leader and Hezbollah’s secretary-general. Indeed, no one will welcome a subject change more than Bashar al-Assad. Chemical warfare, Nazi-like detention practices, mass homicide, starvation sieges, and a nation’s ruin: these are the usual word-association phrases prompted by the name “Assad.” Aggrieved nationalist appealing to the Security Council to defend and enforce its own resolutions has a better ring to it.
Still, the end of days is not upon us. An American President who knows something about foreign interference in the elections of others has tried to help a friend, albeit with a blunt instrument not at all shaped by input from his Departments of State and Defense, his intelligence community, or his national security staff. They will now scramble, as they have done on other occasions, to salvage what they can of America’s reputation and credibility.
In the end it will be up to Israel’s next Prime Minister and Knesset to decide what to do about the Golan Heights. They may well decide that upending a satisfactory status quo would be risky, counterproductive, and profitless. They may elect to keep faith with those of their Syrian neighbors open to peace with Israel and dedicated to achieving self-government notwithstanding the determination of Iran and Russia to keep in place a client who has betrayed and destroyed his own country. On the other hand, they may stir up a hornets’ nest by following the lead of Donald Trump. One way or the other, the Assad family has done its best to make the Golan Heights Israeli forever.