Jeff Blankfort writes:
I just finished Seymour Hersh's piece in the New Yorker, "Syria Calling," and am no less sure than I was before that Israel does not want to negotiate a deal with Syria,
only give the appearance of wanting to do so for global PR reasons. One
of the reasons Erdogan was so furious at Peres is that two or three
days before the attack on Gaza, Olmert
had been meeting with Erdogan and that a deal between Syria and Israel
had, according to him, been agreed upon and Olmert never said a word to
Erdogan about the forthcoming attack even though he obviously knew
about it and knew that it would be a deal breaker which was Israel's intent and I believe one of the reasons for the attack on Gaza at that time. Assad
knows all this and that is why he is so publicly willing to re-open the
negotiations and to put the onus on Israel when it starts backing off.
Assad is not about to turn its back on either Hezbollah or Hamas whatever happens because his support for both groups is the source of his prestige in the Arab world
beyond the palaces of the Sheikhs. As far as Obama's pressure on Israel
to pull back before the inauguration, I'm not buying that as anything
but an effort by the Repubs to damage him in the eyes of the lobby.
Israel obviously intended to get the job over with quickly and before
he took office and that he has still not pressured Israel to open its
borders or hold back arms shipments tells me he is still in thrall to
the lobby in keeping with the big D Democratic Party tradition.
Agreed, good analysis Jeff. I felt like Seymour had this rambling urgency with this piece that I couldn't understand what he was getting to with Israel's position. Maybe I should just blame it on Israel's manipulative ambiguity.
But Hersh readers must realize that you could also cut every one of his pieces by at least 50% and lose exactly nothing. And I'm not picking on Hersh, he's great.
well, it's very simple: no Israeli government that seriously proposed to return the Golan Heights to Syria would survive for more than about four hours.
In thrall or not, nothing is going to happen until Term 2–if he gets one. Obama's problem is how to keep the lid on things till then while looking like he's actually doing something.
alert: "await term 2" meme, seen this before,
Israel is screening everyone's calls
Do you seriously expect Israel to give up the Golan Heights in anticipation of seeing whether Syria (1) distances itself from Iran, (2) cozies up to the US, (3) breaks relations with HIZBULLAH, (4) Allows Lebanon to function as a truly independent country, (5) Breaks with HAMAS, (6) Encourages the Palestinians to make peace with Israel?
Bush had big dreams about remaking the Middle East. You all curse him endlessly for doing so, saying it would never work. Now, St Obama has big plans and you are suddenly big believers. As the British say: you are all in cloud-cuckoo land.
You can't be referring to this blog when your talking about 'dreamers'.
Nobody here is under any illusions about Obama and the peace process.
The only thing Syria should be doing is upgrading their air defenses and trying to procure more advanced weaponry. You don't negotiate with Israel until you've blown a few holes in it's side.
Otherwise you know they'll do and say anything to avoid peace.
stevie, Russia is not going to provide effective anti-F16 systems to Syria or Iran.
Rowan– what Russia does depends to a large extent about what the US and Nato do in Eastern Europe. Russia can make things very difficult for us in the Middle East.
I've read that its new missle tech is simpler, cheaper and more effective than anything the US has in the works.
Russia will put state of the art missiles in Belarus, which has reverted to being a dependency. But it will not arm the mid east with state of the art systems, only with systems that are a generation out of date. I shall not burden the thread with the serial numbers of the various systems and their respective F16 antagonists.
Yes I did read that Rowan, but it doesn't mean Syria should stop trying. And after the last Israeli aggression in Syria, I wouldn't think they would either.
And alot depends on how Israel continues to behave. The Russians actually did have a contract with Iran I think for those weapons so I wouldn't say it's over until it's over….
… certainly not until the fat lady sings. That would be Dana International, probably.
(1) distances itself from Iran, (2) cozies up to the US, (3) breaks relations with HIZBULLAH, (4) Allows Lebanon to function as a truly independent country, (5) Breaks with HAMAS, (6) Encourages the Palestinians to make peace with Israel?
Syria will never distance itself from Iran. There is a Shia crescent extending from Tajikistan, parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and most of the gulf countries. They need to get their act together and forma common bulwark. Cozying up to the US is usually the kiss of death unless you are Izzy the leech. Lebanon is an artificial construct, created by the perfidious French to safeguard the lunatic Maronites. Well their day has come and gone. Syria should simply annex Lebanon with aid of Hassan Nasrallah, probably the most gifted political and military mind of this century. Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestinians and is on friendly terms with Hizb and Syria, fellow muslims. Its like asking Izzy, the tick, to break with the US. Palestinians should never make peace with Izzy, the the the … vulture, until every European jew leaves.
The idea that Shias can, should, or wish to form a bloc distinct from Sunnis is a colonialist divide and rule myth, which has not been internalised in the Muslim world to anything like the extent western propaganda would like you to believe. This is one of the aspects in which what I called pseudo-gangs (Kitson's term) play such a big role –, not necessarily so much, to actually sow violent sectarian strife, as to give western audiences the impression of such violent sectarian strife. The false labeling of certain population fractions in sectarian terms is also used domestically, inside Israel, and not only on e.g. Druze, but even on Sephardic Jews, who are expected to think 'religiously' and conform accordingly to corrupt political patterns set out for them originally by the Labor Ashkenazi elite (as it was then).