|
A
Fox called Lion
By
Uri Avnery
January 16, 2004
You really can't rely on these Arabs.
Take this fellow, Qaddafi. For decades he played the
clown. The whole world laughed at him (except when he
downed a French plane in Chad and the Pan-Am jet over
Lockerbie.) His Libya was a "rogue state", an
international pariah. He was working on Weapons of Mass
Destruction. The Americans hated him, and from time to
time bombed him, killing his daughter on one such
occasions.
You could rely on good old Qaddafi. He supplied us
with an alibi for producing all kinds of interesting
weapons. Everybody understood that with such people
around, Israel needs the doomsday weapon, and that it's
useless to talk about peace.
And then, suddenly…
Suddenly Qaddafi becomes the darling of the world.
Look at him, in his Bedouin robes: a serious man, a sober
and pragmatic statesman. Pays a fortune to the families
of the victims in the planes he has downed. Invites the
Americans along to see for themselves how he destroys his
stock of WMD. Flatters President Bush. Makes advances to
Israel. Tomorrow - God forbid! - he may invite
Bush to mediate between himself and his dear colleague,
Ariel Sharon.
If Bush starts to pamper Qaddafi, he will coddle
Sharon less. He might get the idea that Israel, too, get
rid of its Weapons of Mass Destruction. Perish the
thought!
Or take Iran. Well, they aren't really Arabs, but they
are Muslims, and all Muslims are the same, aren't they?
Anti-Semites. Israel-haters. Plotting to destroy us.
One used to be able to rely on Iran. There is always
somebody there shouting "Death to America! Death to
Israel!" They are trying to produce nuclear bombs. They
vow to bury the Great Satan together with the Small Satan
(us). True, we did sell them some arms, quite quietly,
with American blessing (see: Irangate), but that doesn't
count. President Bush even included them in his "Axis of
Evil". We were hoping that after the occupation of Iraq,
the Americans would deal with them. Between Afghanistan
and Iraq, Iran sits like an almond between the jaws of a
nutcracker.
And then, suddenly…
Suddenly Iran is dripping honey. They thank the
Americans for the generous assistance sent to the victims
of the big earthquake. They invite international
inspectors to check their nuclear installations.
And the Americans - who can believe it? - let
themselves be seduced. They emit conciliatory noises. And
there are already some people who expect us to behave
like Libya and Iran, to open our nuclear installations to
inspection. Perish the thought!
But all this is nothing compared to Syria.
If there was one Arab nation you could rely on without
reservation it was the Syrians. Born Israel-haters.
Tough. Uncompromising. Stockpiling chemical and
biological weapons. True, they respect the cease-fire
line with Israel, but they use the Hizbollah against us
instead. And they play host to the headquarters of the
militant Palestinian organizations in Damascus.
The Bush administration has officially labeled Syria a
terrorist state. It has targeted them. Our friends in the
Pentagon, Wolfowitz and the other Neo-Zionists, promised
us that Syria would be the next candidate for an American
invasion, right after Iraq. Our good friends, the Turks,
were also to join in the party. After all, they have had
an ongoing quarrel with Syria since the late 1930s, when
the French (who controlled Syria at the time) gave them
the Syrian Alexandretta region. And this conflict
deepened even more when Syria began supporting the
Kurdish revolt in Turkey and demanded a bigger share of
the Euphrates water.
And now, suddenly…
Suddenly this youngster, Bashar, changes direction
overnight. Suddenly al-Assad ("the Lion") turns into
al-Taleb ("the Fox"). Says he wants peace. Wants to help
the Americans. Invites Israel to renew negotiations.
Visits Turkey and forges an alliance with them against
Kurdish independence in northern Iraq.
That is dangerous. Terribly dangerous. The American
might pressure us to make peace with Syria and give the
Golan back to them. True, up to now, the Americans have
reacted coolly to the Syrian overtures, but that may
change. As the American elections draw nearer, and Bush's
adversaries increasingly paint the Iraq war as one big
fiasco, Bush will be keen to demonstrate that the war was
actually an enormous success. To wit: It has created a
New Middle East (alas, without Shimon Peres). The wicked
states, Iran, Syria and Libya, have forsaken their bad
old ways and are basking in the Pax Americana. All the
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the region have been
abolished, except for Israel's.
No wonder the Sharon government is in a dilemma. They
are doing what they can to foil this plot. They publish
Qaddafi's overtures, so as to embarrass him into denying
them. They reject Assad's peace stratagem. "Don't run and
jump!" Sharon admonished his ministers this week,
commanding them not to get excited about it. Assad is not
serious. He only wants to suck up to the Americans. He
wants to use us in order to reach Bush. For him, Israel
is only "a stair of the White House", as Sharon put
it.
Defeatists might say: let's seize the opportunity.
Assad is weak? Assad is afraid? Assad want to appease the
Americans? All the better, that is the opportunity to
make peace. What have we got to lose? If Assad is
serious, we can put an end to our conflict with a
dangerous enemy. And if he isn't, we will unmask him.
(The same defeatists proposed in 1972, too, that we
should accept the peace offers sent by Anwar Sadat via
the UN emissary, Gunnar Jaring. But Israel had a tough
leader, Golda Meir, who rejected them "out of hand".
True, this led to the Yom-Kippur war and the deaths of
some 2000 young Israelis, not to mention the tens of
thousands of Egyptians and Syrians, but it certainly
screwed the defeatists.)
Sharon will not accept the Syrian proposal, because
that might lead to peace. And peace with the Syrians
would mean the return of the Golan and the dismantling of
all the settlements there. That would be awful. It would
also be a dangerous precedent for the Palestinians.
Bashar Assad, the fox in lion's clothing, wants to
renew the negotiations at the point where they were
broken off by Ehud Barak. At the time, Barak just managed
to save himself from the threat of peace in the nick of
time. Assad Sr. would accept nothing less than regaining
the shores of Lake Tiberias (the June 4, 1967 line)
instead of staying ten meters short of it (the 1949
line). Barak couldn't stand the idea of Assad dipping his
long feet in the waters of this lake. Now Assad Jr. is
hinting that he is prepared to forgo the pleasure. He can
dip his long feet somewhere else. Perhaps in the waters
of the Euphrates.
Sharon will not repeat the mistake of Barak, who
barely extricated himself by the skin of his teeth. He
will not start negotiations at all. And indeed, if Assad
is weak, why negotiate with him?
Catch 23: If the Arabs are strong, you can't make
peace with them. You have to defeat them. And if the
Arabs are weak, there is no need to make peace with them.
Why offer them anything?
Catch 24: If the Arabs say they want war, you have to
believe them. But if the Arabs say they want peace, they
are clearly lying. And how can you make peace with
liars?
©
TFF and the
author
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
|