A Fox called Lion
Israel's response to the threat of peace
By Uri Avnery
10 January 2004
You really can't rely on these Arabs.
Take this fellow, Qadhafi. 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 (WMD).
The Americans hated him, and from time to time bombed him, killing his
daughter on one such occasions.
You could rely on good old Qadhafi. 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 Qadhafi 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 Qadhafi, 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 Little
Satan (us [Israel]). 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 labelled 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-Asad ("the Lion" in Arabic) turns into al-Tha'lab ("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 Qadhafi's overtures, so as to
embarrass him into denying them. They reject Asad's peace stratagem.
"Don't run and jump!" Sharon admonished his ministers this week,
commanding them not to get excited about it. Asad 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. Asad is weak? Asad is
afraid? Asad want to appease the Americans? All the better, that is the
opportunity to make peace. What have we got to lose? If Asad 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 [October 1973] and the deaths of some
2,000 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 Asad, 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.
Asad Senior would accept nothing less than regaining the shores of Lake
Tiberias (the 4 June 1967 line) instead of staying 10 metres short of it
(the 1949 line). Barak couldn't stand the idea of Asad dipping his long
feet in the waters of this lake. Now Asad Junior 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 Asad 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?
© Uri Avnery
