Category Archives: Syria

Hezbollah’s coalition partner meets Obama

At the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Schenker writes:

On Monday, Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri will visit Washington for a meeting with President Obama. In announcing the meeting, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called it “a symbol of the close and historic relationship between Lebanon and the United States.” Indeed, between 2005 and 2009, bilateral ties were never closer or more consequential, with the Cedar Revolution ending nearly three decades of Syrian suzerainty in the country. Over the past year, however, Hariri has had to govern in coalition with Hizballah. The Iranian-Syrian backed Shiite militia will be the elephant in the Oval Office during Monday’s meeting.

Prior to becoming prime minister, Hariri was a frequent visitor to the Bush White House as head of Lebanon’s ruling March 14 coalition. This will be his first visit as premier, his first meeting with Obama, and his first trip to the White House since last year’s seeming reversal of the Cedar Revolution. Although Syria no longer has troops stationed across the border, President Bashar al-Asad’s allies in Lebanon have retrenched in recent months and once again wield preponderant political influence. Meanwhile, the March 14 coalition has been dramatically weakened by attrition and defections at home and abroad that have led the movement to moderate its pro-Western stance and embrace — at least rhetorically — Hizballah’s “resistance” doctrine.

Phil Sands, at The National, adds:

Syria and Lebanon have agreed they will present a united front of opposition to Israel and support for Hizbollah, when the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, travels to Washington next week.

Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, held talks with the Lebanese leader in Damascus on Tuesday. In contrast to Mr Hariri’s first prime ministerial visit to Syria in December, when he was joined by a large government delegation, this time only senior aides accompanied the two.

Bussaina Shaaban, a Syrian presidential adviser, said the meeting was designed to “co-ordinate policy” ahead of Mr Hariri’s trip to the United States, expected to take place on Monday.

There’s little question that like all other Lebanese politicians, Saad Hariri depends for his survival on a good measure of expediency and pragmatism, but even so, are we really to believe that he is tightening his bonds with the people who killed his father? Or is it time to acknowledge that whoever was benefited by the assassination of Rafic Hariri, it wasn’t Syria.

As Bill Van Auken wrote in 2005:

If one asks the question, “Who benefits?” the answer is clear. The destabilization of Lebanon, the mobilization of the US-backed opposition to the pro-Syrian government in Beirut, and the vilification of Damascus all serve to advance US and Israeli strategic plans long in the making.

It is not just a question of motive, however. Israel has a long history of utilizing assassination as an instrument of state policy. The Israeli regime has not infrequently carried out acts of terror and blamed them on its enemies.

And that was written before the assassinations of the Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in 2008 and of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January this year, both of which killings were attributed to Mossad.

Russia’s Middle East moves

While Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan are like lead weights that limit the flexibility of the United States in the Middle East, other powers are now taking advantage of Washington’s inability to function as an agent of change.

After Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Turkey this week, commentator Semih Idiz wrote:

[I]f U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Turkey was the highlight of 2009, Medvedev’s visit to Turkey is the highlight of 2010. In fact, one can even go further and suggest that the latter visit has produced much more in terms of concrete results than the former.

There is no doubt, for example, that Washington is looking on with a certain chagrin as Turkey awards a $20 billion nuclear power plant contract to Russia and signs documents that propose a $100 billion volume of trade as well as billions of dollars worth of investments, all suggesting a rapidly growing strategic partnership.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Russia has rejected criticism from Israel after Medvedev met the leader of Hamas in Damascus.

Israel’s foreign ministry said it was “deeply disappointed” that Medvedev had met Khaled Meshaal, the group’s exiled leader, during a visit to Syria this week.

“Hamas is not an artificial structure,” Andrei Nesterenko, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement on Thursday.

“It is a movement that draws on the trust and sympathy of a large number of Palestinians. We have regular contacts with this movement.

“It is known that all other participants of the Middle East quartet are also in some sort of contact with Hamas leadership, although for some unknown reason they are shy to publicly admit it,” Nesterenko said.

Joshua Landis says:

Russia will fish in the troubled waters of the Middle East. American isolation can only redound to its advantage. The Arabs and Iran will look to Russia for arms. Russia can also be gratified by the deterioration of Turkey’s relations with both Israel and the United Stats. It will continue to look for ways to frustrate U.S. efforts to add teeth to its sanctions regime against Iran.

So long as America’s No. 1 foreign-policy goal in the region is to hurt Iran and help Israel, Russia will be drawn back into the region and a new Cold War will take shape. Washington’s failure to realign relations with Iran and Syria dooms it to repeat its past. But this time Israel will be more of a millstone around its neck as it thumbs it’s nose at international law and human rights.

American hypocrisy on weapons in the Middle East

Haaretz reports:

The U.S. administration has asked Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately stop transferring arms to Hezbollah. American officials made the request during a meeting Friday with the Syrian ambassador to Washington.

Al-Hayat reports Hillary Clinton sent a message to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on the need to curtail arms smuggling to Hezbollah. “Not a problem” said Berri, but that the US must also stop arming Israel with weapons and equipment.

US can’t get no satisfaction from Syria and Iran

At his blog, Syria Comment, Joshua Landis writes:

President Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was in Damascus today, threw down the gauntlet. Only the day before Hilary Clinton warned Syria “to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran,” and stop supporting Hizbullah, Hamas, and ex-Baathists in Iraq. For several years, Syria has been told to “flip” and break from Iran if it expects to be allowed out of diplomatic and economic isolation. Israel has made Syria’s break with Iran a condition for peace with Damascus.

Today, Assad came out forcefully and defiantly to end any talk of separation.

“We must have understood Clinton wrong because of a bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement to cancel the visas,” Assad said. “I find it strange that they (Americans) talk about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other,” he added.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, held up his hand with his thumb and index finger only a centimeter apart to indicate how little separated the positions of both countries.

The Washington Post reported:

The presidents of Iran and Syria on Thursday ridiculed U.S. policy in the region and pledged to create a Middle East “without Zionists,” combining a slap at recent U.S. overtures and a threat to Israel with an endorsement of one of the region’s defining alliances.

Ah, more threats to Israel… except Ahmadinejad’s threat was more nuanced than the Post report implies and it was made conditional on the possibility that Israel might launch another war. The Iranian president said:

I call on the Zionists to return to their senses and to recognize the legitimate rights of the people of the region and to respect them and to understand that if they continue to go down the wrong path, which they have traveled in the past, there will be no place for them in our region.

In other words, if Zionists insist on disregarding the rights of Palestinians and on making war with their neighbors, they are not welcome in the Middle East. What a reckless and unreasonable statement!

Why the U.S. is back on the road to Damascus

Time magazine on the new phase in US-Syrian relations:

Unlike many U.S. embassies in the Arab world that have been forced by security concerns to move from the center of capital cities to fortress-like suburban compounds, the Damascus embassy still occupies prime real estate — just a stone’s throw from the residence of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Syria’s much feared state security apparatus keeps close tabs on everyone entering and leaving the embassy, but it also helps keeps the embassy relatively safe from the occasional jihadist sneak attack. In turn, living close to the Americans may also help Assad sleep more easily at night, say Damascene wags, because the proximity of the embassy would make the U.S. and Israel think twice about every trying to dropping a bomb on him.

But news that the embassy is set, for the first time in five years, to have have a resident ambassador is a sign that the “can’t live with ’em/can’t live without ’em” U.S.-Syrian relationship is about to enter a new phase. The State Department has presented the credentials of Robert Ford, former U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Iraq, to the Syrian government for approval as ambassador in Damascus, according to the Syrian government. The Ambassador’s residence in Damascus has been empty ever since the Bush Administration accused the Assad regime of orchestrating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and removed then-Ambassor Margaret Scobey in protest.

Haaretz reported:

Syria is ready to respond to Israeli “aggression”, Syrian Minister of Information Mohsen Bilal said Sunday, in an escalating war of words between the two countries.

Speaking at a seminar near the Israeli border, Bilal said that Syria would “stand in the face of Israeli ambitions.”

Speaking just kilometres from the Golan Heights – a strategically important plateau at the intersection of Israel, Syria and Lebanon seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War – Bilal said the contentious area was at “the core” of Syria’s interests and vowed it would return to Syria.

On Israel-Palestine, no more of the same

Yossi Alpher:

President Obama and Mr. Mitchell must recognize that in the current regional strategic lineup, Syria is more relevant than Palestine. Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, declares himself ready to deal. A Syrian-Israeli process has a better chance of getting underway than a Palestinian-Israeli process. A successful Syrian-Israeli effort offers the United States, Israel and the moderate Arab states immediate benefits by reducing Iran’s penetration of the Levant, weakening its regional proxies and allies and rendering the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq — a major strategic event of the coming year — more likely to succeed. The mere fact of Israel-Syria negotiations would hurt Hamas, thereby strengthening Mr. Abbas.

Such a potential payoff justifies applying some pressure if necessary on Mr. Netanyahu. It justifies the risk of failure. And it justifies devoting more U.S. diplomatic energy to Damascus instead of Ramallah.

A second revised priority should address Hamas itself. It’s time to recognize that all the strategies mustered against the Hamas “emirate” in Gaza since the takeover of June 2007 have failed. The economic warfare policy invoked by Israel, the Quartet powers — the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations — and Egypt has punished 1.4 million Gazans, impoverished the moderate middle class and empowered and enriched Islamist smugglers, yet has failed to dislodge the Hamas regime. It is plainly counterproductive. Israel’s use of military force in Gaza, most recently a year ago, may have bought it some deterrent time but proved devastating for its international image. Egypt finally acknowledges that its mediation efforts with Hamas have failed. And the fiction that the P.L.O. will soon return to power in Gaza is just that — a fiction.

Lebanon drama adds act with leader’s trip to Syria

Lebanon drama adds act with leader’s trip to Syria
By Robert F Worth, New York Times, December 21, 2009

In any other part of the world, a new prime minister’s visit to a neighboring country would be a fairly routine event. But Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s trip to Syria over the weekend has been treated here as a kind of Lebanese national drama, the subject of almost endless commentary in newspapers and television shows.

It is not that anything really happened. Mr. Hariri and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria exchanged some thoroughly forgettable diplomatic banter and posed for photographs.

Instead, the trip epitomized a national story with anguished, almost operatic dimensions: a young leader forced to shake hands with the man who he believes killed his father. And it served as a reminder of this region’s deep attachment to political symbolism.

For many Lebanese, the visit was a measure of Syria’s renewed influence over Lebanon after years of bitterness and struggle since the Syrian military’s withdrawal in 2005. That withdrawal came after Mr. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was killed in a car bombing that many here believe to have been ordered by Syria.

The withdrawal was a blow to Syrian prestige, and afterward Saad Hariri seemed to have the entire Western world at his back as he built a movement for greater Lebanese independence and pushed for an international tribunal to try his father’s killers.

But since then, the United States and the West have chosen to engage with Syria, not isolate it. And Saudi Arabia, which has long backed Mr. Hariri and competed with Syria for influence here, reconciled with the Syrians earlier this year, leaving them a freer hand to guide politics in Lebanon as they once did. [continued…]

Relations with Turkey kindle hopes in Syria

Relations with Turkey kindle hopes in Syria
By Robert F Worth, New York Times, December 15, 2009

Ever since Syria and Turkey lifted their visa restrictions in September, Turkish visitors have poured into this picturesque northern city. Hawkers in Aleppo’s ancient souk now call out to shoppers in Turkish, and cross-border commerce has soared. The two countries have embarked on a very public honeymoon, with their leaders talking about each other like long-lost friends.

But this reconciliation is about far more than trade, or the collapse of old Turkish-Arab enmities. At a time of economic and political uncertainty here, the new warmth with Turkey has stirred hopes about Syria’s future direction, in areas that include religion, oil and gas, and peace with Israel.

For some here, the new closeness with secular, moderate Turkey represents a move away from Syria’s controversial alliance with Iran. For others, it suggests an embrace of Turkey’s more open, cosmopolitan society. And for many — including Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad — it conjures different dreams of a revitalized regional economy, less vulnerable to Western sanctions or pressure.

“It’s much more than an economic relationship,” said Samir al-Taqi, director of the Orient Center for International Studies in Damascus. “It’s about regathering the region, and a feeling that the West is much weaker, less liable to do anything here. I think Syria has lots of ambitions to redefine its geopolitical position.” [continued…]

Snubbed by Europe, now Turkey looks to the East

Snubbed by Europe, now Turkey looks to the East
By Emile Hokayem, The National, October 20, 2009

The accession to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a moderate Islamist organisation, provided the domestic impulse to redefine the country’s approach to the Middle East. Under the AKP, Turkey is rediscovering its eastern identity, combining it with moderate Islamist ideology into what is known as a neo-Ottoman outlook. This seeks to anchor Turkey as a pivotal Asian actor whose economic wellbeing depends on a stable environment: something it does not have yet. So a confident Turkey is going about shaping that environment with an ambitious “zero problems, zero enemy” policy, the brainchild of the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

This strategic reorientation has been obvious in the intense diplomatic activity of recent weeks. The most striking achievement is the establishment of diplomatic ties with Armenia, a country in dire need of regional integration, and the re-opening of the Armenian-Turkish border after 16 years. Conveniently, an “impartial scientific examination” will determine how to define the killing of more than a million Armenians during and just after the First World War. This arrangement may be scuttled by the rage of many in both countries, but a longstanding taboo has vanished.

Then there was the first meeting of the Turkey-Syria High Level Strategic Cooperation Council in Aleppo, crowning a decade-long rapprochement between the two countries. Of course, this would not have been possible without Turkish bullying and Syrian capitulation. In 1998 the Turkish army threatened to “enter Syria by one side and exit by another” unless Syria ended its support for the PKK. The Syrian president, Hafez al Assad, caved in and expelled the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, from Damascus. Syria also had to accept the loss of the province of Hatay, also known as Alexandretta. [continued…]

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, August 27, 2009

Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed.

The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in Iraq in over 12 months and came just a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wrapped up a state visit to Syria. While there he boosted political and economic relations with Syria and jump-started bilateral committees to see that security is strongly monitored on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Since then, however, a tug-of-war has erupted within Iraq between those who blame al-Qaeda and the outlawed Ba’ath Party and those who blame Iran for the Black Wednesday attacks.

Maliki blames both, while Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi said the weapons used for the attacks had been “made in Iran”. Syria’s name emerged rather suddenly on Sunday, when a former policeman appeared on Iraqi state-run media, claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they had been ordered by two Saddam loyalists based in Syria. [continued…]

Shiite power broker dies, in blow to Iraqi party
By Marc Santora, New York Times, August 27, 2009

One of the towering figures of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite who had longstanding ties with Iran but was also a supporter of the American invasion, died on Wednesday.

His death from cancer, at age 59, was a blow to the political group he led, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which emerged from the war as the country’s dominant political party. But it has steadily lost support over the past year, and this week it announced a new alliance with the party loyal to the scion of another revered Shiite family, the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Still, Supreme Council members hold positions atop important ministries and in Parliament. The group runs charitable organizations, libraries and schools and has a large network of support that stretches back to when Mr. Hakim’s father, Grand Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim, was one of the top Shiite spiritual leaders in the world. [continued…]

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border
By Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2009

The Obama administration and Damascus tentatively agreed to establish a tripartite committee, with Baghdad, to better monitor the Syrian-Iraqi border as the Pentagon draws down American troops from Iraq in coming months, said senior U.S. officials.

The proposed three-way border-control assessments could boost Iraqi security and patch one of the region’s most volatile fault lines. The initiative was made by a team of U.S. Central Command officers and their Syrian counterparts last week in Damascus.

The pact awaits the green light from Baghdad, which expressed frustration at being excluded from the U.S.-Syrian talks, saying they violated Iraqi sovereignty on security matters.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Tuesday. A statement issued late in the day by the Iraqi prime minister’s office in Baghdad said only that the two sides “discussed the expansion of the Iraqi and Syrian cooperation” in border control. [continued…]

Syria key to regional power shift

Syria key to regional power shift
By Mark Levine, Al Jazeera, July 28, 2009

It is hard not to feel like it is déjà vu all over again.

A US Middle East peace envoy travels to Damascus and then to Israel in an effort to jump start Israel-Syrian negotiations over a land for peace deal involving the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1967.

At the same time progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front seems stymied and the US remains reluctant to impose a final solution on the two parties.

The push towards Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations fits a familiar pattern in the larger Middle East peace process, one that returns to the first years of the Oslo peace process in the mid-1990s. [continued…]

EDITORIAL: Syria’s nuclear reactor

The Al Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 25, 2008

As someone who voiced great skepticism about the initial claims that Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in the Syrian desert on September 6, 2007, I’ll be the first to admit that the evidence provided in the DNI background briefing presents proof that Syria was in fact close to completing the construction of a Calder-Hall type of nuclear reactor producing plutonium. The evidence of North Korean involvement is not quite as compelling but there doesn’t seem much reason to doubt it. (Nearly all the information that follows comes courtesy of Arms Control Wonk.)

Here’s the video:

All in all, in terms of intelligence, this looks like an open and shut case — with one noteworthy exception: In the intelligence briefing a senior intelligence officer when asked about evidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons development program said this:

To go with the question you’re asking – weapons – we said, we believe it. There’s no other reason for it. But our confidence level that it’s weapons is low at this point. We believe it, but it’s low based on the physical evidence.

In other words, the physical evidence gathered indicated that Syria had built a nuclear reactor that, once operational, would have been capable of producing plutonium. There was no evidence that the reactor had been built to produce electricity and neither was it deemed suitable to be a research facility. The production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons was thus inferred in the absence of any other plausible explanation.

The next point worth noting is that the decision to bomb the facility was Israel’s:

Q: Would the U.S. have considered any kind of activity had the Israelis not?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We obviously were looking very closely at options, and we had looked at some approaches that involved a mix of diplomacy and the threat of military force with the goal of trying to ensure that the reactor was either dismantled or permanently disabled, and therefore never became operational.

We looked at those options. There were, as I mentioned to you, conversations with the Israelis. Israel felt that this reactor posed such an existential threat that a different approach was required. And as a sovereign country, Israel had to make its own evaluation of the threat and the immediacy of the threat, and what actions it should take. And it did so.

The unanswered questions at this point nearly all seem to be political. Such as:

1. Why did the US government back Israel in a military action that totally undermines the authority and value of the IAEA?

2. Why has the intelligence been released now?

3. What impact should this have on any agreement reached with North Korea?

FEATURE: What did Israel bomb in Syria?

A strike in the dark
By Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, February 3, 2008

Shortly after the [Israeli] bombing [in Syria, last September], a Chinese envoy and one of the Bush Administration’s senior national-security officials met in Washington. The Chinese envoy had just returned from a visit to Tehran, a person familiar with the discussion told me, and he wanted the White House to know that there were moderates there who were interested in talks. The national-security official rejected that possibility and told the envoy, as the person familiar with the discussion recalled, “‘You are aware of the recent Israeli statements about Syria. The Israelis are extremely serious about Iran and its nuclear program, and I believe that, if the United States government is unsuccessful in its diplomatic dealings with Iran, the Israelis will take it out militarily.’ He then told the envoy that he wanted him to convey this to his government—that the Israelis were serious.

“He was telling the Chinese leadership that they’d better warn Iran that we can’t hold back Israel, and that the Iranians should look at Syria and see what’s coming next if diplomacy fails,” the person familiar with the discussion said. “His message was that the Syrian attack was in part aimed at Iran.” [complete article]

NEWS ROUNDUP: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Syria

Bush prods Saudi Arabia on high oil prices
By Stephen Lee Myers, New York Times, January 16, 2008

President Bush urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Tuesday to take into account the toll that high oil prices are having on the American economy, gingerly touching on an issue that has begun to color the last year of his presidency and dominate the presidential election campaign. [complete article]

U.S. offers Saudis ‘smart’ arms technology
By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2008

The most controversial element of the sales is the offer to the Saudis of Joint Direct Attack Munitions, technology that allows standard weapons to be converted into precision-guided bombs. The deal envisions the transfer to Saudi forces of 900 upgrade kits worth about $120 million. [complete article]

Minister sees need for U.S. help in Iraq until 2018
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, January 15, 2008

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018. [complete article]

U.S. shifts Sunni strategy in Iraq
By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2008

More than 70,000 members of mostly Sunni Arab groups now work for American forces in neighborhood security programs. Transferring them to the control of the Shiite Muslim-dominated government, as policemen and members of public works crews, has taken on a new urgency as American troops begin to withdraw, officials indicated in recent interviews, meetings and briefings. [complete article]

Ex-Baathists get a break. Or do they?
By Solomon Moore, New York Times, January 14, 2008

A day after the Iraqi Parliament passed legislation billed as the first significant political step forward in Iraq after months of deadlock, there were troubling questions — and troubling silences — about the measure’s actual effects. [complete article]

Bush trip revives Israeli push for pardon of spy
By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post, January 15, 2008

A balding, bearded visage loomed over President Bush’s visit here last week, peering down from banners and from posters on buses barreling along quiet streets. The face was that of Jonathan Pollard, an American who pleaded guilty in 1986 to passing top-secret information to Israel. [complete article]

Israeli pianist Daniel Barenboim takes Palestinian citizenship
Haaretz, January 14, 2008

Daniel Barenboim, the world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, has taken Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples. [complete article]

Olmert faces right-wing rebellion
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, January 15, 2008

With Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the most right-wing party in Mr Olmert’s government already threatening to walk out, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud, urged both him and the religious party Shas to do so “to stop this process”. [complete article]

Haaretz probe: Shin Bet count of Gaza civilian deaths is too low
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, January 14, 2008

Israeli security forces killed 810 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 2006 and 2007, Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin reported Sunday at the weekly cabinet briefing in Jerusalem. He estimated that some 200 of those killed were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations. [complete article]

Syria rebuilds on site destroyed by Israeli bombs
By William J. Broad, New York Times, January 12, 2008

The puzzling site in Syria that Israeli jets bombed in September grew more curious on Friday with the release of a satellite photograph showing new construction there that [vaguely] resembles the site’s former main building. [complete article]

NEWS: Egypt outrages Israel; Israel ready to talk to Syria; Syria alienates France

Egypt opens crossing so Palestinians can return
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 3, 2008

Egypt opened its main crossing into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to allow more than 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims — including at least one official of the armed Hamas movement — to return to their homes there, outraging Israel in a growing dispute over border security.

The return followed a month of increasingly bitter words between the two neighbors over Egypt’s policing of its border with Gaza, which Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni last month described as “terrible.”

The friction between the two long-standing partners in U.S.-brokered peace deals comes as President Bush prepares to visit the region next week with a goal of smoothing the way for further peace accords. [complete article]

Israel signals willingness to reopen talks with Syria
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, January 2, 2008

Following a softening of the Bush administration’s opposition to Israeli-Syrian contacts, the Israeli government is actively exploring the possibility of reopening negotiations with Syria, according to Israeli sources and a senior Republican lawmaker who visited Damascus last week.

The Republican lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, spoke after meeting last Sunday, December 30, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and conveying a message from Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

Specter, accompanied by Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, told Assad that Israel is still waiting for a response to its request that Syria take public actions to prove its readiness for peace negotiations. For Specter, this message was seen as giving a green light to negotiations. “The time is right now, and prospects are very good,” the senator told reporters in Damascus after meeting Assad. “The parties will continue talks through intermediaries, and it’s my hope and expectation at some point, if preliminary progress has been made, the U.S. government would be ready, too.” [complete article]

Israel does not expect war with Iran: Peres
AFP, January 2, 2008

Israeli President Shimon Peres said he did not believe a war with Iran would be necessary but called for the end of the current government in Tehran, in an interview published Wednesday.

Peres told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was dangerous for Israel and the region but that other means could be used to contain the threat. [complete article]

Syria’s foreign politics
The Economist, January 1, 2008

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has made good on his threat to take action against Syria on account of its presumed role in blocking the election of a new president of Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo at the end of a holiday-cum-official visit, Mr Sarkozy said that France will henceforth suspend all diplomatic contact with Syria “as long as we do not have proof of their [the Syrians’] willingness to allow Lebanon to have a consensus president”. In a further swipe at the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, Mr Sarkozy said that France was willing to bankroll the tribunal that has been established under UN auspices to try those charged with the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, and a series of subsequent political murders in Lebanon—Syrian involvement is strongly suspected, although Mr Assad has consistently denied responsibility.

Mr Sarkozy’s exasperation follows several weeks of intensive French diplomacy aimed at working with Syria on a solution to the Lebanese presidential impasse. The French president dispatched several of his senior foreign policy advisers to Damascus, and spoke to Mr Assad on the telephone on three occasions in pursuit of a breakthrough. This approach appeared to mark a shift from that of the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac, in that it invited Syria to wield its influence in Lebanon. Mr Chirac had been the architect of a joint policy with the US that sought to extirpate all Syrian influence over Lebanese affairs in the interest of enabling Lebanon to achieve full independence and sovereignty over its territory. [complete article]

Eight Gazans killed by IDF fire; Katyusha hits north Ashkelon
By Yuval Azoulay, Avi Issacharoff, and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz, January 3, 2008

A Katyusha rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning struck an open field in northern Ashkelon, the furthest distance a rocket has struck yet – traveling some 16.5 kilometers.

Also Thursday, at least eight Palestinians were killed by Israel Defense Forces fire in several separate incidents in the Gaza Strip, including at least four militants. [complete article]

NEWS: Syria waiting for Bush to go; Egypt critical of Israel Lobby; Israel not planning to reprimand itself for use of cluster bombs

Israel’s Foreign Ministry: Syria feels peace must wait for next U.S. president
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, December 25, 2007

She Syrian administration is waiting out the Bush presidency, and only intends to enter a serious diplomatic process with Israel when the next United States administration takes over in 2009, according to the Foreign Ministry’s intelligence assessment.

“Damascus is interested in an agreement with Israel, but only according to Syria’s conditions and with American involvement,” Nimrod Barkan, who heads the ministry’s political research department, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

“The Syrian surface-to-surface missile threat has increased in the past year,” he added. “Israel’s deterrence against Syria and Hezbollah still exists and even increased during 2007, but we must watch closely for the possibility that the deterrence could weaken.”

Barkan added that the U.S. twice tried to “open a door for Syria” in 2007, but Damascus failed to meet the administration’s demands regarding its continued involvement in Lebanon. [complete article]

Egypt FM: Pro-Israeli lobby is harming our relations with U.S.
AP, December 26, 2007

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Wednesday accused the Israeli lobby in Washington of straining its relations with the United States by using the issue of smuggling across the Gaza border as an excuse to cut U.S. military aid to Cairo.

The remarks came hours before a scheduled meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik where they were expected to discuss the cross-border weapons smuggling to Gaza militants.

“The latest months have seen the Israeli lobby’s efforts to harm Egypt’s interests with the (U.S.)Congress,” Aboul Gheit told reporters. “The Israeli lobby inside the Congress was behind some positions adopted by Congress and the Israeli media campaign in the last few months falls within this trend.”

Another senior Egyptian official echoed Aboul Gheit’s comments, accusing Israel of trying to influence U.S. aid to Egypt. He referred to video footage that Israel passed to the United States in which Egyptian soldiers are seen taking part in the weapons smuggling. The official said that this is a “blatant attempt to interfere in internal Egyptian matters,” adding that “in the videos there is nothing” and that “the construction of settlements is very damaging the peace process”. [complete article]

Israel won’t prosecute for use of cluster bombs in Lebanon
By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, December 25, 2007

Israeli military prosecutors announced Monday that they would not press charges over the army’s use of cluster bombs during the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, actions that had been widely criticized by human rights organizations.

The announcement came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams met here Monday evening for the second time since the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Cluster bombs are not prohibited in warfare, but their use is criticized because they contain “bomblets” that explode over a wide area and may strike unintended targets. In addition, bomblets that fail to explode become, in effect, land mines that can be detonated by civilians long after fighting has stopped. More than 30 Lebanese are said to have been killed by munitions left behind after the monthlong war in 2006. [complete article]

NEWS: Syria turned away A.Q. Khan

Syria spurned atom smuggler approach in 2001: Assad
Reuters, December 19, 2007

Syria rebuffed a possible approach in 2001 from Pakistani-led traffickers in nuclear arms technology, President Bashar al-Assad said.

In an interview with Austrian daily Die Presse, Assad said an unnamed person delivered to Syria a letter purportedly from A.Q. Khan, the now-disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb who supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear parts and know-how.

“At the beginning of 2001 someone brought us a letter from a certain Khan. We did not know if the letter was genuine or a forgery by Israel to lure us into a trap,” Assad was quoted by Die Presse on Wednesday as saying. [complete article]