Peace and the Regional System

Lebanon and the Peace Process in the Middle East
February 22, 2000 Riviera Hotel, Beirut-Lebanon

Peace and the Regional System

Keynote address

The keynote speaker of the conference raised a number of relevant points with respect to Lebanon's participation - or absence thereof - in the Arab-Israeli negotiations. The speaker remarked that Lebanese civil society is eager to debate the topic of regional peace, but lacks accurate information on what is at stake. That is why many remain afraid that a final settlement will be to Lebanon's detriment. At the same time, Lebanon's absence at the negotiation table has caused some domestic frustration.

The speaker noted that it is necessary for the government to initiate diplomatic efforts so that Lebanon can enter the peace negotiations. His view was that once peace was achieved, it would lead to several other results, including rectification of the selective implementation of the Taif agreement and the normalization of the special relationship with Syria. These two byproducts would facilitate the emergence of a national unity government, which many favor.

The speaker sounded a cautionary note, however, when he remarked that peace would not return Lebanon to its economic glory past. Yet Lebanon had to discover for itself a new regional role, one that fit in with global economic trends. This would require coordination with Arab countries. As to the Palestinian refugees, Lebanon's official position and that of its people was clear: the Palestinians must be repatriated in accordance with UN General Assembly resolution 194. Lebanon must mount a strong diplomatic campaign to ensure that it is implemented.

The speaker concluded by noting that Lebanon needed a just and comprehensive peace. Only the future would tell, however, whether such a peace is warm, lukewarm, or cold.

Giving Lebanon a hearing

In a brief introduction, the moderator of the first session welcomed the participants. She described the conference as an effort to give Lebanon a hearing. Lebanon's perspective has not often been heard often enough, she pointed out, and the gathering was designed to do just that.

The first speaker began by reminding one and all that Lebanon is a player in what he referred to as the 'Levant sub-system', which is characterized today by conflict between Israel and Syria. The latter two powers are queens on the Levant chessboard, with such states or entities as Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories being the less powerful pieces. This situation is likely to continue even after a peace settlement. Syria can be expected to tighten its bonds with Lebanon, as this will facilitate its opening to "the modern world." In turn, the speaker continued, Lebanon would benefit from the Syrian presence, as this would guarantee it security and stability. The speaker added that, in the event a settlement is reached, Syria may need Lebanon even more than Lebanon needs Syria. The countries were complementary, and together formed a potential market of over 20 million people.

Though his focus was on Syria and Lebanon, the speaker did comment on the fact that, in the context of the Levant sub-system, Jordan had lately repositioned itself. He speculated that the late King Hussein had chosen to succeed him his son, Abdallah, in order to move Jordan away, in relative terms, from the United States and Israel, who had protected his throne. King Abdallah, in contrast to the former crown prince, Prince Hassan, who was a champion of close relations with the US and Israel, has sought to improve ties with the Arab states and make Jordan a more neutral actor in Arab-Israeli relations.

The speaker then moved on to the Syria-Israeli negotiations. He asked a question which was on many people's minds: Why, after an ongoing ten-year process, do the negotiations frequently seem to be on the verge of failure? A major problem is that the parties have fundamentally different conceptions of peace: Syria wants to recover the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in June 1967. And, the speaker was persuaded, President Asad probably wants to contain Israel behind its pre-1967 borders, and bring about an Arab-Israeli balance of power.

Israel, in contrast, seeks to exchange territory for strategic advantage. Indeed, this has been a recurring feature of its security doctrine, for example in relations with Egypt and Jordan. Israel's desire to increase its influence, military and otherwise, in the region has been met by Syrian refusal, because it is the view in Damascus that Israel is already overwhelmingly strong as it is. The speaker noted that UN Security Council resolution 242 presented a formula of 'land for peace', not 'land for peace plus certain security advantages.' The struggle, therefore, is one between expansion on the Israeli side, and containment on the Syrian side.

There have been two public phases in the Israeli-Syrian negotiations, the speaker continued. The first was in the period 1992-1996, beginning with the process started after the Madrid conference of October 1991, and ending with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister in May 1996. Several months after the election of Ehud Barak in May 1999 as Mr. Netanyahu's successor, the process formally resumed, with a meeting in Washington between Mr. Barak, and the Syrian foreign minister, Farouq al-Sharaa, and subsequent negotiations in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

In the 1992-1996 phase, Syria refused to enter into substantial negotiations with Israel before the Israelis committed themselves, first, to a full withdrawal to the lines existing on June 4, 1967, the eve of the Six-Day war. According to the speaker, the Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres agreed to such a demand, though they made a full withdrawal conditional on a number of reciprocal commitments from the Syrians.

As negotiations progressed, the Syrians shifted priorities towards attempting to deny Israel strategic advantages after an agreement. This led to what became known as the "non-paper" of May 24, 1995, a document entitled Aims and Principles of the Security Arrangements. The unsigned one-page document set general conditions for future security relations between Syria and Israel, and specifically noted that these had to be equal, reciprocal, and mutual. Its underlying rationale was that security is indivisible, something, the speaker suggested, the Israelis have not fully grasped in their negotiations with the Syrians.

In response to a question, the speaker did confirm that Syria had, in the past, agreed to a 10:6 ratio of demilitarization along any future border with Israel. This detail was revealed in a study published by the leading Israeli negotiator with Syria, Uri Saguy, when he was a fellow at the James Baker Institute at Rice University. While this appeared to suggest that Syria accepted the principle of asymmetrical demilitarization to Israel's advantage, the speaker warned that Syria only considered this applicable to a narrow strip along an agreed future border. Israel and Syria have yet to agree on the size of such an area.

At Shepherdstown, a compromise was struck on borders. Mr. Barak, the speaker continued, accepted an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines. These lines are de facto boundaries, different than the 1923 Mandate border between Syria and Mandatory Palestine. That is why Syria reciprocated with a concession of its own: it agreed to the establishment of a joint boundary commission to delineate where, precisely, the June 4, 1967 lines stood. Syria's acceptance of such a commission suggested, implicitly, that it would compromise on a final border, as these became an object of negotiations.

The Syrians also agreed to a joint water board. Privately, President Asad has assured the United States that Syria would not seek to pollute Lake Tiberias or interrupt the flow of water there. Syria also accepted some sort of early warning station on the ground under American, or possibly French, control to provide the parties with protection against surprise attack.

After initially accepting the quid pro quo on borders - full withdrawal in exchange for joint demarcation of the June 4, 1967 borders - the Israelis reversed themselves at the second round of the Shepherdstown talks. Mr. Barak rejected the idea of a withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines and demanded that Syria make a series of concessions on other issues such as security and water. It is at that point that Syria, seeing that Israel had backtracked and realizing that the US was unprepared to implement a deal it had negotiated, decided to break off the talks.

One of the reasons for Mr. Barak's reluctance to follow through with the arrangement was the publicity surrounding the negotiations. While Yitzhak Rabin was able to maneuver secretly, Mr. Barak has no such luxury. His difficulties have been compounded by the fact that the Israeli public has deep-seated doubts about giving up the Golan. There is a view that relinquishing control of the plateau would not very much improve Israel's situation. Moreover, Israelis wonder whether a deal is really worth it, given the speculation surrounding President Asad's health. This pessimism is reinforced by the Syrian president's reluctance to behave towards Israel as did the late Egyptian president, Anwar al-Sadat.

The Syrian-Israeli-Lebanese triangle

In Lebanon, the speaker argued, Ehud Barak is facing a dilemma. He is hemmed in by the pledge he made to the Israeli electorate that he would pull his forces out of Lebanon by July 2000. The successes of the resistance, in particular Hizballah, are pushing Mr. Barak in the direction of seriously considering a unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon. However, this is not his preferred option: he neither wants to give the resistance a public victory, nor does he believe that a unilateral withdrawal will satisfy Israel's security concerns.

Despite his preferences, however, Mr. Barak is politically weaker today than when he took office, in part because he has missed all the political deadlines he set. Even those who brought him to power - the media, the intelligentsia, the left-wing political establishment - are confused by the prime minister's policies. This may well imply that events control Mr. Barak today, rather than the contrary. Illustrating this is the fact that in Lebanon Israel has no answer to Hizballah. Nor can it hold Syria solely responsible for the organization's actions, since Hizballah is neither a Syrian nor an Iranian puppet, and was born from the reality in south Lebanon.

The Israeli public increasingly favors a unilateral pullout from Lebanon. This would allow Israel to escalate from a position of strength, many Israelis believe. Right-wing members of Mr. Barak's One Israel coalition seem to be joining the Likud in demanding that such a withdrawal be accompanied by threats of massive retaliation if Israeli territory is attacked. Indeed it can be argued that Mr. Barak ordered the attack against Lebanon's electricity infrastructure recently in order to save his coalition.

This situation, the speaker insisted, provides a recipe for war. This has been compounded by misperceptions on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide. The speaker ventured, further, that the situation appeared not unlike that on the eve of the Six-Day war of 1967. This led the moderator to ask: Is the alternative to peace between Israel and Syria war? Not all participants agreed that it was.

The speaker concluded that Mr. Barak would be unable to resist demands for a withdrawal after the July 2000 deadline. This assessment was shared by many of the participants, as was the view that a unilateral withdrawal would pose substantial problems for the region. The speaker remarked that, in the event of a unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Syria would have a vested interest in maintaining instability in the border region, perhaps by encouraging anti-Israeli military activities by Palestinian organizations. This would allow the Syrians to continue to exert pressure on Israel, since the fear in Damascus is that an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon will imply an indefinite delay in a solution to the Golan imbroglio.

Mr. Barak's difficulties in Lebanon also perhaps explain why he backtracked at Shepherdstown on his commitments to pull back to the June 4, 1967 lines. As the casualties in Lebanon have mounted, internal cohesion in Israel has suffered. At the same time, demands have increased on the prime minister to ensure that Israel garners ever more strategic advantages over Syria once a settlement is concluded.

How would President Asad react to this? He certainly prefers to conclude a settlement with Israel before the Palestinians do, and wants to reap the economic benefits of peace, which are imperative due to Syria's deteriorating economic situation. However, the speaker continued, President Asad will not agree to an accord that is to Syria's disadvantage. As the Syrian president sees it, there is room for demurral: while the Golan is a symbol of Syrian sovereignty - meaning there can be no concessions on its return - it is not essential to Syrian life, suggesting that Syria has ample time to await an optimal deal on the plateau's future.

The role of the United States in this emerging process was repeatedly brought up by the speaker and participants. According to the speaker, the US made two fundamental mistakes in the Middle East in the last three decades. One was to allow Israeli settlement building to continue, the other was to allow Israel to stay in Lebanon for so long. The speaker noted that the American president, Bill Clinton, undoubtedly wants peace treaties between Syria and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Yet Washington had not condemned the Israeli raids on Lebanon in February, nor did it forcefully defend the April understanding of 1996, which it helped broker. This could be because President Clinton did not want to damage the election chances of his vice-president, Al Gore, and his wife, Hillary, who are keen to avoid offending Jewish-American voters.

What of Lebanon?

Several participants took advantage of the framework developed by the speaker to comment on the link between the Lebanese-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli tracks. No one openly suggested that the two tracks should be separated, though there was disagreement on the outcome of the linkage. One participant defended the close relations between Syria and Lebanon, implicitly recognizing that the resistance also served Syria's interests as a means of exerting pressure on Israel. He noted, further, that Lebanon's right to resist occupation did not contradict the conducting of negotiations.

Another participant was more wary. He wondered whether, in the event cross-border attacks took place after a unilateral Israeli withdrawal, the Israelis would also respond against Syrian targets. The implication was that Lebanon alone might be made to pay the price for Syria's continued use of Lebanese territory against Israel, as a means of securing an advantageous arrangement on the Golan Heights. The speaker did not directly answer the question, though he did note that Mr. Barak had promised massive retaliation in response to attacks after a unilateral pullout. Mr. Barak's attitude is supported by many in Israel, and there are those in the Likud who would like a war with Syria.

The objections of one participant put Lebanon's limited influence in perspective. He commented that the negotiations between Syria and Israel had legitimized Lebanon's absence from the talks. He argued, further, that this was unjustified, since Mount Hermon, whose future was being discussed by Syria and Israel, was also partly in Lebanese territory. Lebanon had been given no say on how the 1.2m cubic meters of water there would be distributed. He noted that the early warning station so essential to the Syrian-Israeli talks was on Lebanese land. He mentioned, finally, that little was being done to solve the problem of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and concluded that there should be no peace at Lebanon's expense.

The speaker agreed. He cautioned, however, that it was time for the Lebanese to work in collaboration with Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians to help find a solution to the refugee problem. He also recommended that Lebanon draw up an account of damages suffered during the Arab-Israeli conflict: "If you don't ask, you don't get" was the formulation he employed. He suggested that the Syrians too should put forward financial compensation claims, though President Asad appeared too proud to ask for money. This, he noted, was a mistake.

A reverse Sykes-Picot?

The second speaker took the macro-political road to examine how the Middle East peace negotiations might affect the regional state system. He remarked, in reference to the Palestinian-Israeli track, that there was a serious conceptual clash on the final status of a Palestinian state. This revealed an absence of moral equivalence in Israel's dealings with the Palestinians. Thus, the Palestinians find themselves alone today - a situation to which they contributed - making the advance of serious negotiations between them and the Israelis laborious. As the speaker pithily put it: "The PNA (Palestinian National Authority) has lost its carrot and never developed a stick."

The situation was illustrative of a larger problem in the Arab world: the absence of Arab unity vis-à-vis Israel, and indeed its replacement by what the speaker referred to as an excessive "tribal-state logic." The Arab states, forever unable to act in unison, often seem to be engaged in a 'zero-sum game' when measuring their interests in relationship to those of their Arab brethren. This did not bode well for future negotiations.

The negotiations between the different Arab parties and Israel are leading to a fundamentally new state and security structure in the Middle East. The talks are about tomorrow rather than today, the speaker remarked. This has already alarmed Israel, which is wary of improved ties between the United States and Syria, along the lines of what took place between the United States and Egypt. The speaker then sought to explain the context of the emerging state system in the region by offering up several observations.

He noted, first, that the region was witnessing a 'strong internationalization' of Arab relations, with a concomitant 'Americanization' of these relations. The speaker was specifically drawing a parallel with the concept of 'Finlandization,' whereby regional powers in the Middle East have been compelled, particularly since the Gulf crisis, to accommodate themselves to the interests of non-regional powers, most prominently the United States.

The speaker, continuing, remarked that the Arab world is demoralized and lacks a sense of direction. This is accompanied by, what he referred to as, increasingly 'dis-Arabized inter-Arab relations.' Making matters worse is the fragmentation of the Arab body-politic, which has made Arab states particularly vulnerable at a time when peace is reshaping the regional state system. In many ways, the Madrid conference of 1991 was a new Versailles. Various ideas for regional cooperation, particularly economic cooperation, have effectively "privatized the peace process."

The speaker then focused on what he referred to as 'historic Greater Syria', an area corresponding to Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. The area has become the focal point for bitter conflict between states wanting to enhance their regional influence. This will lead to systemic transformations, since the fluidity in 'historic Greater Syria' is creating a veritable cornucopia of possible alternatives: Jordan might go the way of a confederation with the Palestinians, while Syria and Lebanon might go another. It is not clear where Israel stands in all this.

Continuing, the speaker remarked that what is going on in 'historic Greater Syria' is of vital interest to Egypt, Turkey and other regional powers which will be affected by the ensuing changes. The speaker argued that what is taking place is a 'reverse Sykes-Picot': the state system is being redrawn, although this time the motor for change is less imperial interests, which are inherently political, than economic relations.

A participant disagreed with this model, arguing that he did not necessarily discern inherited historical patterns in 'historic Greater Syria.' He was unconvinced by the notion of a 'new game' in the Levant area, and expressed the same view to the first speaker, who had used the expression 'Levant sub-system.' Implicit in this criticism was a notion that the Arab states are pragmatic enough to break out of traditional geo-political mindsets, even when they publicly pay lip service to these for reasons of expediency. Among the events proving this were the Egyptian-Israeli and Jordanian-Israeli peace agreements and the Oslo process.

Another participant agreed, questioning the whole concept of a supposed cohesiveness of the Levant area as developed by both speakers. He pointed out that "we are in a new age." His point was that the Levant was being transformed by globalization, which had, in the past twenty years, altered economic systems and political structures.

A third participant showed marked despondency in concluding that the Arabs appeared to be mere observers of regional developments. Invariably, it seemed, they were on the receiving end of the region's processes. This made him wonder whether cooperative Arab participation in the peace process was doomed. Given this state of affairs, he asked whether Israel intended to impose preferential economic relations - as opposed to security arrangements - on the Arabs in the context of a settlement?

The first speaker, to whom the question was addressed, noted that he did not think that Israel intended to impose a postwar economic system balanced in its favor. Rather, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, appeared to be preoccupied with security issues and water, befitting his military background. Like his political mentor, the late Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Mr. Barak would primarily seek a hefty security package from the United States to make more palatable a new relationship with Syria.

The session adjourned amid a general acknowledgment of uncertainty in the near future. Syria is going through a period of domestic transition, particularly as regards the succession question; Ehud Barak is facing uncertainty both domestically and in southern Lebanon; and the United States is in the midst of an election year, which means that the president, Bill Clinton, has a short deadline to advance the Syrian-Israeli and Lebanese-Israeli negotiating tracks.

| next | workshops and seminars | top |