The Obama administration remains mum regarding Syria's uprisings, and the reason may be Assad's policies towards Israel.
Robert Grenier
Al-Jazeera
"As Bashar al-Assad reverts to his family pedigree and continues what has become a brutal, methodical, and systematic crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, it seems hard to account for the Obama administration's rhetorical gentleness toward him.....
Syria-Israel peace deal
The only explanation appears to be that the Obama administration still holds out the hope, however unlikely, that Bashar al-Assad could yet agree to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal which would serve to compensate for its utter failure to achieve Israeli peace with the Palestinians.
But if this is the case, the Obama people should think again. For those in the region, justice for the Palestinians is the central concern vis-à-vis Israel - not recovery of the Golan. A just settlement of the Palestinian issue is the key to a broader regional peace, and to whatever hopes one might harbour for Israel's long-term ability to establish an accepted place for itself in a region which may soon evolve along a path which would otherwise make it far more conducive to a constructive relationship with Israel than has been the case in decades past.
In 1988, Meron Benvenisti, the Israeli political scientist, politician, journalist and activist wrote a highly insightful article concerning the first intifada. In it, he pointed out that the uprising in the occupied territories had brought home a central reality which Israeli politicians had tried for decades to deny or to ignore. In attempting to reach peace deals with regional states and in thinking and speaking of an Arab-Israeli, rather than an Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he said, Israelis had attempted to deceive themselves about the essential nature of the problem.
Inescapably, he said, the core issue was the Palestinians. Absent agreement with them, peace with the surrounding states, even if it could be achieved, would serve the Israelis little. The nature of its future relations with the Palestinians, he said, was the central - indeed, the existential - question for Israel.
Thus, in the end, it matters little what rhetoric or what marginal policy tools the Obama administration employs with regard to the current uprising in Syria. But if their current actions betray an attempt to wilfully ignore the central issue of justice for Palestinians, they are making a big mistake."
Robert Grenier
Al-Jazeera
"As Bashar al-Assad reverts to his family pedigree and continues what has become a brutal, methodical, and systematic crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, it seems hard to account for the Obama administration's rhetorical gentleness toward him.....
Syria-Israel peace deal
The only explanation appears to be that the Obama administration still holds out the hope, however unlikely, that Bashar al-Assad could yet agree to a Syrian-Israeli peace deal which would serve to compensate for its utter failure to achieve Israeli peace with the Palestinians.
But if this is the case, the Obama people should think again. For those in the region, justice for the Palestinians is the central concern vis-à-vis Israel - not recovery of the Golan. A just settlement of the Palestinian issue is the key to a broader regional peace, and to whatever hopes one might harbour for Israel's long-term ability to establish an accepted place for itself in a region which may soon evolve along a path which would otherwise make it far more conducive to a constructive relationship with Israel than has been the case in decades past.
In 1988, Meron Benvenisti, the Israeli political scientist, politician, journalist and activist wrote a highly insightful article concerning the first intifada. In it, he pointed out that the uprising in the occupied territories had brought home a central reality which Israeli politicians had tried for decades to deny or to ignore. In attempting to reach peace deals with regional states and in thinking and speaking of an Arab-Israeli, rather than an Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he said, Israelis had attempted to deceive themselves about the essential nature of the problem.
Inescapably, he said, the core issue was the Palestinians. Absent agreement with them, peace with the surrounding states, even if it could be achieved, would serve the Israelis little. The nature of its future relations with the Palestinians, he said, was the central - indeed, the existential - question for Israel.
Thus, in the end, it matters little what rhetoric or what marginal policy tools the Obama administration employs with regard to the current uprising in Syria. But if their current actions betray an attempt to wilfully ignore the central issue of justice for Palestinians, they are making a big mistake."
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