Middle East Analysis: Syria, Thomas Friedman, & "Why We Fail" (Narwani)

Sharmine Narwani writes in The Huffingon Post:

Nothing annoys me more about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman than his tendency to scuttle his occasionally insightful commentary with fabricated assumptions to fit his narrative.

This makes it really hard for me to like him.

You know that irritation that grows under your skin when somebody is making a lot of sense and then suddenly -- wham -- they hit you with a doozy so ridiculous you feel disproportionately deflated?

Well, that is my Friedman experience time and time again. Not always though -- sometimes I am irritated from the get-go.



In his latest column on Tuesday, Friedman shines a light on a very true Middle East reality -- one that quite deliberately gets downplayed in Washington's power centers: The Mideast is now, for the first time since the Cold War ended, largely defined by two blocs of influence and their respective worldviews.

The first, is the US-led bloc consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan -- the latter three often ignominiously referred to as the "moderate" Arab states. The second, is the grouping sometimes referred to as the "resistance" bloc that consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Friedman's column posits that there are five key actors in the Israeli-Palestinian equation today: Israel, America, the "moderate" Arabs, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and the resistance bloc.

Look, I can give him that -- I don't have a fundamental problem with the fact that he only includes one key individual from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to represent the entire Palestinian side. Fatah, on its own, is rather irrelevant these days, except in the minds of the US bloc. And kudos to Tom for recognizing this nuance.

Friedman then makes his main thrust, which is that only two of these actors actually have clear strategies for a Palestinian-Israeli solution:  Fayyad, the former World Bank economist who, peace or no peace, wants to create a de facto Palestinian state on the ground within two years -- and the resistance bloc. That's true enough. Friedman goes on to press the other three players to forge a clear, unified strategy -- preferably backing Fayyad's plan -- which can foil the agenda of the resistance bloc.

And then I did my double take. Iran... Hezbollah... Hamas... Where was Syria?

Ah, Thomas. You did that doozy-thing.

The Alliance of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas

It is more than abundantly clear that in Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Cairo, all efforts are being made to wrest the reluctant Syria from this "resistance" bloc. It is equally obvious for those who live in the real world, that Syria has no intention of parting ways with its longtime friends.

When US President Barack Obama moved ahead with plans to reinstate an American ambassador in Damascus in 2009, the gleeful thinking in Washington was that Syria would prostrate itself in gratitude, jump at bilateral peace talks with Israel and walk into the US bloc's fold. Increasingly, however, even US analysts are grumpily acknowledging that the chances of this now happening are akin to Sarah Palin embracing a vegetarian diet.

But not our Thomas. He decided that this is how he wanted things to be, and so -- voila -- it just was.

As an opinion writer, Friedman still has the responsibility to convey the facts as they are - he can always spin his analysis around them or not include them in his deliberations if he wants to produce substandard commentary. But to just unilaterally change the facts? That isn't just wishful thinking -Friedman is trying to create the facts. And here is why his exclusion of Syria from this bloc is so completely disingenuous:

Syria Makes Its Position Clear

Renewed Syrian-US relations, rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh, and Syria's disengagement from Lebanon brought hopes last year that the government of Bashar Al-Assad would take a more independent regional stance. When speculation reached a fevered pitch, Assad decided to nip it in the bud by staging a photo op worth a thousand words.

Last month, he convened a high-profile meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadand Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah just to underline the cohesiveness of this bloc and quash all speculation of potential rifts.

The message, according to savvy, Damascus-based political analyst, journalist and author Sami Moubayed, was two-fold. Firstly, it was a warning for Israel to abandon all thoughts of launching another war in the region -- as in Gaza in 2008/9 and Lebanon in 2006: "The meeting de-escalated tension in the region and served as a deterrent by reminding all parties that the amount of destruction that would result from any war would be too much to bear."

Secondly, the meeting represented a clear signal to the US that this alliance will stand firm and cannot be ruptured because of the will of external players. Moubayed explains:

You don't sever relations just because another party wants you to -- you only do so when you have been wronged or there is a state of war, and those conditions don't apply at all to Syrian-Iranian relations.

In fact, throughout the 1990s Syria enjoyed relationships with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US -- relationships with one party never precluded relations with another. That is not the way of diplomacy.

London-based Syrian diplomat Jihad Makdissi concurs: "We have always enjoyed good relations with both Iran and the West, so why is there suddenly a necessity to break links? This Iranian-Syrian relationship is devoted to the stability and security of the region, and the West should take advantage of this friendship instead of antagonizing both countries."

Invest, Not Divide

What does this mean? In the world of realpolitik, far, far away from Friedman's Mideast musings, this means that the US and others can "use the leverage that Syria has within this group to moderate them", says Moubayed.

He believes that after over a year of active engagement with Syria, the US bloc has in effect tacitly surrendered to the notion that "if they can't break this alliance, the best possible alternative is to invest in it instead."

There is evidence of this "investment" already: in the past two years, Syrian backdoor diplomacy has gained the release of high-profile Western captives in both Iran and Gaza. And recognition of Syria's role has come from the highest quarters in European capitals.

As Moubayed notes, the departure of US troops in 2012 will leave a vacuum in Iraq, which Iran and Saudi Arabia will compete to fill. Secular Syria is in the enviable position of enjoying a "cross-confessional network of allies (read Shiites and Sunnis) which it can use to stablilize and normalize Iraq - to the collective benefit of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States".

Even if the Syrians and Israelis struck a deal to swap the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for peace -- highly unlikely given the make-up of the current, right-wing Israeli government -- Jihad Makdissi insists that nothing would fundamentally change in relation to an alliance with Iran:

In Syria's view, for normality to prevail in the Middle East, Israel needs to withdraw from all occupied Arab land. The occupation is the problem in the region, not Iran.

So, Tom -- peace talks or not, nuke talks or not -- Syria is an active adherent of the increasingly popular regional worldview that includes Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. All the wishful thinking in the world won't alter a relationship that has outlasted five US presidents, and provides vital strategic value to its participants.

In all fairness, Friedman is just doing something that has been a hallmark of US policy in the Middle East for decades. Denying inconvenient facts that have left us deaf, dumb and blind to the realities we face in the region. It is no wonder we cannot claim any lasting victories.

Blind spots everywhere, and then we wonder why we fail.

Israel-Palestine Proximity Talks: "Theatre of the Absurd"

Sharmine Narwani writes for The Huffington Post:

After a year of grandiose declarations on Mideast peace prospects and a gazillion trips to the region by US envoy George Mitchell, the Obama administration has come up with this?

"Proximity Talks." Look it up in the Dictionary of Realpolitik and you will find the following: "Negotiations going nowhere fast. Wear seatbelts lest the speed of self-destruction spins you off the earth's axis."

Israel-Palestine-Hamas Mystery: Questions & A Response
Israel-Palestine: “Proximity Talks” and US Vice President Biden

Palestinians and Israelis are not even going to be at the table together. Mitchell could not even make that happen. This isn't phase one of a longstanding conflict. These are adversaries who have sat across many tables and struck many agreements over the past 19 years.



And so this is where we are in the gruelingly endless Middle East peace process. About a dozen steps back from where we started.

False Starts

Here's the down-low. After an upbeat set of promises to bring old foes to the Mideast negotiating table, Obama realized that Israel would not move so much as an inch on freezing illegal settlement-building activity -- a fundamental necessity since there can be no land-for-peace agreement without land to cede.

The Obama presidency began just days after Israel's three-week military devastation of Gaza concluded, putting not even the most sycophantic of Palestinian leaders in a position to be generous without a significant Israeli goodwill gesture. Then Benjamin Netanyahu emerged victorious from Israeli national elections and the die was cast.

Netanyahu's Likud Party has never accepted a Two-State Solution, and Obama wasted much time wresting a luke-warm endorsement of this plan from the new Israeli prime minister. But while Netanyahu's "compromise" was lauded by US officials and media pundits, the fact is that Mideast observers knew there was nothing new in his for-the-cameras acceptance of a Palestinian state minus sovereignty.

On the other side of the fence, the increasingly unpopular Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) government -- as corrupt and ineffectual as our Arab allies come -- desperately needed an active peace process to give it a veneer of respectability. Fatah's credibility is in serious jeopardy -- it pushed for participation in peace talks with Israel almost two decades ago at the Madrid Peace Conference -- and has virtually nothing to show for it.

Well, except for the fact that Jewish settlers in the West Bank have quintupled in number and that Israel has managed to divide up the West Bank to its advantage, with Jewish-only roads and checkpoints cutting off Palestinian movement and freedoms further.

But PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was unable to participate in post-Gaza peace talks without a settlement halt -- he had drawn that line in the sand after Obama offered up a settlement freeze as part of his fantasy-based approach to peacemaking.

Eureka!

So, as Israel continued to announce new settlement projects and evict Palestinians in hotly-contested Jerusalem from their homes, Abbas and Obama looked desperately for a way to hang on to credibility and launch talks in some form.

And then the brilliant idea struck. Why, if we can't talk to Israel directly because of its flagrant violations of international principles and laws, let's just have the Americans do it for us. And this way, if anything goes wrong and our popularity suffers, we have plausible deniability and can blame it all on the US.

The Proximity Talks were thus born. Presumably that means "talks that are close, but not too close."

And the absurdity continues. US Vice President Joe Biden, during his visit to Israel on Monday said: "If the talks develop, we believe that we'll be able to bridge the gaps and that the conflict will be ended."

Really? Two decades of talks between Palestinians and Israelis when the players were far more motivated to deliver a solution -- and now -- Biden believes the conflict will be "ended."

One-Way Street To Irrelevance

Here's what I think is actually happening:

I think Obama is realigning his peacemaking priorities in the Middle East -- at least until he has the US economy, health care reform and Iraq under his belt -- a must if he wants to be re-elected in 2012. For both domestic and international public consumption, he cannot accept complete failure in such a visibly-touted part of his global agenda. There must be talks in some form, but they will be placed on a low burner, increasing the risk of more of the same endless "process without peace" that the US has sponsored since 1991.

Instead, Obama is placing his bets on Iran to bring him home a foreign policy "victory" -- contradicting his earlier claims that Palestinian-Israeli conflict resolution should be tackled first, as this will diffuse Iran's grandstanding and reduce its regional influence.

The US's Mideast allies have to be dealt with in the meantime. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is getting testy watching Iran's ascendency in the Persian Gulf, and is champing at the bit to halt this trend. The Saudi King is the proud benefactor of the Arab Peace Plan and he would like to see it advanced. As would Egypt -- facing key elections in 2011 and suffering from regional criticism for its own blockade of Gaza. In return for Saudi and Egyptian cooperation on isolating Iran further - and financial/political help in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the US will push forward its half-baked peace process and try to keep the wheels grinding as long as humanly possible.

In the meantime, the entire US "Camp" is doing all it can to retain the status quo in the Mideast. It isn't just Iran that threatens. The rising popularity of a bloc of nations, leaders and groups that challenges US, Israeli, Saudi and Egyptian hegemony in the region just keeps growing. The Arab and Muslim Street is with the new bloc -- decades of corruption, occupation and stagnation have seen to that.

And here we are, just la-la-la plodding along, ignoring facts and realities in a quick-changing landscape. We are not the economic and military power of yesteryear -- protracted, unwinnable battles in tribal Afghanistan and splintered Iraq demonstrate that we can not even win an elementary victory in the Mideast.

We listen to political decision makers -- not area experts who can clue us in -- and advance forward as though nothing has changed, as though we are the only player that counts. We decide who plays with us -- not the democratically-elected Hezbollah and Hamas whose critical part in any feasible and long lasting Mideast solution we still refuse to acknowledge.

We vilify Iran and others who threaten our view of things, not realizing that this opposition emerges because of our blinkered behaviors and double standards in a region straining to discover its own identity and set wrongs right.

Double standards have destroyed any credibility we have in the region. We resist international demands that Israel and its 300 nuclear warheads join the IAEA, but censure the longstanding IAEA member, Iran, from pursuing a nuclear energy program. We back some of the most despicable dictatorships in the Arab world and then undermine the electoral victories of those we oppose. We send troops and funding to rein in Salafi jihadists throughout the region without a backward glance at the most intolerant nation of them all, our ally Saudi Arabia, the very source of radical militancy. And we don't even offer an apology for the wrongful deaths of hundreds of thousands of their civilians in our zealous attempts to avenge the deaths of 2,750 of ours.

And now we are hosting the Theater of the Absurd -- these so-called proximity talks -- where there are no actors, just us, sitting in a room alone, talking to ourselves. We have fooled them all! Or have we?