لماذا يتوجب على سوريا أن تنتظر

بقلم: أوديد اران – سفير إسرائيل إلى حلف شمال الأطلسي و الاتحاد الأوروبي.

هاآرتز الإسرائيلية - 27/4/2007

لقد انتظرت عائلة الأسد أقل من 40 عاماً لاستعادة حكمها للجولان, لندعها تنتظر سنوات قليلة أخرى حتى يتم حل جوهر الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي وهو الصراع الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي.

Why Syria must wait

By Oded Eran

The heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All the other components of the former revolve primarily around the question of borders. The resolution of those other elements is important, and - as in the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt - has led to the promotion of the concept of accepting Israel. But until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is completely resolved, the Israeli-Arab conflict will continue either to simmer on a low flame or even to boil over.

Even if the negotiating skills of former Foreign Ministry director general Alon Liel and his negotiation partner - Ibrahim (Ayeb) Suleiman, an American of Syrian heritage - are granted the utmost respect and viewed with the greatest sincerity, we must take into account the ramifications that entering into talks with Syria would have on resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict, especially the Israeli-Palestinian one.

I never conducted negotiations with Syria, so I can't absolutely contradict the argument that such talks could be completed within six months. Nonetheless, even if an extensive foundation was laid during Israel-Syria negotiations over the past 15 years, it is difficult to believe that a full treaty could be reached in such a short time on such questions as the border, water, security arrangements and normalization, among other issues. A year of intensive negotiations appears to be a more reasonable period.

Assuming that negotiations did end in an agreement, such a deal would have to be brought to a vote in a national referendum, as all prime ministers who have previously been involved in negotiations with Syria have promised. One can presume that there would also be a need to repeal the Golan Heights Law. Preparing for a referendum, holding it and analyzing the significance of its results would require another year, bringing us to nearly two years elapsing from the start of negotiations. Assuming that the referendum produces the result the government anticipated, the process of evacuating the army and civilians would begin. With the lessons they learned from the experience of the evacuation of Israelis from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli residents of the Golan Heights would surely wage a more extended and uncompromising battle to assure that they receive suitable compensation and to create the proper conditions for their successful absorption into other communities, before they are evacuated from their homes. Let us not forget that the Israeli population of the Golan is nearly twice the size of that which resided in Gaza, and it has established a far more extensive agricultural and industrial infrastructure than the one that existed in the Strip.

One can predict with cautious optimism that the process of evacuating the Golan Heights would take two years, possibly longer - bringing us to a minimum of four years from the beginning of Israel-Syria negotiations. Even the most ardent proponents of Syrian-Israeli peace would agree that it should take a few years to carry out the military disengagement and the creation of buffer zones and bases to which the armies will redeploy - the Israeli army from the Golan Heights to Israel, and the Syrian army to the new lines within Syrian territory. Let us say, for the purpose of this discussion, that it would take three years from the time the agreement is signed. Thus would five years have passed.

Few would dispute the assertion that the Israeli political bridge is incapable of supporting two peace processes, a Syrian and a Palestinian one, at the same time. As one of some dozen envoys sent by then-prime minister Ehud Barak to conduct negotiations with the Palestinians, I disagreed with his decision in late 1999 to begin talks with Syria while negotiations with the Palestinians were underway. I told him he would lose a lot of political blood in order to get a referendum passed on the Israeli-Syrian agreement and would be forced to give up on the negotiations with the Palestinians. It wasn't as a result of the Palestinians taking offense because Barak preferred to talk with Syria that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations failed, but that doesn't take away from this mistake, and others, that Barak made.

It is our duty to resolve, first and foremost, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, under the right conditions for negotiations, to dedicate all our internal political resources to it. The State of Israel must not give the Palestinians the message that it is now abandoning the resolution of the conflict with them and that they should be so kind as to come back when the complex process of peace with Syria is completed. The Assad family has waited slightly less than 40 years to rule the Golan Heights again; let it wait another few years until the heart of the conflict is resolved.

The writer is Israel's ambassador to North Atlantic Treaty Organization institutions and the European Union.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/853134.html

-----------------

نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

ـ

ـ

من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ