by Reese Erlich
Officially, Israel had proclaimed its neutrality in Syria's civil war. But as indicated by its policies in the Golan, the reality was different. To find out more, I had to visit Tel Aviv.
Israel's public-transport system is quite good. I arrived at Jerusalem's central bus station one morning, stood in a short line, and paid the equivalent of eleven dollars for a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv, which is forty-two miles away. A bus left every twenty minutes. My bus quickly filled with students, retirees, business people, and young soldiers clad in olive-green uniforms and carrying Galil assault rifles. I was off to interview experts at Tel Aviv University, one of the country's most prestigious educational institutions.
While the transport system is cheap and efficient for Israeli Jews, it's very different for Arabs. Palestinians from the West Bank can't travel anywhere in Israel without special passes. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are legally able to travel but are often afraid to ride the bus. On a previous trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I sat next to a young woman grading papers in English. She turned out to be a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who commuted to teach at an Arab school near Tel Aviv. On the bus, she never wore a hijab nor spoke in Arabic. She spoke only English, fearing the driver or a passenger would throw her off. By being quiet, she hoped to pass as a foreigner.
I got off at the Tel Aviv station and took the short taxi ride to the university. I walked into the sprawling campus to meet Eyal Zisser, a history professor and dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Back in early 2011, when most of the world welcomed the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring, Israeli leaders were already wary, according to Zisser. After all, demonstrations were targeting pro-US dictators who had reached accommodations with Israel. Israel might have to pay the price for having cooperated with such repressive regimes.
So when Syrians rose up, Israeli leaders were wary once again. For all Syria's anti-Israel rhetoric and supposed support for Palestinians, the Assad family had kept the Israeli border quiet and secure. “He's the devil we know,” Zisser told me. “We got used to Bashar al-Assad. This regime is evil…but at the same time, it kept the border quiet. Better to stay with Bashar al-Assad. Who knows what will happen if he falls?”7
Zisser explained that Israeli leaders held split opinions about Syria, much as in Washington. Some Israelis preferred to see the overthrow of Assad if a compliant Sunni regime came to power. Zisser summarized that view. “Any future Sunni regime will be better for Israel than Bashar…because this will be a blow against Hezbollah and Iran. Any Sunni government will be more moderate because it will be connected to the Saudis, Turks, and Americans.” The flaw in that argument, he noted, is that a Sunni regime could also open the door for al-Qaeda.
Zisser said other government leaders believed Israel benefitted so long as the civil war continued. “Bashar will stay in power, strong enough to keep the border quiet but too weak to attack Israel. That's the ideal situation for Israel. Unfortunately, at one point or another, the war will end.”
And I thought American leaders were callous about the impact of war on ordinary people.
I walked a few blocks over to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a university-affiliated think tank. About half the analysts were former government officials. I figured this was as good a place as any to hear the divergent views within Israeli ruling circles.
“Assad is considered to be a serious enemy of Israel because he's firmly in the Iranian-led camp,” said Mark Heller, an INSS analyst.8 Israeli leaders initially thought Assad would be out of power quickly. In December 2011, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak told the World Policy Conference in Vienna that Assad would be overthrown “within weeks.”9
Israeli leaders considered various outcomes. One of the worst would be a new parliamentary government in Syria that respected minority rights, a result Heller thought highly unlikely. “If the dictatorship of Assad was replaced by a liberal democratic regime, then it might be a little harder for Israel to occupy the moral high ground and to resist demands for a peace agreement that included major territorial concessions.”
Heller said the longer Assad stayed in power, however, the more Israeli leaders adjusted their policies. “People are in a watch-and-wait mode.”
But critics said Israel was doing a lot more than watching and waiting. Israel was helping the FSA. It made use of close ties with the army and intelligence services of Jordan, where the CIA was training rebels. A commander who left the Free Syrian Army to join an extremist rebel group said Israeli intelligence helped train the FSA in Jordan.10 Israeli leaders will never acknowledge such cooperation because they know full well that any public declaration of Israeli support would discredit the FSA.
In one of the great ironies of the war, both Assad and the rebels accuse Israel of helping the other side. And to some extent it's true. At one point Israel was happy to see a weakened Assad stay in power, although it soon sought his overthrow. Israel hoped all sides would exhaust themselves fighting, leading eventually to a new dictator willing to deal realistically with Israel.
In the fall of 2013, Israel acknowledged providing food and water to Syrian villages along the Golan border in addition to treating the wounded. Israel characterized this as “humanitarian assistance” and not taking sides in the war.11 But Israeli officials certainly knew which villages were controlled by the FSA, the Syrian army, and al-Nusra. They made sure aid didn't go to al-Nusra or the army. But there were even more direct signs of Israel's opposition to Assad.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked Syria on five occasions in 2013, each time claiming it wasn't taking sides in the civil war but only stopping arms shipments to Hezbollah. The IDF didn't publicly acknowledge any of the raids, but US intelligence confirmed them. In January Israeli planes fired missiles at a Syrian convoy carrying Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles, allegedly being delivered to Hezbollah. Then twice in May, Israel launched missile strikes at a warehouse storing advanced surface-to-surface missiles and other arms.
US intelligence sources said the warehouses contained Iranian Fateh-110s, solid-fuel missiles with a capability of hitting Tel Aviv from Lebanon. Israel unilaterally asserted the right to deny Hezbollah such “game changing” weapons.12 On those days, the IDF also attacked Syria's main military complex in Mount Qasioun and the Scientific Studies and Research Center, both in Damascus and well away from the missile warehouses. The attack killed over a hundred soldiers, with many dozens injured.13
It's difficult to verify claims that Israel attacked only weapons destined for Hezbollah. After all, the Syrian army also used Fateh-110 missiles. But even if true, why would “neutral” Israel attack a Syrian army headquarters? IDF officials knew Syrian soldiers would be killed. I think Israel hoped to weaken Assad at a time when his troops were winning some battles against the rebels.
Smaller-scale attacks continued. In July, the IDF attacked a missile depot in Latakia and then repeated the attack in November, having apparently missed some munitions in the original strike.14 Israel launched yet another attack near the Syrian–Lebanese border in February 2014.15
Firing missiles at another country constitutes an act of war—unless you're Israel or the United States. Israel was just asserting its right to punish Syria for crossing a red line drawn unilaterally by Israel. As a practical matter, the Assad regime was too weak to respond. And Israel was getting ready to enforce a much bigger red line—this one drawn by the Obama administration.
In September 2013, Israel threw its full weight behind Obama's plans to bomb Syria in connection with the use of chemical weapons. Israeli officials argued that US credibility was on the line. Israel drew red lines and enforced them militarily. Now it was time for the United States to do the same.
A high-ranking Israeli official finally admitted that Israel favored Assad's overthrow. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go,” Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post.16 “We always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran
to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He continued, “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.”
Around the same time, the New York Times wrote, “As the death toll has mounted, more Israelis joined a camp led by Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, who argues that the devil you know is, actually, a devil who should be ousted sooner rather than later.”17
For Israeli leaders, the time had arrived to topple Assad. A US bombing campaign would provide cover for a rebel takeover. Israel mobilized its powerful lobbying apparatus in Washington to sway public opinion and pressure Congress. Such campaigns had always worked in the past, whether to increase US military aid to Israel or to tighten sanctions on Iran.
In August, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mobilized hundreds of followers to lobby Capitol Hill to back Obama's plans to bomb Syria. They spread out to meet with conservative Republicans and centrist Democrats, convinced they would prevail. But they lost, big time. Obama had so little popular support that he didn't dare risk a congressional vote authorizing war.
Abraham Foxman, national director of AIPAC, said rather defensively, “There's nothing sinister, nothing conspiratorial, nothing wrong with the lobbying arm relating to Israel and the Middle East supporting the president on this issue.”18 AIPAC was formed in 1951 to promote closer relations between the United States and Israel. In its mission statement, AIPAC carefully stresses the mutually beneficial nature of its work: “The mission of AIPAC is to strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of Israel and the United States.”19
But opponents said AIPAC uncritically accepted Israeli policies that made a peace settlement impossible. For example, AIPAC uncritically supported ultra-right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. AIPAC and other groups making up the Israel lobby had healthy war chests, strong support from key American politicians, and the reputation for defeating politicians at the polls who didn't support their pro-Israel positions.
That's why the Israel lobby's three defeats in 2013 were so surprising. The lobby failed to prevent the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense in February 2013, despite Hagel's alleged “anti-Israel” bias. In September it failed to mobilize public opinion to bomb Syria. And then in late 2013, the Obama administration began talks with Iran to prohibit development of nuclear weapons. The Israel lobby joined with right-wing and centrist senators in an effort to toughen sanctions against Iran, which would likely have ended the negotiations.20 The Israel lobby lost and, as of mid-2014, new sanctions weren't imposed.
Mustafa Barghouti said AIPAC's defeats were quite significant. He leads the Palestinian National Initiative, a small socialist party in the Palestinian parliament. When Barghouti ran for president in 2005, he garnered 20 percent of the vote.
Referring to AIPAC's defeats, Barghouti told me in a West Bank interview, “For the first time, it became clear there is a huge divergence between the Israeli government policy and American policy…. Once AIPAC tried to get a resolution that hurts the interests of the American public, they couldn't pass it. This will go in history as a very important turning point.”21 He said American Jews didn't want war despite the heavy push from Israel and AIPAC. He praised the rise of liberal Jewish lobby groups.
An ad hoc coalition of liberal Jews, progressive Iranians, and peace groups helped defeat AIPAC. “This is the best we've ever been coordinated,” Lara Friedman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She's director of policy and government relations for Americans for Peace Now, a liberal Jewish peace group. “There's a whole bunch of groups, we're disparate, we have our own agendas, our own boards and positions, but we're sharing information the way an informal coalition should, and it's empowering people to be more effective. This is the most energizing and fun thing I've done in years. You feel you're not alone.”22
A subheadline in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz summed up the predicament of Israel and its lobby: “Israel finds itself isolated in the world arena, with only Saudi sheikhs and US lawmakers at its side; perhaps it's time to consider other diplomatic options besides perpetual petulance.”23
AIPAC and the Israel lobby remained powerful, however. They had no intention of folding their tents anytime soon. So it remains to be seen if the 2013 defeats were temporary or a long-term trend.
Amid the upheaval of civil war, the future status of the Golan has gotten lost. It's worth reviewing recent history to see how it might be resolved.
When Israel captured Arab land in 1967, the United Nations passed Resolution 242, calling for the return of all occupied territory, among other provisions.24 Israel promptly ignored 242. Through the 1970s, Israel sent settlers to build infrastructure and kibbutzim in the Golan. Israel ruled under military administration. Then in 1981, Israel decided to govern Golan with the same civilian laws used in other parts of Israel, effectively annexing the occupied territory. Neither Syria nor the United Nations recognized the annexation. In December 1981, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 497, declaring the annexation “null and void.”25 Even the United States—Israel's staunchest ally—rejected the annexation and continues to see the Golan as occupied territory.
Today the Golan includes some twenty thousand Israeli settlers living in more than thirty settlements.26 An estimated twenty thousand Syrians and their descendants lived in their own towns, often getting jobs in the settlements. An uneasy peace prevailed as the vast majority of Arabs wanted to reunite with Syria while the settlers strongly opposed returning any of the land.
Israel and Syria periodically hold negotiations on the Golan issue. In 1999 and 2000, the two sides came close to a settlement. Israel proposed to return territory based on maps drawn by Britain and France in the 1920s. Israel would keep all of the Sea of Galilee and ten meters of its shoreline. Syria insisted on the 1967 border, which included all of the occupied land and a small northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. The difference could be measured in yards, according to analyst Heller.
He said both sides descended into an argument that “only lawyers could appreciate.” The dispute hinged on whether “the waterline as it existed in the early 1920s was the permanent feature or whether the border should move as the level of the lake fell or rose. The substantive point is that Israel doesn't want Syria touching the waterline.”27
That difference is critical. The Sea of Galilee is an important source of fresh water for Israelis. They want complete control. Syria, on principle, wanted all of its territory back. It also wanted to have access to an important source of water. As Mark Twain reportedly said, “whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting.”
In 2008 both sides tried again to reach a settlement, using Turkey as an intermediary. The conflicting sides never met face-to-face, instead passing messages along to Turkish leaders. Assad was reluctant to start one-on-one talks unless he could be assured of success.28 Assad reportedly said that he and then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert came close to making a deal.29
As word leaked of a possible peace plan, settlers in the Golan strongly objected. They issued a statement that all settlement construction would continue unabated. Then, in December, Israel launched a three-week assault on Gaza in an effort to stop Palestinians firing homemade rockets into Israel. That eliminated the chance for any Golan settlement, and the Turkish dialogue ended.
In 2010 both sides tried yet again. Prime Minister Netanyahu's government held secret talks with Syria. Israel saw Syria as a potential weak link in a Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis. It hoped to break off Syria and then move on to a settlement with Lebanon, excluding Hezbollah. Netanyahu offered to return all of the Golan if Assad would break with Iran, according to a report in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Netanyahu denied he made such an offer.30 Talks ceased in 2011 with the beginning of the Arab Spring upr
isings.
One reason talks never succeeded was that Israel kept shifting the goalposts. Israeli officials would launch Syrian talks when negotiations with the Palestinians weren't going well, hoping to reach a separate deal with Syria. Later, they added the new condition that Assad break with Iran in order to make progress on Golan. Then Israel argued that it couldn't return the Golan because there's no stable government in Syria. “As a general principal, Israel's permanent preference is to have authoritative decision making bodies on the other side so Israel can carry out a rational, strategic dialogue,” analyst Heller said.31
As the civil war in Syria intensified, Israelis reached an informal consensus not to negotiate about the Golan. Zvi Hauser, Israel's cabinet secretary from 2009 to 2013, wrote an opinion article for Haaretz: “Israel will not be capable of dealing with a three-pronged front, consisting of Iran on a nuclear threshold, a failing Palestinian state…and a Syria dangling its feet in the Sea of Galilee.”32
Instability in Syria certainly raised serious problems of how to return the Golan. But it could be resolved. Both sides could agree on borders in principle while postponing implementation until Syria became stable. That solution doesn't appear likely anytime soon.
I had learned the Israeli and Druze views about the civil war, but where did the Palestinians stand? For that I traveled to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Crossing from West Jerusalem to Ramallah was very easy when I first visited in 1986. I went to one of the main hotels in Arab East Jerusalem and found a collective taxi. They were old-school Mercedes limos with an added bench seat. The car for millionaires became transformed to a nine-seat taxi with several hundred thousand kilometers on the odometer. I'd pay a few shekels, grab an empty seat, and get dropped off anywhere in Ramallah.