Syria’s Latest “Peace” Overture

P. David Hornik
FrontPagemag.com
09 December 09

It’s happening yet again. Syria, while simultaneously aiding and facilitating anti-American, anti-Israeli, and general anti-Western terror, is again trying to prettify its image in the West by, among other things, conveying an interest in “peace talks with Israel.”

Not only that, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset on Monday that Syria “is now willing to negotiate without preconditions”—meaning Damascus is no longer demanding, as in the past, that Israel concede the entire Golan Heights as a condition for starting talks in the first place.

Lest the excitement get unbearable, Netanyahu acknowledged that French president Nicolas Sarkozy had told him that “the Syrians…do not want to negotiate directly, only via a mediator. I replied to Sarkozy, ‘I prefer direct negotiations, but if the Syrians want mediation, you mediate.’”

Sarkozy, however, told Netanyahu that the Syrian choice of mediator was not himself, but Turkey—already a monkey wrench in the works?

Although Turkey mediated the latest round of indirect Israeli-Syrian “talks” in 2007 while Ehud Olmert was still Israeli prime minister, since then Turkey’s star has not shone brightly in Israeli skies. During the Gaza war, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel of “perpetrating inhuman actions [that] Allah will sooner or later punish,” further stoking anti-Semitic agitation against Turkey’s Jewish community. In October Turkey ousted Israel from a planned NATO military exercise, prompting the United States and Italy to withdraw as well. Israeli-Turkish relations are currently—at best—in rescue mode.

But for Israel’s left-wing daily Haaretz—which, on Tuesday, gave major billing to Netanyahu’s words about talks with Syria—such details are, as usual, nothing to dampen the “peace” palpitations. Also on Tuesday Haaretz ran an op-ed by Hebrew University professor Elie Podeh complaining that “On peace with Syria, Israeli leaders only talk the talk.” Haaretz, particularly its English website, is one of the main forces in the world propagating the notion that the Arab Middle East is seeking peace with Israel while Israel is the obstacle, and this op-ed fits squarely in that inglorious tradition.

“Making do with noises about peace has a number of advantages,” Podeh grouses.

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