President Barack Obama’s brief visit to the Middle East has given the Arab world a brutal lesson in power politics. Every word he uttered in Israel, every gesture he made, served to illustrate the unprecedented closeness of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, as well as his disregard for Arab interests and his evident reluctance to give the Palestine cause any serious or sustained attention.

Rarely if ever has an American President shown such intense concern for Israel’s welfare and such casual indifference for the Arabs.

The visit to Israel and its Arab neighbours marks an important moment in Obama’s presidency. It sends a clear message that he is not prepared to engage in a fight with powerful pro-Israeli forces deeply entrenched in American government and society. To the Arabs, it signals that resolving the Palestine problem is no longer his priority. He seems prepared to leave it to the next incumbent of the White House, whoever that might be.

No doubt John Kerry, America’s new Secretary of State, will go through the motions of addressing the Palestine problem for a while, but it would be naïve to expect any real progress without vigorous and sustained presidential attention, and that now seems highly unlikely.

Many Arabs had thought that Obama, on this his first presidential visit to the region, would give fresh impetus to the search for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement — even at this eleventh hour. Their disappointment has been bitter. They had failed to grasp how the evolving power relationships — in the region itself and also in Washington — had undermined their interests and hardened the resolve of Israel’s land-hungry leaders not to give an inch.

The truth is that the Arabs’ attention over the past two years has been fully engrossed by the political upheavals in their own societies. Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, as well as the bitter civil war in Syria, have absorbed Arab attention, virtually blotting out everything else. The Arabs have failed to grasp that their revolutions — whatever promise they may hold of a better future — have for the moment at least gravely weakened them, reducing their influence on the international stage.

It is, therefore, not surprising that, on this visit to the Middle East, Obama felt no obligation to calm Arab fears or help the Palestinians towards their longed-for independence. Instead, he devoted himself entirely to celebrating Israel’s achievements as the region’s most powerful and dynamic actor — as well as hailing its ever closer ties with the United States. No doubt he felt free to flatter Israel and offend the Arabs because of the lamentable state in which much of the Arab world now finds itself.

As a handsome parting gift to Netanyahu, Obama brokered a peace deal between Turkey and Israel, putting an end to the three-year feud between them. It will be recalled that their quarrel dates back to May 2010 when Israel attacked and boarded a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, which was seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Nine Turks on board the ship were killed. During his visit to Israel this month, Obama persuaded Netanyahu to issue a public apology to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, together with a promise of compensation, thus putting an end to the quarrel.

The sudden and dramatic Israeli-Turkish reconciliation has come as a bitter blow to the Arabs. They had thought that their alliance with Turkey would help them stand up to Israel. Instead, Obama has brokered an alliance between the United States, Israel and Turkey which is intended to dominate the region and dictate terms to the Arabs.

Indeed, the Arab heartland has rarely seemed so weak and vulnerable:

• Egypt is today close to bankruptcy, a condition which severely limits its regional influence. Once the most powerful Arab country, it is today a victim of long years of authoritarian rule and of a population explosion. When Nasser’s Free Officers took power in 1952, there were about 18m Egyptians; today there are 85m. Egypt desperately needs international credits and is dependent on American support to get them. It cannot afford to show sympathy for Hamas in Gaza since the United States — pandering to Israel — considers it a terrorist organisation.

• Iraq has far from recovered from the American invasion of 2003, engineered and driven by pro-Israeli neo-cons, and from the nine-year occupation which followed. Now under Shia leadership, and allied to Iran, it is a long way from recovering its once influential place in Arab affairs. It has virtually lost control of its Kurdish territories and is being torn apart by Sunni-Shia strife.

• Syria is in the grip of a brutal civil war, which threatens to overthrow its secular Ba‘thist regime, in power since 1963. If the regime is toppled, Syria could then be ruled by hard-line Islamists who are leading the revolt against President Bashar al-Asad. More probably, however, the country could be partitioned into small confessional units, each looking desperately to its own defence. So great is the human and material damage Syria has suffered in these past two years that it seems unlikely that it will recover its long-standing role as a barrier to Israeli power in the Levant.

• Under Israeli pressure, the United States is subjecting Iran to a cruel siege. This has greatly enfeebled the Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance which, over the past three decades, had attempted to keep Israeli power in check. Today the alliance is in grave danger of collapse: Iran is battling against crippling sanctions, Syria faces dismemberment, while a nervous Hizballah contemplates the potential loss of its two external patrons. In Jerusalem on March 21, Obama blatantly embraced Israel’s point of view by calling on foreign governments to brand Hizballah as a ‘terrorist organisation’. Blinded by their fear of Iran and puffed up by their vast income from oil and gas, a number of Arab Gulf states have also joined in the effort to dismantle the Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance and rob it of its regional influence. They may live to regret it.

What sense, therefore, can one make of the overall picture? How to explain Israel’s arrogant self-confidence and its cold-hearted refusal to allow the Palestinians a mini-state of their own? Part at least of the answer must surely lie in Egypt’s insolvency; in the deep divisions in Iraqi society, scarred by a decade of conflict; in Syria’s cruel civil war; and in Iran’s struggle to survive harsh American sanctions.

By all accounts, Arab public opinion has been shocked by Obama’s extravagant love affair with Israel. It was not what the Arabs had expected. In their innocence, they had thought the American President would put on a show of neutrality and do his best to promote a settlement of the Palestine problem. They had not realised — or had forgotten — how little influence the Arab voice has in Washington and how their own long-running and still unfinished revolutions have sapped their energies and undermined their international influence. The awakening has been rude.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 26 March 2013
Word Count: 1,148
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Barely a month after Al-Qaida’s devastating 11 September 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York and on the Pentagon near Washington, a maddened and enraged America attacked and invaded Afghanistan. The aim was to punish Afghanistan for giving shelter to Al-Qaida, a radical Islamic group responsible for the unprecedented terrorist assault on the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Hell bent on revenge, U.S. President George W Bush proclaimed a Global War on Terror. The 21st Century thus began with a great outburst of violence and counter-violence, which a dozen years later shows little sign of abating.

The American war on Afghanistan shattered much of that country, killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens and is still unfinished a dozen years later. The United States and Britain then attacked Iraq in 2003. The reasons for doing so were fraudulent because Iraq had had nothing to do with Al-Qaida’s terrorism. But pro-Israeli neo-cons in the U.S. administration seized the chance to destroy a leading Arab country, which might have challenged Israel’s regional hegemony. By the time the United States finally withdrew in 2011, Iraqi civilian casualties were estimated at well over one million and material destruction immense. As the country wrestles with the painful task of political and physical reconstruction, it has fallen victim to Sunni-Shia quarrels, which threaten to tear it apart once again.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States has continued to kill Muslims it considers hostile — in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other places across the globe, usually resorting to strikes against distant targets by pilotless armed drones. Large numbers of innocent civilians have been among the casualties, inevitably stoking violent anti-American feeling among relatives and friends of the victims.

These violent events across the Middle East — which are now spreading to the Sahel in North Africa — have dominated the first years of this century. One way or another, they have all been triggered, and been publicly justified, by Al-Qaida’s 9/11 assault on the United States. Yet an inescapable fact is that a great many victims of these retaliatory wars were innocent Muslims, who had nothing to do with Al-Qaida but were swept up in the security frenzy of the time.

Over the past dozen years, many Muslims in Britain and America have faced discrimination, harassment and years of incarceration without trial just because they are Muslims. The secret war against them has passed largely unnoticed and unreported, largely because opinion is still outraged by Al-Qaida’s violence. But their plight — and the devastating impact it has had on their wives and families – caught the attention and aroused the conscience of the British writer Victoria Brittain. Her book, Shadow Lives, which examines the painful lives of these victims of counter-terror, is a heart-wrenching work to which she brings the passion and the careful investigative skills which made her reputation on the British daily newspaper, The Guardian.

With barely suppressed anger, she describes how, after 9/11, George W. Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair launched “what was effectively an anti-Muslim crusade” — including the right to arrest, indefinitely detain or deport anyone, even if they had committed no crime, as well as massive surveillance of mosques and Muslims. Britain, America’s close ally, was swept up in the hysteria which was to condemn many an innocent Muslim to long years of incarceration and their families to untold misery.

Guantánamo Bay in Cuba was, Victoria Brittain writes, “the centrepiece of the reaction to 9/11, and remains the symbol of how half a century of international conventions on torture, prisoners’ rights, rendition and other aspects of international law were simply over-ridden by the US government and its allies.” In the name of national security, anti-terrorist laws were passed which meted out gross injustice. Thousands of men were captured, many of them entirely innocent, in what she describes as “a vast fishing expedition across the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and from Bosnia to Gambia.” They were sent to Guantánamo where they were held beyond the reach of U.S. law, without habeas corpus, in conditions that were flagrant violations of international law. The Geneva Conventions were set aside. Torture was widely and systematically practiced. She describes how, in Guantánamo, men were “stripped naked in front of females, held in freezing containers, kept awake for as long as 20 hours a day” and were subjected to repetitive interrogation. Her book is, in fact, a passionate indictment of the cruelty and stupidity of the war on terror.

Most of the men at Guantánamo were held there on very slight evidence. They were victims of a “steamroller of propaganda” by the U.S. and UK governments and their media allies. Stoking fear of Muslims had become a profession. Even before 9/11, Arabs and Muslims in the United States were victims of what the author calls “a general manufactured climate of fear… often linked to efficient and well-funded pro-Israeli lobbyists.”

Of Victoria Brittain’s many painful case studies, I have space to mention only two. Ghassan Elashi was chairman of America’s largest Muslim charity, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. In July 2007, he and four colleagues from his Foundation were charged with “material support” for Hamas, described as a foreign terrorist organisation. They had sent some $12 million to Gaza, earmarked for orphanages and community welfare groups. Although the groups they were helping were not on any government terrorist list, the prosecution claimed they were fronts for Hamas. Elashi was sentenced to 65 years in jail. The impact on his family was devastating.

Sami Al Arian, a professor of engineering at the University of South Florida and outspoken campaigner for Palestinian rights, was indicted in 2003 on multiple counts of “material support for terrorism.” In a 2006 trial, after nearly three years in solitary confinement, the jury acquitted him of half the charges, while they were deadlocked on the others, with ten jurors to two wanting to acquit. He took a plea bargain on one count, agreed to deportation and should have been freed the following year. But he was then charged with criminal contempt when he would not testify in another trial. In 2009 he was released to house arrest, where in three years he was allowed to leave his apartment twice — for his daughters’ weddings.

In Britain, too, many men were arrested after 9/11 as part of a worldwide intelligence swoop on Muslims. They were assessed as “risks to national security” and held for years in high security prisons on secret evidence that was not disclosed to their lawyers and about which they were never interrogated or charged. As Victoria Brittain comments, “indefinite detention felt like torture to them and as life suspended for their frightened wives.”

Shadow Lives is an important book which will awaken righteous rage in many readers — or reduce them to tears.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 March 2013
Word Count: 1,116
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The Middle East is experiencing some of its greatest political upheavals since the creation of the Arab state system after the First World War. Right across the region, regimes have been toppled and authority challenged. In one country after another, people have gone down into the street in their tens of thousands to demand jobs, bread, respect, an end to corruption and police brutality, a greater say in how they are governed. In several Arab countries, secular Arab nationalism has been discredited while political Islam, long suppressed, has re-emerged to the front of the political scene.

In reacting to these events, the European Union has tended to leave the initiative to the United States. There were, of course, some exceptions. France, for example, played a leading role in spearheading the international intervention in Libya and more recently in Mali. But, on the whole, in dealing with major problems like the Arab-Israeli conflict, the dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme, or the highly destabilising civil war in Syria, the European Union has preferred to leave the initiative to the United States.

Problems have arisen, however, because of America’s close relationship with Israel. For several years now, the Israeli tail has wagged the American dog in the Middle East — and Europe has meekly followed along. This has not been good for the reputation of several European countries, Britain in particular. In the explosive climate created by the Arab revolutions of the last two years, it is surely time for Britain and the European Union to recover their freedom of thought and action in dealing with the Middle East

The Arab-Israeli conflict, which has festered for the past 65 years, remains a factor of immense instability. Today, the two-state solution is moribund, if not actually dead. A last minute attempt must surely be made to bring it back to life, or the consequences could be extremely dangerous for the Middle East and for European interests in this important region. Britain has a historic responsibility for the tragic state of affairs. Instead of keeping silent, Britain should be making a big and noisy fuss about the cruel oppression the Palestinians are suffering — under occupation on the West Bank and under siege in Gaza. It is surely time for the UK, and its European partners, to press for Palestinian statehood at this eleventh hour, even if it means threatening Israel with sanctions. As Israel’s major trading partner, the EU could apply considerable pressure, if it were able to summon up the courage and the political will to do so.

Israel’s present course is ultimately suicidal. It is a small country which depends on generous American aid and protection. But its long-term survival must surely depend on its ability to reach an accommodation with its Arab, Iranian and Turkish neighbours. This can be achieved only by halting and reversing its theft of Palestinian land and allowing the emergence of a small Palestinian state living alongside it in peace, security and prosperity. Israel’s reward would be normal relations with all 22 Arab states.

Britain made a blatant mistake ten years ago when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair joined the United States in the invasion of Iraq. The war was planned by a group of pro-Israeli neo-cons embedded in George W Bush’s administration — notably Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon and David Wormser in the Vice-President’s office, among many others. The French and the Turks were wise enough to stay out of the war. Israel wanted Iraq destroyed because, after the Iran-Iraq war, it thought it might one day pose a threat to Israel’s eastern front. So Iraq, a major Arab state, was shattered and hundreds of thousands of its citizens killed. Millions more were displaced or driven into exile. It is still a long way from recovery.

An unforeseen consequence of the war was to unseat the Sunnis from power in Baghdad and replace them with the majority Shia community. This meant that Iraq could no longer play its traditional role as a Sunni counterweight to Shia Iran in the Gulf region. This development has caused some of the smaller Gulf States to take fright at the prospect of falling under Iranian hegemony. The shift in the regional power balance has also worried the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the major Arab state in the region.

Having managed to persuade the United States to destroy Iraq, Israel then shifted its attention to Iran, another potential challenger to its regional supremacy. Israel has campaigned tirelessly to get the United States to join with it in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — or, better still, for the United States to do the job alone. Israel has not hesitated to depict Iran as a terrorist state and its nuclear programme as a threat to all mankind.

In his first term as President, Obama was able to resist Israel’s intense pressure for war against Iran. But he only managed to do so by imposing crippling sanctions on Iran, and forcing the Europeans to follow suit. Sanctions have more than halved Iran’s oil exports, shattered its currency, cut it off from international banking, and inflicted great hardship on its population.

There are now, at long last, some timid signs of a more rational approach to the Islamic Republic. The recent talks in Kazakhstan between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany appear to have had some limited success and are due to be followed up soon by further negotiations. The obvious solution is for Iran to be allowed to enrich uranium to a low level for peaceful purposes under strict IAEA safeguards, in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.

But Israel is seeking to torpedo any such compromise. It wants to close down Iran’s nuclear industry altogether. It doesn’t want any of its neighbours, near or far, to acquire even the possibility of a modest deterrent capability. As we all know, Israel is a major nuclear power with an elaborate arsenal of well over a hundred nuclear weapons, numerous long-range delivery systems and a second strike capability in the form of nuclear-armed submarines. It wants the freedom to hit its neighbours at will and never to be hit back.

In Syria, the United States and some of its allies seem to be edging towards supplying weapons and equipment to opposition fighters. Of these, by far the most effective are radical Islamic groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, linked to Al-Qaeda. The United States and its allies are thus in the paradoxical position of fighting Al-Qaeda across the world but supporting it in Syria. They will undoubtedly live to regret it. The Syrian conflict should be brought to an end as soon as possible. The way to do this is not to arm one side against the other, but to deny weapons to both sides. A ceasefire must be imposed by the United States and Russia, backed by all the other external parties who have been feeding the flames of war. This is what the great majority of the martyred Syrian population is longing for.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 March 2013
Word Count: 1,180
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While blood-letting in Syria continues on a grand scale, the situation in and around the country is far from static. Three major developments are worth noting, as they are changing the nature of the struggle.

First, the United States and its Western allies are becoming increasingly alarmed at the rise to prominence in Syria of extremist al-Qaeda-backed rebel groups, such as the Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), which has eclipsed all its rivals in fighting prowess in the field. Washington has put it on a list of foreign terrorist groups.

Indeed, many are beginning to ask what is the point of the United States and its allies waging war against al-Qaeda across the world — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, most recently, in Mali — while giving free rein to it in Syria, thereby no doubt guaranteeing it a major role in any post-Asad government. The spectre of a Taliban-type regime on the doorstep of Europe is causing real concern and explains the increasing reluctance of Western countries to arm the rebels.

The current European Union embargo on arms deliveries to Syria is due to expire on 1 March. Will it be renewed or will weapons be allowed to flow in? The British and French foreign ministers, William Hague and Laurent Fabius, have been very much in favour of arming the rebels. But they are likely to meet stiff resistance at the next council meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels on February 18. The Western mood is now far more cautious in dealing with the Syrian crisis.

A second major development is a growing split in the civilian ranks of the Syrian opposition, a fractious body at the best of times. The Turkey-based Syrian National Council (SNC), dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, has always rejected any negotiation with the Syria regime so long as Bashar al-Asad remains in power. Its prime objective is to topple him. But the SNC has proved to be an ineffective body of squabbling exiles, exercising little control over the fighters in the field. To remedy the situation, Qatar and the United States sponsored the creation last November of a new opposition body — the Syrian National Coalition — headed by an apparently moderate Islamist, Moaz al-Khatib, who had been the Imam of the Great Omayyad Mosque in Damascus. The old SNC was incorporated in the new Coalition as a sort of junior partner.

Al-Khatib’s new Coalition, however, has not done much better than its predecessor. Its constituent factions have failed to show enough cohesion to allow it to form a credible opposition ‘government’ — and thereby win real financial and political backing from the West, not to speak of weapons.

Such is the background to the political bombshells recently dropped by two opposition figures. Haytham al-Manna, a veteran Paris-based Syrian civil rights activist, has from the start of the uprising in 2011 firmly opposed the rebels’ resort to arms. When the world’s attention was focussed on the fighting, he was ignored. But the military stalemate has contributed to a change of mood, which has allowed al-Manna to re-emerge into public view. On 28 January, he chaired what seems to have been a highly successful meeting of like-minded opposition figures in Geneva. Two days later, on 30 January, Moaz al-Khatib — perhaps not wishing to be upstaged by al-Manna — dropped his own bombshell by announcing (on his Facebook page) his willingness “to take part in direct talks with representatives of the Syrian regime…”

This dramatic statement was seen as a positive response to President Bashar al-Asad call on January 6 for a major conference of national reconciliation tasked with drawing up a charter outlining how Syria was to be governed in future, the terms of which would then be put to a referendum, followed by elections, the formation of a new government and a general amnesty.

Moaz al-Khatib was immediately denounced by opposition hardliners, notably by the Muslim Brothers. He was forced to explain that he had spoken in a purely personal capacity, but it was widely suspected that he was reflecting a growing trend in the opposition which, despairing at the horrendous human and material cost of the conflict, is perhaps almost ready to give dialogue a chance. No doubt, al-Khatib has also grasped that, as there is little hope of Western military and financial aid on the massive scale required, it might be time to explore the possibility of a negotiated settlement with the regime.

Needless to say, Israel is watching these developments with very great attention. Indeed, a third major recent development was Israel’s air strike on the night of 29-30 January on Syria’s prime military research establishment, the Scientific Studies Research Centre (SSRC), located at Jamaya north-west of Damascus. Israel’s alleged motive was to prevent the transfer to Hizballah of sophisticated Russian weapons — such as advanced radars and anti-aircraft missiles — which might restrict Israel’s freedom to strike Lebanon at will.

In fact, in mounting this latest attack, Israel’s motives were probably more ambitious. As is well known, it is anxious to bring down the whole so-called ‘resistance axis’ of Iran, Syria and Hizballah, which in recent years has managed to develop a certain deterrent capability vis-à-vis Israeli power. Israel’s bombardment of Syria’s research establishment was very probably intended to provoke the ‘resistance axis’ into responding with an attack on an Israeli target — which would then have provided Israel with the pretext for an all-out assault.

Israel has a score to settle with Hizballah, which fought it to a draw when Israel last invaded Lebanon in 2006. Israel is also worried that the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (the so-called P5+1) might make progress at their next meeting with Iran, which is due to take place in Kazakhstan on February 25. It is particularly concerned at reports that the United States and Iran might engage in a bilateral dialogue, as U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden has recently hinted.

None of this is to Israel’s taste. It has for years been urging the United States to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities — and bring down the Islamic regime — in much the same way that pro-Israeli neo-cons, using fraudulent intelligence, pushed the United States into invading and destroying Iraq in 2003. Equally, Israel does not want the Syrian opposition to engage in dialogue with the regime and arrive at a peaceful settlement. It wants Syria to be further enfeebled and dismembered, much as Iraq was a decade ago, and from which it has far from recovered.

Much will depend in the coming weeks on the wisdom of President Barack Obama’s new team and, in particular, on the new Secretary of State John Kerry. Will he encourage negotiations to resolve the Syrian crisis peacefully so as to stem the destruction of the country and its people, as well as preventing the further destabilisation of Turkey and Lebanon, or will he play Israel’s traditional game of subverting the region so as to reign supreme?

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 February 2013

Word Count: 1,153

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Three highly-dangerous Middle East problems — Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the bloody civil war in Syria, and the long-festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict — pose a grave challenge to President Barack Obama and his foreign policy team of John Kerry at State, Chuck Hagel at Defence and John Brennan at the CIA. America’s vital interests in the Middle East, its political reputation, its ability to project power and influence are intimately tied up with the way it deals — or fails to deal — with these problems. So what advice might one be bold enough to give to President Obama and his team?

Each of these three problems is profoundly destabilising for the region as a whole and risks triggering a war of unpredictable consequences. Taken separately, each of them has so far defied resolution. One suggestion is that tackling them as a package might prove more effective.

Consider, for a moment, how closely inter-connected they are. No one is more concerned than Israel about Iran’s nuclear programme, which it sees as a threat to its military supremacy and ultimately to its security. It fears that a nuclear capable Iran would restrict the freedom — which Israel has enjoyed for decades — to strike its neighbours at will, when they seem threatening.

Iran, however, does not stand alone. Its fate is closely linked to that of Syria, its principal regional ally. Syria has also been the most ardent champion of Palestinian rights and of Lebanon’s freedom from Israeli control. Indeed, the so-called ‘resistance axis’ of Iran, Syria and Lebanon’s Hizballah has sought to deter or contain Israeli attacks while challenging U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the Levant.

Needless to say, Syria’s calamitous civil war has gravely weakened the resistance axis. Israel’s dearest hope is to destroy what remains of it by urging the United States and its allies to bring down the Tehran and the Damascus regimes, thus freeing Israel from any constraint from these powers in its relentless drive for a ‘Greater Israel’.

It can thus be seen that Iran’s nuclear programme, Syria’s existential crisis and Israel’s land hunger are inextricably linked. Attempts to deal with these problems separately have so far failed. The obvious conclusion is that they may be better dealt with as a package. These are not marginal problems which can be left to fester. If the United States wishes to protect itself, its interests and its allies in a highly turbulent environment it must make a supreme effort to resolve them.

Moreover, this is a unique moment: President Obama has been re-elected for a second term. His political authority has been enhanced. The world is looking to him for leadership. Although many other foreign policy problems clamour for his attention — the rising colossus of China first among them — he knows that the Middle East, for all its maddening complexity, latent violence, and the current resurgence of Al-Qaeda, not least in Syria, cannot be ignored.

He should consider the possibility of a trade-off between Iran’s nuclear programme and a Palestinian state. The proposal is simple enough: If Iran were to agree — under strict international supervision — to give up, once and for all, its ambition to become a nuclear-capable state, Israel would, in exchange, agree to the establishment of an independent Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem. The exact terms of the trade-off would evidently need negotiation and refinement, but the main lines and necessary mutual concessions of an Israeli-Palestinian deal have been extensively debated and are widely known.

Such a bargain between Iran’s nuclear ambitions and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is not as far-fetched or as fictional as it may sound. Iran has boxed itself into a corner. It knows that the United States will not allow it to become a nuclear power. It wants a dignified exit from its present predicament and an end to crippling sanctions. Israel, in turn, faces international isolation — not to speak of the permanent threat of terrorism — if it insists on stealing what remains of the West Bank. It, too, needs a dignified exit from the insanity of its fanatical settlers and religious nationalists who, if unchecked, would condemn Israel to pariah status and permanent war. A trade-off would resolve two of the region’s most intractable problems to the great benefit of everyone concerned. Peace and normal relations with the entire Muslim world would be Israel’s very substantial reward.

What about Syria? It lies at the very heart of the regional power system. Its on-going civil war is threatening to destabilise its neighbours — Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Israel itself will not be immune. Islamist fighters, some linked to Al-Qaeda, are flowing into Syria, while refugees are fleeing out to neighbouring states in very large numbers. The toll of dead and wounded is heavy, material destruction great and human misery incalculable.

It is by now abundantly clear that there is no military solution to the conflict: Neither the regime nor its opponents can hope to win an outright victory. No outside power wants to intervene militarily. Yet the regime and its enemies are incapable of negotiating an end to the conflict without outside help.

What should the international community do? First, the United States and Russia (with active support from other powers) should join together in imposing a ceasefire on both sides of the conflict. This could involve deploying an international force around Syria’s borders to prevent the inflow of fighters, weapons, and other military equipment to both government and rebels.

Secondly, major external powers — Arab, Western, Chinese, Russian and others — should solemnly pledge to contribute to a Syria Reconstruction Fund of some $10bn-$15bn. The money would be entrusted to the World Bank and disbursed only when a permanent ceasefire is in place and when some clear progress is made towards a negotiated settlement. The existence of the Fund will provide a real incentive.

Thirdly, the United Nations Secretary General, with unanimous backing from the Security Council, should summon a conference of national reconciliation in Damascus attended by regime representatives as well as by all Syrian factions, groups, parties and prominent individuals prepared to renounce war.

The task will not be easy. The wounds of the conflict are very deep. But for the sake of Syria and its neighbours — for the sake of peace in the region — a supreme effort must be made to prevent the collapse of the Syrian state and its possible fragmentation. The difficult task will be to reshape Syria’s political system on democratic lines. Political freedoms will have to be guaranteed, individual rights respected, police brutality ended, the rule of law observed, government services restored and minorities protected. An essential goal must be the preservation of the Syrian Arab army as the indispensable institution of the state. In Iraq, it was the disbanding of the army which led to the collapse of the state, triggering the catastrophic civil war from which the country has yet to recover.

If Barack Obama were to adopt the programme outlined above and throw his full weight behind it, his place in history as a great peacemaker would be assured.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 January 2013

Word Count: 1,174

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