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By Ron Bousso
JERUSALEM: Peace between Israel and Syria could
defuse some of the most explosive conflicts in the Middle East and
weaken Iran’s growing influence there, Israeli analysts say.
Israel and Syria, technically in a state of war
since the Jewish state was born 60 years ago, announced on Wednesday
that they had resumed indirect negotiations under Turkish mediation
after an eight-year freeze.
The surprise announcement followed months in
which reports of discreet peace overtures alternated with
belligerent rhetoric.
The Israeli-Syrian border has remained calm for
nearly 25 years, but the two enemies challenged each other regularly
in Lebanon for 18 years until Israeli troops withdrew from the
country’s south in 2000.
And while Israel has military superiority in the
region, it considers Syria one of its biggest strategic threats.
The 34-day war in Lebanon between Israel and
Hezbollah in 2006 underscored Syria’s role in sponsoring the
Shiite movement, supplying it with ammunition that included
thousands of Iranian-made rockets that wrought havoc on Israel.
Damascus also hosts the leaders of several
Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
which have carried out dozens of deadly operations and suicide
bombings in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, commenting
on the peace talks, pushed home the danger of maintaining the status
quo.
“The years which have passed since the
negotiations were frozen did not improve the security situation on
our northern border, which still serves as our primary source of
concern for regional deterioration,” Olmert said in Tel Aviv.
But towering above the immediate points of
friction between Israel and Syria is Iran, which has become
Damascus’s closest ally in recent years. The strategic alliance
between the two states was bolstered in 2006, when they signed an
agreement on military cooperation against “common threats.”
Syria’s support of groups considered by the
West as terror organizations and its constant meddling in Lebanon
have placed Damascus on US and EU blacklists. That has isolated the
country even further, and pushed it more firmly into the arms of
oil-rich Tehran.
Israel believes it faces an existential threat
from Iran, whose leaders have called for the destruction of the
Jewish state.
At the same time, Israel, the United States and
other powers believe Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear
bomb—which Tehran denies.
Israeli experts believe that any attack on Iran
would lead Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, the Islamist movement that
controls the Gaza Strip, to attack Israel together with Iran.
A peace agreement with Israel could pull
Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad out of his alliance with Iran
and end its isolation by the West, analysts said.
“Israel wants to destabilize the ‘rocket
coalition’ of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas,” wrote Aluf Benn,
diplomatic commentator of the liberal Haaretz daily.
“Israel will be deciding in the coming months
whether to bomb the Iranian nuclear facility or invade the Gaza
Strip. In both cases it would be better for Israel if Syria did not
intervene on behalf of its allies,” Benn wrote.
Reserve Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, a senior
research associate at Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies in Tel
Aviv, told AFP the secular Syrian leadership’s alliance with the
Shiite Iranians is one of convenience and not of ideology.
“Iran is Syria’s strategic backer in the
face of the US and Israel, and once Syria normalizes its ties with
the West, it will no longer need Iran,” Brom said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday
reiterated the Jewish state’s long-standing demand that Syria stop
backing and harboring militant groups.
This will be part of any future peace deal
between the two states, Brom said.
“An agreement will completely change Syria’s
strategic considerations . . . For Syria, talks with Israel are its
way to rectify its ties with the West and the United States, most of
all,” the former military intelligence officer said.
With Syria no longer dependent on Tehran’s
military and economic backing, it would cease supplying Hezbollah
with weapons and considerably limit Tehran’s “long arm” in the
Middle East, analysts said.
And with peace deals signed between Israel and
the Palestinians, Iran would lose one of its main arguments, Brom
said.
“Iran needs a reason for friction with Israel.
The second a peace agreement is signed with Syria and the
Palestinians it will lose most of its excuses for its belligerency
against Israel and support of terror organizations such as Hezbollah
and Hamas,” he said.
-- AFP
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