Peace and the Golan Heights

Syria and Israel are said to be indirectly negotiating a deal over the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty between the two nations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reportedly acting as the intermediary and will meet with President Bashar Assad in Damascus over the weekend.

For over 40 years Israel has been willing to explore the possibility of a withdrawal to the international border (not the 1949 Armistice Line that was the demilitarized zone) in exchange for true peace. The Golan would have to be completely demilitarized; the Syrians would have to commit not to obstruct the flow of water into Israel; and there would have to be ironclad international guarantees that the treaty would stand the test of time.

It is germane to recall how Israel first came to control the strategic mountains in the first place. In the early 1960s Syria sought to divert the flow of water from Israel. Saboteurs based in Syrian training camps infiltrated via Jordan and Lebanon. In April 1967, the Syrian military that was entrenched atop the Heights, which tower 700 meters above the Galilee, unleashed an unusually fierce shelling of Israeli communities below. Then IDF chief of General Staff Yitzhak Rabin warned the Ba'ath regime that it would face severe consequences if its unprovoked aggression persisted.

In response, a Syrian-Egyptian alliance, under Russian sponsorship, readied for war. Then Syrian defense minister Hafez Assad - Bashar Assad's father - announced that his country was ready to "liberate" and "explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army with its finger on the trigger is united. I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."

Facing massed armies on its borders and hysterical threats from Arab leaders, Israel struck first on June 5, 1967 and captured the Golan along with Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Sinai. Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973, but was repulsed.

SINCE THEN, the Syrians have remained a force for instability in the region. They are a state sponsor of terrorism, house Hamas in Damascus and maintain Hizbullah's lifeline to Teheran. Along the way, Syria has been implicated in the assassination of Lebanese politicians and in funneling jihadi gunmen into Iraq. Syria has virtually melded its foreign and security policies with those of Iran. And now it is revealed that, for the past five years, Syria has been collaborating with North Korea on building a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium.

It is unclear why Syria leaked news of Ankara's efforts to facilitate a deal on the Golan. Does Assad want to distract the world from revelations in Washington about his ties to North Korea? Was the mysterious liquidation of Hizbullah's Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus Assad's way of signaling a readiness to break with Hassan Nasrallah and Iran? Has Syria's Alawite ruling clique rethought its relationship with the Persian Shi'ites given that its own population is 74% Sunni Arab?

WHATEVER HIS motivations, Israel should judge Assad by what he says and what he does. Assad insists that even under a peace treaty normalization is out of the question. This is how he put it at a conference in Damascus last week: "Restoration of land and rights may lead to relations based on routine, but not [necessarily] normalization. What happened in Jordan and Egypt is proof to us that the public does not want normalization, and therefore nobody can impose it on anybody else. I know that the Syrian people reject normalization and therefore I will not impose it on them."

It is in Israel's long-term interest to have a peace treaty with Syria, but not at any price. Israel would have to make irrevocable strategic concessions. So it's hard to imagine many Israelis having the confidence to support a deal that does not signify a true opening of genuine peaceful relations.

If Assad wants a treaty, we urge him to come to Jerusalem or invite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Damascus. After 60 years of unremitting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement Syrians may indeed not be ready for normalization. But if he wants Israelis to risk all by ceding the Golan, Assad is going to have to show that he truly wants a change - and he is going to have to take some chances too.

Hamas's Apologist

Jimmy Carter, the 83-year-old former US president, has been on a "study mission" to our region, visiting Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. On Monday, back in Jerusalem, Carter announced what he'd learned: The Arabs want peace; the problem is Israel.

Carter met with Hamas leaders in Cairo and Damascus and held a joint session with both factions in Damascus. He came out of those sessions convinced that Hamas wants peace.

The former president sounds like a moral relativist, for whom there are no universal truths by which to judge behavior. This is manifested in the juxtapositions he so effortlessly makes. Speaking Monday, he denounced the Palestinians' "despicable terrorism" against Sderot. Yet when Israel tracks down and arrests the "despicable" terrorists, Carter gets equally passionate about the need to release them - 11,600 (Carter's numbers) now in Israeli prisons, "many of them women and children."

To Carter's muddled thinking, Palestinians and Israelis are equally responsible for the conflict. After all, Palestinians launch Kassams into Israeli kindergartens, and Israelis live over the Green Line.

Since Annapolis, Carter claims, there's been no real progress because of "settlements" and "roadblocks" and because Israel has turned Gaza into one big prison. That Jews also have claims in Judea and Samaria, that checkpoints have proven to keep terrorists from blowing up buses and cafes, that every last Israeli soldier and "settler" has been yanked out of Gaza - none of this turned up in Carter's study mission.

But he did conclude that "despair leads some people on both sides to resort to violence."
Carter professes to understand why Israel is "reluctant" to negotiate with Hamas. The organization refuses to renounce violence, has "yet" to recognize Israel and doesn't accept the 1993 Oslo Accords. But Carter forgives all this. He "understands" that Hamas feels "some violence is necessary" to keep the Palestinian issue alive, and that when the organization is sidelined, the "cycle of violence" is exacerbated.

Carter spent seven hours with Hamas leaders during which they told him they would accept Israel's existence if it withdrew to the 1949 Armistice Lines; if any deal reached between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA President Mahmoud Abbas was approved in a Palestinian referendum; and if Hamas had the prerogative to disagree with the referendum results.

To sum up Carter's assessment: Hamas wants peace. It is ready now for a cease-fire - even one that doesn't immediately include the West Bank. It also supports the Arab League peace plan that could flood Israel with millions of refugees - a scheme no Israeli government could accept.
That Hamas carried out an attack against the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Saturday, wounding 13 soldiers - while its leaders were telling Carter they supposedly wanted peace - is irrelevant, Carter insists, because the mission had been planned "months in advance."

WE ARE grateful to Carter for raising the issue of Gilad Schalit with his interlocutors. The former president promises that Hamas will now allow the kidnapped soldier to write a second letter to his parents. At the same time, he should know that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have routine access to the Red Cross and can write to their loved ones even without presidential intervention.

Carter, of all people, ought also to know how far Israel is prepared to go for peace. It ceded every inch of the Sinai to Anwar Sadat. But the Egyptian leader first demonstrated that he genuinely sought an accommodation with Israel.

When King Hussein embraced Yitzhak Rabin, a peace treaty resulted 100 days later.
One could imagine a situation in which Israel would talk with Hamas. After all, when Yasser Arafat claimed to be ready to end the "armed struggle," Israelis desperately tried to reach an accord with him. A Hamas that is prepared for real compromise will always find Israel ready.
Shortly after meeting with Carter, though, a Hamas spokesman declared that the Islamists remained committed to "resistance" and opposed Egyptian cease-fire proposals.

Carter's "study mission" failed to uncover the obvious: Hamas is a toxic opponent of peace. Too bad that in the twilight of his public life, Carter has undermined the relative moderates among the Palestinians and become an apologist for violent religious fanatics.

The price of freedom

Never in the ebb and flow of its long, rich and complicated history has the Jewish people experienced greater national, political and personal freedoms than it enjoys now. There are no ghetto walls. We are Jews by choice and we identify with the Jewish past, share in the Jewish present and look toward a common future.

The more we know about Jewish civilization, the greater our literacy, the less the open door of 21st-century modernity beckons us to abandon the values of our forefathers and foremothers.

With numerous and diverse avenues of Jewish expression to be explored, this may be the most exciting period in modern Jewish history.

Half of all US and UK Jews marry out. That is a fact. But many of these couples and their children can still be part of our community if they, and we, make wise decisions.

Yet, paradoxically, while Jews worldwide have never had more personal liberty, the well-being and security of the Third Jewish Commonwealth has never been under greater threat.

THESE ARE the thoughts that concern us as we approach the evening of April 19 - corresponding to the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan - to celebrate Pessah, "the season of our freedom."

By tradition the festival commemorates God's deliverance of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. Thus the Exodus became the founding narrative of Jewish peoplehood and the centerpiece of Israel's sacred history. In ancient times this deliverance was marked by the eating of the Paschal lamb sacrificed in Jerusalem's Holy Temple.

Today, our attachment to this ancient spring festival remains imprinted on our collective psyche. Across the world, Jewish people will participate in ceremonial Seder meals centered around the Haggada's Four Questions. While the more pious among us will scrupulously observe the minutiae of the festival's rules, it behooves all Jews to focus on the meaning - and cost - of freedom, liberty and self-determination.

In the renascent Jewish homeland, which marks its 60th independence day next month, Israelis are grappling with how to cherish tradition while respecting the individual's right to freely disregard (sometimes foolishly) what should be treasured.

Consider the latest quarrel in Jerusalem over the sale of hametz during Pessah. A very few stores sell bread, which the law allows so as long as they don't ostentatiously display it in public. This strikes us as a reasonable compromise. So why interfere with it?

When issues of personal freedom, religion and collective values are at stake, coercion is not only counterproductive, it is often also unnecessary. Seventy percent of Israelis won't go near bread during the festival; 60% would like to see stores closed on Shabbat. That's because the values and mores of Jewish civilization appeal to traditional and secular Jews even when the motivation is not necessarily halachic.

And yet this age of great personal freedom will not have achieved its full potential until non-Orthodox and secular Jews - to paraphrase popular theologian Dennis Prager - start taking Judaism as seriously as do the Orthodox.

MOREOVER, given the threats the Jewish global collective faces, stemming mainly from the menace of Islamist extremism, Jews had better stop dissipating their energies and resources in internal bickering.

Iran is hurrying to build nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. It may take another year or two, but the mullahs don't see the international community standing in their way. This week's meeting of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, in Shanghai on the Iranian issue reiterated that message. (The failed agenda was to coax Iran - which has rejected every economic, diplomatic and security offer thus far, including civilian nuclear cooperation - into reopening negotiations.)

As Iranian leaders employ disinformation, obduracy and guile to keep the world powers spinning their wheels, we hear Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisting that Iran's efforts will, at the end of the day, fail.

The mullahs take their extremist Islam very seriously. It is the bedrock of their perverted vision of world domination. In this "season of our freedom" we need to recommit to our own Jewish and humane values. And if we cherish our freedom, we need to recognize that it comes at a price.

The mullah minuet

It was a small news item, easily unnoticed, part of a protracted series of deceptions: "Monday's scheduled meeting in Vienna between Iranian nuclear negotiator Gholamreza Aghazadeh and the UN's nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei has been postponed."
One step back in the minuet.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced that it would "propose a package of solutions" aimed at "convergence" with international proposals offering Iran nuclear technology in return for ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. One step forward - ostensibly.

This ongoing dance is accelerated by the scheduled meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, set for April 16 in Shanghai. They will talk about Iran's brazen, artful stonewalling of three fairly innocuous UN Security Council resolutions (the latest on March 3) aimed at cajoling the mullahs to abandon their efforts to build nuclear bombs.

No one in Shanghai will suggest an international ban on weapons sales to Iran. There will be no talk of any air or sea embargo. Still, the great powers will probably express "disquiet" over the installation of hundreds, if not thousands, more centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Verifiable data on the centrifuges - how many and how prolific - is unavailable.

What is known is that Iran is moving rapidly to create as much nuclear bomb-making fuel as possible.

Also overshadowing the Shanghai meeting is last week's Jane's Defense dispatch, which shed light on what Iran wants to do once it has nuclear weapons: place warheads on ballistic missiles. Iran will soon possess solid fuel projectiles capable of reaching Europe. Yet the mullahs keep refining their Shahab missile, and it will eventually traverse 10,000 km., putting the US within range.

If previous international discussion about Iran is any guide, Russia will be thinking about all the nuclear technology it sells the mullahs, the profits reaped and the influence leveraged. Vladimir Putin continues to be Teheran's main enabler.

But China will do its part in Shanghai. One of Iran's two biggest oil customers, it is heavily invested in Iran's petroleum industry. Beijing is also Teheran's second-biggest trading partner. China wants Mideast "stability" and is convinced sanctions are bad for business.

Germany, France and Britain will be mindful of the price of oil ($109 a barrel) and the business they do with Iran. Berlin is Iran's number one import partner; Paris not too far behind. London's record is slightly better: Iran is ranked as the UK's seventh-largest export market in the Middle East and North Africa. But that's still a lot of sterling.

A complete quarantine of the world's number-four oil exporter - the kind of action that would make the mullahs sit up and take notice - is simply not on the Shanghai agenda. And why should it be? There is no constituency for the sacrifices entailed. If anything, many EU citizens believe, incredibly, that Israel is a bigger danger to peace than Iran.

THERE ARE too many sticks and not enough carrots, some of the diplomats in Shanghai will claim. But Iran has time and again rejected generous international offers of nuclear fuel and technology in return for abandoning its bomb. Others will say that Iran feels threatened, and that Washington should negotiate directly with it. Yet Washington and Teheran have been speaking directly in Iraq, to no avail. As the UK's Independent reported only yesterday, back-channel talks between well-connected retired US diplomats and Iranian officials have been dragging on fruitlessly for five years.

The pro-accommodation camp also relies on the December 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, which invoked the narrowest definitions to assert, high in its text, that Iran stopped working on a bomb in 2003, and left lower down the fact that enrichment and all other elements necessary for a weapons program proceed apace.

Some friends of Israel are in despair. Columnist Charles Krauthammer urges Washington to place the Jewish state under its nuclear umbrella, while pundit Zev Chafets, writing in The New York Times, gloomily concludes that the Jews are on their own.

Granted, Iran is Israel's foremost strategic dilemma. But those gathering this week in Shanghai should not delude themselves into believing that the rapacious Islamist regime in Teheran does not also threaten everything they hold dear. Iran already has all of Israel well within its missile range, and still it extends its delivery capabilities.

Egyptian tremors

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turns 80 next month. He assumed power 26 years ago, after Islamists assassinated Anwar Sadat for having made peace with Israel.

Egypt's political system remains weak on legitimacy. The liberal opposition, led by the Democratic Front Party, is in disarray. A leading reformist critic of the regime, Ayman Nour, is imprisoned.

Egyptians mostly ignored the April 8 local elections to fill 52,000 places on municipal and village councils. Seventy percent of the seats were earmarked for Mubarak's National Democratic Party because they were "uncontested." Mubarak's son, Gamal, happens to head the NDP.
Recalling the failed policies of the Shah of Iran, Mubarak has defeated the non-Islamist opposition, leaving the Muslim Brotherhood as the only credible voice of reform. This is the same toxic movement, founded in 1928, whose world-view spawned al-Qaida and Hamas. It wants Shari'a law imposed in Egypt and relations with Israel broken off. Prudently, the Brotherhood eschews violent revolution, patiently waiting for power to fall into its hands. Despite Mubarak's machinations, Brotherhood-supported "independent" candidates captured 20% of the 454-seat parliament.

Mubarak has stayed in power by making an implicit contract with Egypt's masses: We provide food, you keep your noses out of politics. That deal is now fraying.

Egypt is a vast country of some 76 million people, of whom 53% are under 24. Hope and economic prospects are in short supply; religion, however, is bountiful. Mosques are everywhere (one for every 745 people). Most women in Cairo, once a cosmopolitan city, now cover their hair.
Globalization, worldwide economic factors, even climate change have all conspired to make the temporal lives of average Egyptians more difficult. In recent weeks, labor and food riots have broken out in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahallah-Al-Kobra. Two protesters were killed, 100 wounded and over 300 arrested. Opponents organized protests, using text messaging and even Web-based social networks to circumvent the state-controlled media. A nationwide one-day strike had been planned, but was ultimately stymied by the authorities.

Fearing the spread of rioting, Mubarak dispatched Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif to meet with workers at the state-owned weaving factory in Mahallah, which employs 25,000 people, and where the average monthly salary is $34. And to appease the local opposition, Nazif granted it 15 seats in the municipal government.

Six people have died since March waiting on bread lines, either from exhaustion or because frustration led to fighting. A piece of bread costs 5 piasters - about a US penny. Thirty million Egyptians depend on subsidized bread under a scheme that is riddled with corruption. Forty percent of Egyptians live under the $2-a-day poverty line.

As an emergency measure Mubarak ordered the army to start baking bread.

Amr Elshobaki of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies told The Washington Post last week that "The mood of the people is angry. I think it's near collapse, the state."
To address the larger crisis, the regime has halted the export of rice and cement for the next six months and continues to impose price controls on a wide range of commodities. Food is subsidized at a staggering $13.7 billion annually.

Not everyone is suffering. The disparity between rich and poor is immense. Sales of some luxury cars are up 20 percent. The economy has grown 7%. The Cairo and Alexandria stock exchanges are up 40%. Foreign investment has surged to $11 billion. Egypt's international reserves stand at $30 billion; foreign debt is $7.8 billion. Thousands of new companies are established every year. For its part, Washington contributes $1.3 billion in military aid and a paltry $200 million in economic assistance. More constructively, however, annual trade with the US stands at $8 billion.

How well the regime feeds, clothes and employs its population, how swiftly it creates a civil society and system of representative government should be of foremost concern to Israel.

Mubarak is mistaken in emasculating the moderate opposition, misguided in trying to "out-Islam" the Brotherhood by persecuting homosexuals. He is wide off the mark in allowing Egypt's media to demonize Jews and Israel. It took him too long to realize that letting Hamas bleed Israel was ultimately not in Cairo's interest.

But we who have an interest in a stable and flourishing Egypt understand the enormity of the challenges Mubarak faces. May he continue to enjoy good health, and be blessed with better judgment.