Thur. 3 Mar. 2011

NEW VOICES What Israel Can Learn from Syria …………….…………….1

FACTBOX Key political risks to watch in Syria ……………….………..5

PEOPLE DAILY Mideast turmoil may boost Israeli-Syrian negotiations ……..7

WASHINGTON TIMES Iran and Syria: BFFs? ............................................................10 Syria suspected of nuke activity ……………………………13

BUSINESS INSIDER Israel Splits Over How To Deal With All The Revolutions In

The Middle East……………………………………………19

INDEPENDENT Robert Fisk: The historical narrative that lies beneath the

Gaddafi rebellion………………………………...…………20

GUARDIAN Intervention in Libya would poison the Arab revolution …..22

DAILY STAR The Syrian regime could be the next Middle Eastern domino

to fall………….By Ribal al Assad………………………...26

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HOME PAGEWhat Israel Can Learn from Syria Gedalyah Reback,New voices (national Jewish student magazine)2 Mar. 2011,

Why Netanyahu should support Egyptian democracyAs Egypt celebrates, Israel worries.

With Hosni Mubarak out of power, Israelis are concerned that extremists could take over the country, bolster Hamas and scrap Egypt’s peace treaty with the Jewish state—effectively turning Egypt into another Iran.

But Israel can secure its treaty with Egypt and improve its regional status by imitating a historical example--albeit a surprising one: the relationship between Iran and Syria after Iran’s Islamic revolution.

As Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after a long exile in Iraq and France, the former president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, was sending congratulatory messages to the revolutionary leader. Assad followed up on this diplomacy and offered his congratulations again when a referendum approved the new constitution of the Islamic Republic.

So far, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has taken a less friendly route. Anticipating the possibility of a new Iran-style theocracy in Egypt last month, Netanyahu allowed a limited number of Egyptian soldiers into the usually demilitarized Sinai Peninsula and warned the world that the Muslim Brotherhood could end up ruling Egypt in Mubarak's place. Before Mubarak’s fall, Israeli President Shimon Peres said, “We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak.”

With those actions and words, which the Arab world heard loud and clear, the Netanyahu government put its treaty with Egypt at risk—the very scenario it most fears. Moreover, Israel has undermined its status as the pillar of democracy in the Middle

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East, not because new democracies are developing around it but because Israel's leadership has not supported them. It is neither pragmatic nor moral to deny Arab aspirations for civil rights.

As a student of the Middle East at Hebrew University, it seems to me that Israel can best serve its interests by supporting Egyptian democratic aspirations. By acting as Syria did in 1979, Israel can show that it has much to offer Egypt--and that it wants to encourage democracy in the Arab world.

Three decades ago Syria was ruled, as it is today, by the Baath—a secular, Arab nationalist party whose ideology opposed that of Iran. But Syria’s regional isolation, rather than its ideology, motivated its warm relations with Khomeini. Before Iran’s revolution, Syria was alone in the Arab world. Egypt was concluding a peace treaty with Israel; Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran were consolidating a strategic alliance supported by the United States; and Iraq had cut off its oil pipeline to Syria.

Israel faces similar regional isolation today. Its distancing from Turkey, still-dormant diplomatic ties with Iran and a weak relationship with the Egyptian people signal a heavy dependence on the United States. Israel’s frozen relationship with the Palestinians and lack of exit strategy from its occupation of the West Bank leave the country needing a new outlook on its policies and regional relations.

Israel can also utilize its ideology in a way Syria could not with 1979 Iran. Israeli support of Egyptian democratic aspirations will contribute to long-term stability by avoiding the arbitrary, one-man rule of dictators. Egypt has no reason to rebuff reinforcing its ties to Israel. Israel has much to offer economically and in terms of security to a new Egyptian government.

Israel can protect a new Egyptian government from Saudi and Iranian intelligence. A democratic Egypt will support Iran’s democratic, popular opposition—not the current regime. Given that, Egypt faces the threat of Iranian interference. And though the

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Egyptian military let Iranian ships pass through the Suez Canal recently, permission for subsequent crossings is not guaranteed and depends on a yet-to-be-formed formal policy.

A democratic Egypt would also endanger the authoritarian Saudi crown. Israel’s intelligence services and military could serve as the basis for a strategic alliance against Iran and any other rulers who survive the current turmoil in the region.

Israel can address Egypt’s burgeoning water crisis by offering its desalinization technology. Egyptian dependence on the Nile River makes it vulnerable, as several countries around Lake Victoria--the source of the Nile’s flow in central Africa--have made it clear that they intend to use more of the river’s resources, ignoring decades-old agreements that guaranteed a disproportionate quantity of the river’s water for Egyptian use. Access to Israeli desalinization products could save Egypt significant amounts of money.

Israel has also expanded its ties with those same African states. Newly independent Southern Sudan has accepted overtures from Israel. Israel already has a strong relationships with Ethiopia and Kenya, and is courting Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria. In 2009, Israel signed a deal with 15 western African states to combat starvation and lack of water in their countries. This gives the Jewish state a valuable diplomatic position to mediate water disputes between Egypt and its neighbors, and balance diplomatic pressure from Egypt if need be.

Mubarak’s rule fostered a state-controlled press that published consistently anti-Semitic articles against Israel. His fall should be welcomed as a chance to open the Egyptian press and communicate directly with the Egyptian people, strengthening the current peace treaty. Israel should view this revolution as a chance to encourage an array of Egyptian parties that would diversify Egypt's political scene, including those representing minorities. The Muslim Brotherhood hardly has a monopoly on Egyptian political philosophy. Many intellectuals accuse the party

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of accommodating the Mubarak government and remaining an opposition party in name only. Some Egyptians are angry that the Brotherhood did not supporting the first protests against Mubarak on January 25 and subsequently agreed that he keep power over a transitional government.

Coptic Egyptians may provide an avenue to rekindle relationships between Israel and the Middle East's Christian populations. Egypt has a large Christian population, long agitated by discrimination and ethnic tension in Egypt. The New Year saw a major terrorist attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria. Christians took part in the recent revolution and will look to capitalize on their new opportunities in a representative government.

Most importantly, a successful Egyptian revolution will increase pressure on Iran. The demonstrations in 2009 are still fresh in the minds of young Iranians, who envy the fall of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Iranian opposition figures are trying to start a new round of demonstrations in Iran. A democratic flowering there would alleviate the main strategic adversary Israelis face in the Middle East, no matter which government would take power in Tehran.

Israel should embrace the path of democratization and publicly congratulate a new Egyptian government, as well as the Egyptian people, for its successful efforts to affect nonviolent change. A new approach to Egypt should characterize a broader strategic mindset on the part of Israel's foreign ministry. An Egyptian revolution does not have to constitute the threat that Iran's 1979 revolution did. Indeed, it could be the paradigm for a larger 2011 revolution–-sweeping democratic changes across the Muslim world that bring greater acceptance of the Jewish state.

Gedalyah Reback is a graduate of Rutgers University and a master's student at Hebrew University in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

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Key political risks to watch in Syria Factbox,2 Mar. 2011,

DAMASCUS, March 2 (Reuters) - Syria's ruling hierarchy seems unperturbed by the winds of change sweeping through Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, confident that its security apparatus and a popular hardline against Israel will ensure its grip on power.President Bashar al-Assad, dismissed the possibility that the Arab political upheaval might spread to Syria and said in a recent interview that his priority remained stability and a gradual opening of the economy.

While Assad, the tall, enigmatic ophthalmologist who succeeded his late father 11 years ago, is not widely seen as reformer -- he has kept the authoritarian political system intact -- he does not inspire popular dislike of the kind that helped fuel protests elsewhere in the Arab Middle East.

His emphasis on stability finds resonance among some who have seen Iraqi refugees flood into Syria after the chaos that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein eight years ago.But the Syrian state faces economic and social challenges similar to those that swayed public opinion against the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

With a per capita income similar to Egypt at $2,500, demands may mount for swift and comprehensive change to improve the lot of ordinary Syrians, tackle corruption and a water crisis in the east that has resulted in the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.Following are key Syrian political risks to watch:

EASTERN SYRIAExperts say decades of water resource mismanagement have wreaked environmental havoc on Syria's eastern agricultural heartland, which produces most of the country's wheat.

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The east, home to most of the ethnic Kurdish minority that make up 10-15 percent of the Syrian population, has suffered from drought since 2005.

A United Nations report last year said 800,000 people in the region were living in extreme poverty and "should be benefiting from a much higher level of support".

What to watch:- Kurdish issue. Ethnic Kurds mounted violent demonstrations against the state in 2004 that resulted in scores of deaths. Officials have since promised to address their demands to grant citizenship to an estimated 300,000 Kurds but have not done so, although Syria's northern neighbour Turkey has adopted a softer line toward its own Kurdish population.

- Urban poor. Thousands of easterners have taken up residence in shantytowns on the edge of major Syrian cities. Government moves to prevent illegal housing last year sparked clashes between residents and the police.

OPPOSITIONCandle light vigils organised in this month in support of the Egyptian revolution drew scores of people, amid the usual heavy security presence, but activists say they will continue to call for larger demonstrations.

A special security court sentenced a 69-year-old leftist to seven years in jail and a teenaged blogger to five years in jail on charges of revealing information to a foreign country, signalling no tolerance toward dissent in the wake of Arab political upheaval.

A main challenge, the Muslim Brotherhood, was crushed in the 1980s, and special forces razed the old city of Hamah, where the Brotherhood made its last stand.

But the state has since allowed the Islamists to exercise huge social influence and the number of veiled women has risen

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dramatically, prompting concern among non-religious Syrians and non-Muslims.

What to watch:- Demonstrations. Internet and communications are under surveillance, and there is little street enthusiasm to challenge security forces with a Soviet-like credo. So far, Facebook pages calling for protests similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt failed to mobilise demonstrations in Syria, where security forces keep tight control.

- Any actual street protests, even small gatherings, would mark a significant challenge to authorities.

- Signs of discontent if the ruling hierarchy moves to lessen the leeway granted to Islamists. The authorities have already taken control of the management of privately owned Islamic schools, and made it clear that they do not favour students wearing full veil in universities.

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Mideast turmoil may boost Israeli-Syrian negotiations Adam Gonn (usually writes for Media Line- American)People's Daily Online (Chinese)3 Mar. 2011,

The prospect of restarting the suspended peace negotiations between Israel and Syria may be advanced by the current unrest in the Middle East.

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is willing to reach out to Israel, he will find a willing partner for negotiations.

Barak's remarks came a few days after it was revealed that the United States Senator John Kerry had been working with Assad over the last couple of months on a plan to renew the negotiations.

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Israel hopes that a peace deal with Syria will deprive Iran of a strategic ally and weakening Hezbollah in Lebanon. A peace agreement would also force the Palestinian organizations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to move their headquarters from the Syrian capital Damascus, which Israel hopes will weaken them in the same way that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was undermined when it was forced to leave Lebanon in 1982.

Syria hopes that in addition to regaining the Golan Heights, the deal will lead to better relations with the United States and increased foreign investment in its economy.

Analysts speaking to Xinhua Wednesday said the regional turmoil will have effect on the prospect of reaching a peace deal between Israel and Syria. However, some said it would have a positive effect while others disagreed.

Ely Karmon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Counter- Terrorism at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya told Xinhua that there is a sense of urgency in both Israel and Syria to push for negotiations now.Israel is feeling frustrated with the lack of progress in the negotiations with the Palestinians, and the Syrian president is fearful that it might suffer the same pain as other leaders across the region which have fallen due to protests, according to Karmon.

"The Bashar regime must be under huge psychological and political pressure and will try to change the situation," Karmon said. He noted that 80 percent of the Syrian population is Sunni Muslim while the ruling elite are Alawite.

The Israeli-Syrian negotiations have mainly focused on the status of the strategically located Golan Heights which Israel captured in 1967 and have since annexed.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently said Israel was interested in negotiations with Syria but would never give up

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the Golan Heights. However, Karmon pointed out that the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer almost all of the heights.

"If there is a will like in Egypt during Sadat, it can be managed," Karmon said, referring to former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat who in 1979 signed the peace treaty with Israel.

"Even Netanyahu and the Israeli military and security establishments are very eager to activate an agreement with Syria, " Karmon added.

MUTUAL BENEFITSKarmon's view is shared by Moshe Moaz from the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who agrees that there are good chances of reaching a deal.

Analysts like Moaz maintain that although the Israeli public is against giving up the Golan Heights in exchange for peace, they are not against peace itself.

"There are good chances but it's not simple," Moaz said, adding that the Israeli demands to Syria would "include a demilitarization of the Golan Heights, an arrangement of the water, and also Syria cooling relations with Iran and containing Hezbollah."

In Moaz's opinion, a deal is in the interest of both Israel and Syria.

In order to convince the skeptical Israeli public about the Syrian intent for peace, Syria, when negotiations were conducted 10 years ago, did agree to American supervision of the Golan Heights.

According to Moaz, one additional factor providing reassurance for Israel is that "the balance of power between Israel and Syria is so much in favor of Israel."

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He believes, however, that the Israeli demands on Syria's relations with Iran and Hezbollah will be difficult for Damascus to agree to. He added that it would be possible for Assad to sell the idea to his people, especially if peace would mean economic benefits, but he doubted that Israel has the kind of leaders who would be willing to make a deal.

RISKS TAKINGNot everyone holds an optimistic view. Mordechai Kedar from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University said the regional unrest has made Israeli leaders more skeptical of signing peace agreements, because the governments in the Middle East are not as stable as they once were.

"Israel is very cautious about getting into negotiations because you never know what will be in the future, especially in these days in the Middle East," Kedar told Xinhua.

Contrary to what Karmon and Moaz said, Kedar argued that many Israelis are warning the government not to enter any deals with either Syrians or the Palestinians because the situation in the Arab world is so unstable.

"If the Egyptian regime was subject to such a change, nobody today can get insurance from any other government that it can continue with a peace process with Israel," Kedar said, referring to the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was considered a strategic and dependable ally to Israel but was forced to step down after demonstrations.

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Iran and Syria: BFFs? Judith Levy,Washington Times,1 Mar. 2011,

ISRAEL — March 1, 2011 — Iran never misses an opportunity to seize an opportunity.

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When the Mubarak regime collapsed in Egypt, Iran was quick to characterize the event — possibly with some justice — as signaling the decline of American/Western influence in the region. Whether that’s true or not, Mubarak’s departure constituted an unexpected and exciting opening for Iran, which immediately tested the Americans’ and the Israelis’ stomach for provocation by sending two warships through the Suez Canal.

?This was a major development for two reasons. The first you probably already know: it was the first time Iranian warships had passed through the Canal since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The second point, which got far less attention, is this: the transit marked the first time Iranian warships had ever been granted permission to dock at Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. This is extraordinary, considering the Saudis’ urgent desire to contain Iran. It suggests a timidity in the face of an emboldened enemy that might, one would hope, be of some interest to the US State Department.

The Iranian ships were destined for Syria, with which Iran is swiftly consolidating its military relationship. Both countries have been busy of late, but the radar sweep of American media attention seems determined to avoid catching a blip anywhere other than Libya at the moment. You should be aware of the following recent events:

1. Iran and Syria have formally agreed to cooperate on naval training, including personnel exchange. (Hence the warships.) Iranian naval commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said “the message of the ships is to announce peace and friendship to Islamic countries and the region and attempt to strengthen relations between the countries,” while Iranian Ambassador to Syria Ahmad Mousavi hastened to reassure skeptical observers that Iran “does not seek to wage war against anyone.” (The reassurance wasn’t really necessary, it seems, since no one is admitting to paying much attention. The Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman called the Iranians “insolent,” but DM Ehud Barak

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insists there wasn’t anything on the ships to worry us. The Americans admitted rather diffidently to “watching” the progress of the ships, but wouldn’t commit themselves to concern or even interest.)

2. In the wake of the collapse of the Egyptian military’s efforts to impede arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip, Iran has rushed in to build new infrastructure in the Sinai to enable more efficient arms transfers to Hamas. (By efficient, I mean more advanced weaponry and in larger quantities.) During the Egyptian uprising, dozens of police stations in the Sinai Peninsula were abandoned by policemen fleeing Bedouin armed with missiles and assault rifles. The resulting Wild-Westian anarchy has enabled Iranian proxies to act in the area with near impunity.

3. Last Saturday, Russian DM Anatoly Serdyukov said that Russia has decided to fulfill a contractual obligation to complete the transfer of cruise missiles to Syria, despite two years of entreaties by the Israelis not to do so. The Israeli Defense Ministry fears that the missiles could “fall into the hands of Hezbollah, just as other weapons systems came from Syria.” The weapons in question are surface-to-air rocket units armed with P-800, or Yakhont, missiles. According to Haaretz, they are capable of hitting ships 300 kilometers off Syria’s coast.

It’s impossible to tell from the lack of media attention to these events whether the White House is oblivious to them or maintaining a shrewd and tactical silence. It’s safe to say, though, that the President is clearly profoundly uncomfortable with anything resembling imperial meddling. Is this prudent caution, or is he – as his critics contend — constitutionally unable to defend American interests abroad without compromising his personal principles? I honestly don't know, and at this stage of the game, any commentator who claims to know for sure is probably yanking your chain. I will say, however, that the total silence emanating from the White House in the face of developments that are threatening both to American interests and to American ideals doesn’t inspire much confidence.

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If the overthrow of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs fails, as it almost certainly will, the US will need to be prepared for a much bolder Iranian theocracy, whether it likes it or not. As far as Syria is concerned, it is certainly in American interests to address that country’s apparent decision to formalize its relationship with Iran. Assad has picked his team, and it ain’t us. The strategic consolidation currently in progress will almost without question eventually turn to aggression against Americans or American allies. When it does, polite protestations from Washington that “the violence must stop” just won’t cut it.

Judith Levy is a Duke- and Oxford-educated writer with a background in History and International Relations.

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Syria suspected of nuke activity U.S., U.N. seek inspections at 3 sites for use of uraniumEli Lake,Washington Times2 Mar. 2011,

The Obama administration and a U.N. watchdog agency want Syria to show inspectors a suspected uranium-conversion facility and two other nuclear sites possibly linked to the remnants of a covert arms program.

Since 2007, when Israel bombed the nuclear site at al Kibar, U.S. intelligence agencies feared the conversion plant near the town of Marj as-Sultan outside of Damascus was built to supply fuel to the bombed reactor, according to two former U.S. intelligence officers. Israeli jets destroyed the reactor site in September 2007, but not the suspected site at Marj as-Sultan.

Recent disclosures about the suspected uranium-conversion plant suggest Syria’s nuclear program is more expansive than previously known.

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“Both the Bush and Obama administrations had and still have open questions about the facilities the IAEA is looking to inspect in Syria and what has become of the al Kibar site, including a facility that has been reported as Marj as-Sultan,” said Chuck Lutes, former director of nonproliferation at the White House National Security Council staff, who served in that capacity until September.

Before that, Mr. Lutes, a retired Air Force colonel, was director of counterproliferation under President George W. Bush.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will conduct an inspection on April 1 at a chemical-processing plant at Homs, Syria, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The site, however, is not one of the original three sites the IAEA has asked to inspect in connection with the al Kibar site, also known in IAEA reports as the Dair Alzour site.

“Syria has not cooperated with the Agency since June 2008 in connection with the unresolved issues related to the Dair Alzour site and the other three locations allegedly functionally related to it,” stated the latest IAEA report to the Board of Governors on Syria’s suspected nuclear program.

Syria has publicly denied that al Kibar was a nuclear reactor. When IAEA inspectors found traces of man-made unenriched uranium in soil samples near the reactor in 2008, Syrian officials said the traces came from Israeli munitions, according to the IAEA report released Feb. 25.

Olli Heinonen, who was the chief inspector for the IAEA during the agency’s 2008 inspection of al Kibar, said in an interview the Syrian explanation for the traces of uranium was faulty. “We found the particles there,” he said. “And there was not a good explanation for that. The Syrians say it was from the Israeli bombs.”

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The latest IAEA report on the Syrian program concludes, “The Agency has assessed that the probability that the particles originated from the missiles used to destroy the building is low. The Agency also assessed that there is a low probability that the particles were introduced by aerial dispersion.”

Officials confirmed suspicions about the three sites after the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung published a detailed story about the Marj as-Sultan facility last week. The newspaper stated that it had photos from inside the plant but withheld publishing them to protect the source.

The newspaper said the photos allowed them to make a “reasonable assumption that Syria was busy building a facility for the conversion of uranium, a preliminary stage in the production of fuel rods that could have been used in the presumed reactor.”

Mr. Heinonen said the new uranium-conversion facility was likely built for research because it appears too small to produce fuel at larger-scale industrial levels. “Most likely this facility disclosed in the German press was too small,” he said. “It was only research and development. The fuel for al Kibar had to come from somewhere else in Syria or from abroad.”

After the German report was published, the private Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, which tracks illicit nuclear proliferation, published what it said were commercial satellite photographs of the site on its website (isis-online.org.)

“The facility’s operational status is unknown,” the ISIS report said. “However, there is suspicion that Syria may have emptied the buildings prior to mid-2008 and taken steps to disguise previous activities at the site.”

A senior U.S. official interviewed for this article said he did not know whether the facility at Marj as-Sultan was operational or not.

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“Looking at the stuff that has been in the press and what [ISIS] has shown, there is significant questions about the Marj as-Sultan facility,” said the senior U.S. official. “It remains a question about the scope and breadth of their nuclear program and remains unclear also if there is ongoing activity there. The satellite photos from ISIS indicate that perhaps there is not activity, but it’s hard to know. That is why we need to know what they were doing and what they are doing.”

A spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington declined to comment for the article.

The standoff between Syria and the IAEA over the suspected nuclear sites could also affect Middle East diplomacy.

“There has been a push internationally to possibly invoke special inspections by the IAEA,” said Mr. Lutes, now with the Project on National Security Reform.

Special inspections are more intrusive than the kind of collaborative approach to inspections most countries allow, by which the schedule and content of the inspections are planned out beforehand between the country and the IAEA.

Special inspections, according to Mr. Lutes, have only been invoked twice before, once in Romania after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, and then in 1993 to determine the extent of North Korea’s nuclear program.

In 1993, the call for special inspections resulted in North Korea expelling IAEA inspectors, which touched off the first of several nuclear confrontations with the reclusive Pyongyang regime.

Mr. Lutes said the potential value in calling for a “special inspection” of the Syrian facilities would be that it could force the IAEA to refer the Syria file to the U.N. Security Council if the Syria refuses to allow the inspections as it has since 2008.

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If the U.N. Security Council took up the Syria file, Damascus would be in the same kind of diplomatic jeopardy as Iran and North Korea today.

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Israel Splits Over How To Deal With All The Revolutions In The Middle EastDan Ephron, Business Insier,Mar. 2, 2011,

Netanyahu wants Israel to hunker down in the face of Mideast revolution. But members of his cabinet are now calling for greater engagement. Dan Ephron reports on Jerusalem’s strategic debate.

In the weeks since Arabs began rising up against governments across the Middle East, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the unrest mostly in terms of the dangers it poses to Israel. Appearing before lawmakers on Feb 2, he said Israel must brace for years of instability.

Two weeks later, he told his cabinet that the changes would surely force Israel to spend more on defense. And at a public event last week, he warned that Islamists would try to hijack the democratic revolutions, just as Ayatollah Khomeini usurped the Iranian one in 1979.

The message in all these statements is that Israel would now be hunkering down. If it was reluctant to take risks for peace with its neighbors before the uprisings, now it would be even more cautious.

But lately, a few Israeli officials are quietly making the opposite argument: that events in the region call for bold Israeli initiatives, not just with the Palestinians but perhaps chiefly with Syria; that instead of hunkering down, Israel should now be doubling down. Advocates of this approach mostly come from the top echelons of

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the military and intelligence agencies, where officials have long felt that the strategic benefits of peace with Syria were worth the price Israel would have to pay in territory. But Israelis familiar with internal discussions in recent weeks say the case for aggressive diplomacy is also being made by a few people within Netanyahu’s government, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak. This week, Barak told Israel’s state-run radio: “The Syrians are signaling that they are also willing to consider a peace agreement without harming our security…. I think we have to examine every option.”

The argument for engaging Syria forthwith is underpinned by a certain schoolyard logic: when you’re losing friends, you need to make new ones fast. Israel let a key regional ally slip away when it sparred with Turkey over an aid ship to the Gaza Strip last year. Depending on the outcome of the revolution in Egypt, its relationship with an even more important ally could also take a dive. The last time Israel suffered a setback of that magnitude was when Islamists deposed the Iranian Shah in 1979; the two countries had broad commercial ties and shared intelligence. In what might stand today as a model of a diplomatic rebound, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt that same year, more than offsetting the damage. Ilan Mizrahi, a former deputy chief of Mossad, says a deal with Damascus now would have the added advantage of extracting Syria from Iran’s orbit. “If the major radical threat to stability in the Middle East is Iran, then you have to weaken Iran’s position in the Middle East,” he says.

The most glaring problem with the approach is that Syria is precisely the kind of repressive regime that democratic movements across the region are targeting. Though protests there have been minimal, some analysts believe Syrian President Bashar Assad, who inherited power from his father a decade ago, might soon go the way off the Mubaraks and Ben Alis. From Israel’s perspective, that would mean ceding territory and then bracing for instability—the very scenario it seeks to avoid. Even if Assad is stable, an agreement is a tall order. Assad’s asking price for peace is a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau

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Israel captured in 1967. Under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel came very close to a deal with Syria but couldn’t close the gaps, says Mizrahi, who served as Olmert’s national security adviser.

And Olmert was certainly more compromising than Netanyahu would be. Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has visited Syria and Israel several times in the past two years trying to resuscitate peacemaking. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Kerry showed Netanyahu a paper outlining Syrian terms for fresh talks, the Israeli leader remained dismissive. (Neither Kerry’s office nor Netanyahu’s would discuss details of their conversations). Even if Netanyahu favored a deal he would have trouble getting approval from his hawkish cabinet. His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said this week that Syria was only feigning interest in peace to win western legitimacy. “There is no justification for Israel giving up the Golan Heights,” he told foreign diplomats.

Still, Netanyahu is under pressure to do something about Israel’s rising isolation. He’s come under withering criticism from European leaders for not advancing the peace process with the Palestinians, who refuse to renew negotiations until Israel freezes settlement building. Netanyahu also seems to be paying a price domestically. A poll published last week in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed he was losing ground to opposition leader Tzipi Livni, whose approach to peacemaking is more flexible. Giving talks with Syria a green light might be the easiest way for Netanyahu to deflect the criticism at home and abroad. From his perspective, talks don’t have to lead to an agreement. Israelis and Arabs have been proving that for decades.

Dan Ephron has been Newsweek’s Jerusalem bureau chief since January, 2010. Previously, he served as a national security correspondent and deputy bureau chief for the magazine in Washington. His stories have also appeared in the Boston Globe, The New Republic and Esquire.

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Robert Fisk: The historical narrative that lies beneath the Gaddafi rebellionIndependent3 Mar. 2011,

Poor old Libyans. After 42 years of Gaddafi, the spirit of resistance did not burn so strongly. The intellectual heart of Libya had fled abroad.

Libyans have always opposed foreign occupiers just as the Algerians and the Egyptians and the Yemenis have done – but their Beloved Leader has always presented himself as a fellow resister rather than a dictator. Hence in his long self-parody of a speech in Tripoli yesterday, he invoked Omar Mukhtar – hanged by Mussolini's colonial army – rather than the patronising tone of a Mubarak or a Ben Ali.

And who was he going to free Libya from? Al-Qa'ida, of course. Indeed, at one point in his Green Square address, Gaddafi made a very interesting remark. His Libyan intelligence service, he said, had helped to free al-Qa'ida members from the US prison at Guantanamo in return for a promise that al-Qa'ida would not operate in Libya or attack his regime. But al-Qa'ida betrayed the Libyans, he insisted, and set up "sleeper cells" in the country.

Whether Gaddafi believes all this or not, there have been many rumours in the Arab world of contacts between Gaddafi's secret police and al-Qa'ida operatives, meetings intended to avoid a recurrence of the miniature Islamist uprising that Gaddafi faced years ago in Benghazi.

And many al-Qa'ida members did come from Libya – hence the frequent nomme de guerre of "al-Libi" which they added as a patronymic. Natural it then was for Gaddafi, who once hosted Abu Nidal's Palestinian assassination groups (who never betrayed him), to suspect that al-Qa'ida lay somewhere behind the uprising in eastern Libya.

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It is only a matter of time, needless to say, before Gaddafi reminds Libyans that al-Qa'ida was a satellite of the very Arab mujahedin used by the United States to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Yet Libya's own ferocious resistance to Italian colonisation proves that its people know how to fight and die. In "Tripolitania", Libyans were expected to walk in the gutter if Italians were walking towards them on the same pavement and Fascist Italy used aircraft as well as occupation troops to bring Libya to heel.

Ironically, it was the forces of the British and Americans rather than the Italians that liberated Libya. And they themselves left behind a legacy of millions of landmines around Tobruk and Benghazi that Gaddafi's weird regime never ceased to exploit as Libyan shepherds continued to die on the old battlefields of the Second World War.

So Libyans are not disconnected from history. Their grandfathers – in some cases their fathers – fought against the Italians; thus a foundation of resistance, a real historical narrative, lies beneath their opposition to Gaddafi; hence Gaddafi's own adoption of resistance – to the mythical threat of al-Qa'ida's "foreign" brutality – is supposed to maintain support for his regime.

Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, however, the "People's Masses" of Libya are a tribal rather than a societal nation. Hence two members of Gaddafi's own family – the head of security in Tripoli and the most influential intelligence officer in Benghazi – were respectively his nephew, Abdel Salem Alhadi, and his cousin, Mabrouk Warfali. Gaddafi's own tribe, the Guedaffi, come from the desert between Sirte and Sebha; hence the western region of Libya remains under his control.

Talk of civil war in Libya – the kind of waffle currently emerging from Hillary Clinton's State Department – is nonsense. All revolutions, bloody or otherwise, are usually civil wars unless outside powers intervene, which Western nations clearly do not intend to do and the people of eastern Libya have already said they

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do not wish for foreign intervention (David Cameron, please note).

But Gaddafi went to war in Chad – and lost. Gaddafi's regime is not a great military power and Colonel Gaddafi is not General Gaddafi. Yet he will go on singing his anti-colonial songs and as long as his security teams are prepared to hold on in the west of the country, he can flaunt himself in Tripoli.

And a warning: under UN sanctions, Iraqis were supposed to rise up against Saddam Hussein. They didn't – because they were too busy trying to keep their families alive without bread or fresh water or money. Saddam lost all but four provinces of Iraq in the 1991 rebellion. But he got them back.

Now western Libyans live without bread or fresh water or money. And Gaddafi yesterday spoke in Tripoli's Green Square with the same resolution to "rescue" Benghazi from "terrorists". Dictators don't like or trust each other; but unfortunately they do learn from each other.

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Intervention in Libya would poison the Arab revolution Western military action against Gaddafi risks spreading the conflict and undermining the democratic movementSeumas Milne,Guardian3 Mar. 2011,

It's as if the bloodbaths of Iraq and Afghanistan had been a bad dream. The liberal interventionists are back. As insurrection and repression has split Libya in two and the death toll has mounted, the old Bush-and-Blair battle-cries have returned to haunt us.

The same western leaders who happily armed and did business with the Gaddafi regime until a fortnight ago have now slapped

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sanctions on the discarded autocrat and blithely referred him to the international criminal court the United States won't recognise.

While American and British politicians have ramped up talk of a no-fly zone, US warships have been sent to the Mediterranean, a stockpile of chemical weapons has been duly discovered, special forces have been in action, Italy has ditched a non-aggression treaty with Tripoli and a full-scale western military intervention in yet another Arab country is suddenly a serious prospect.

Egged on by his neoconservative lieutenants, David Cameron went furthest. Fresh from his tour selling arms to Gulf despots, the British prime minister talked excitedly about arming Libyan rebels, and only staged a hasty retreat when he found himself running ahead of the US administration.

But neither American caution nor UN security council opposition should obscure the fact that there is now a serious danger of western armed action in Libya. Unlike in the rest of the region, we are no longer talking mainly about the security forces confronting demonstrators but a split in the heart of the regime and the military, with large areas of the country in the hands of an armed opposition.

With Colonel Gaddafi and his loyalists showing every sign of digging in, the likelihood must be of intensified conflict – with all the heightened pretexts that would offer for outside interference, from humanitarian crises to threats to oil supplies.

But any such intervention would risk disaster and be a knife at the heart of the revolutionary process now sweeping the Arab world. Military action is needed, US and British politicians claim, because Gaddafi is "killing his own people". Hundreds have certainly died, but that's hard to take seriously as the principal motivation.

When more than 300 people were killed by Hosni Mubarak's security forces in a couple of weeks, Washington initially called

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for "restraint on both sides". In Iraq, 50,000 US occupation troops protect a government which last Friday killed 29 peaceful demonstrators demanding reform. In Bahrain, home of the US fifth fleet, the regime has been shooting and gassing protesters with British-supplied equipment for weeks.

The "responsibility to protect" invoked by those demanding intervention in Libya is applied so selectively that the word hypocrisy doesn't do it justice. And the idea that states which are themselves responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in illegal wars, occupations and interventions in the last decade, along with mass imprisonment without trial, torture and kidnapping, should be authorised by international institutions to prevent killings in other countries is simply preposterous. The barefaced cheek of William Hague's insistence that there would be a "day of reckoning" for the Libyan regime if it committed crimes or atrocities took some beating.

The reality is that the western powers which have backed authoritarian kleptocrats across the Middle East for decades now face a loss of power in the most strategically sensitive region of the world as a result of the Arab uprisings and the prospect of representative governments. They are evidently determined to appropriate the revolutionary process wherever possible, limiting it to cosmetic change that allows continued control of the region.

In Libya, the disintegration of the regime offers a crucial opening. Even more important, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, it has the strategic prize of the largest oil reserves in Africa. Of course the Gaddafi regime has moved a long way from the days when it took over the country's oil, kicked out foreign bases and funded the African National Congress at a time when the US and Britain branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

Along with repression, corruption and a failure to deliver to ordinary Libyans, the regime has long since bent the knee to western power, as Tony Blair and his friends were so keen to celebrate, ditching old allies and nuclear ambitions while offering

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privatised pickings and contracts to western banks, arms and oil corporations such as BP.

Now the prospect of the regime's fall offers the chance for much closer involvement – western intelligence has had its fingers in parts of the Libyan opposition for years – when other states seem in danger of spinning out of the imperial orbit.

But Libya has a compelling history of foreign occupation and resistance. Up to a third of the population are estimated to have died under Italian colonial rule. Those calling for western military action in Libya seem brazenly untroubled by the fact that throughout the Arab world, foreign intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship is regarded as central to the problems of the region. Inextricably tied up with the demand for democratic freedoms is a profound desire for independence and self-determination.

That is clear in reaction on the ground in Libya to the threat of outside intervention. As one of the rebel military leaders in Benghazi, General Ahmad Gatroni, said this week, the US should "take care of its own people, we can look after ourselves".

No-fly zones, backed by some other opposition figures, would involve a military attack on Libya's air defences and, judging from the Iraqi experience, be highly unlikely to halt regime helicopter or ground operations. They would risk expanding military conflict and strengthening Gaddafi's hand by allowing the regime to burnish its anti-imperialist credentials. Military intervention wouldn't just be a threat to Libya and its people, but to the ownership of what has been until now an entirely organic, homegrown democratic movement across the region.

The embattled US-backed Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh claimed on Tuesday that the region-wide protest movement was "managed by Tel Aviv and under the supervision of Washington". That is easily dismissed as a hallucinogenic fantasy now. It would seem less so if the US and Britain were arming the Libyan

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opposition. The Arab revolution will be made by Arabs, or it won't be a revolution at all.

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The Syrian regime could be the next Middle Eastern domino to fallRibal al-AssadDaily Star (Lebanese),3 Mar. 2011,

With the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes gone and street protests roiling cities from Algiers to Tehran, many people are now wondering which domino might fall next. Syria, whose secular, militarized dictatorship most closely resembles the fallen regimes of Tunisia and Egypt, may not be next in line, but appears nonetheless to be approaching a tipping point.

Of course, the old “domino theory” in international relations was only a crude way of emphasizing that different parts of any region are linked to each other. For today’s Arab world, a better metaphor might be a chessboard, from which the removal of even a pawn inevitably alters the relationships among all the other pieces.

Today, as protests mount and multiply, the government of every Arab state in the Middle East and North Africa probably believes that, if left to its own devices, it can contain internal dissent.

In Syria, it seems inevitable that protest may soon crack the regime’s brittle political immobility. Most ordinary Syrians face extremely difficult economic and social conditions, including high unemployment, rising food prices, constraints on personal freedom and endemic corruption. These factors are no different from those that brought people on to the streets in North Africa and the Middle East. What began as protests over living

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conditions became full-scale demands for freedom and democracy.

The regime in Damascus is fearful of similar unrest, as it should be. The best way to avoid a confrontation between the people and the security forces is a process of genuine reform leading to elections and a government of national unity. The ingrained inertia of the current regime, however, seems to preclude any early move toward that.

Instead, Syria’s rulers are offering inducements to ensure that key constituencies remain in line – laptops for teachers, subsidies for public-sector workers, and empty reformist rhetoric. But the current situation calls for far more serious measures. Lifting the state of emergency that has been in force since 1963 – giving sweeping powers to the regime and its security services – would be both a symbolic and tangible step in the right direction.

Unless Syria’s rulers, like other leaders in the Arab world, begin to appreciate that freedom is a fundamental human right, even the most quiescent people’s patience may wear dangerously thin.

High food prices may have served as a trigger in North Africa, but the speed with which the protesters turned their attention to political reform caught everyone off guard.

Putting this genie back in its bottle would be virtually impossible without bloodshed of the type we are now witnessing in some parts of the Arab world. So the Syrian leadership knows that it must respond – hence the half-hearted reform agenda that it recently outlined. But trying to address deep-rooted popular grievances with flowery language and a bouquet of subsidies is like trying to extinguish a forest fire with a water pistol. The solutions to Syria’s problems must be as substantive as the problems are serious.

Until now, Syria’s rulers have relied on their anti-Israel, anti-Western rhetoric to protect themselves. But cries about the Israel-

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Palestine conflict were rarely heard in the protests in Tunis and Cairo. Furthermore, in the last few years, when Israeli planes struck targets in Syria, there was no answer from the regime – and still none when Israeli planes flew over the presidential palace.

The regime claims that it is part of the “resistance” with its senior partner Iran. However, the WikiLeaks cables show that the Syrian leadership told the Iranian regime not to count on it in any war against Israel because the country was too weak. So the regime is making a fatal error if it thinks that its old diversionary tactics will continue to provide it with immunity. On the contrary, with a young, well-educated population unable to find suitable work, the regime has created its own cadre of potential protesters, who are aware that it is using empty slogans to keep the state of emergency and stay in power.

The Syrian people are strong, patient, resilient, and resourceful. Family and social bonds remain potent in the face of adversity. When food is scarce, people share. When the regime cracks down on the Internet, people use proxy servers.

But they should not have to make do. They should not have to risk their safety when they seek to engage with the world online. No one wants to see the streets of Damascus consumed in protest, or a violent confrontation erupt between protesters and security forces. What the Syrian people want is a meaningful dialogue with the regime.

The regime must appreciate that, despite its best efforts, Syrians have been watching events in the region with as much interest as the rest of the world. Syria’s people may have no predilection for violence, but the birth of freedom, once witnessed, is not easily forgotten – or trumped by state handouts and vacuous statements by a distant, self-isolated leadership.

People said that the Berlin Wall would not fall. They said that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak would not stand down. And still some say that Syria cannot change. But Syria will change, and I, like my

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compatriots, pray that when change comes, it is peaceful and harmonious.

Hint: He could publish this same article also in the Scotish newspaper Scotsman (here)

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