Summer surprises in Syria and Palestine

It's this time of the week again, and the full version of my print-edition weekend column (with Aluf Benn) is here. If you're tired though, from reading all my other blogs, or all the items in my new What To Read list (I can't imagine any other reason), you can read a shortened version of my column here:

Damascus. Surprise

Israeli political correspondents have spent the last few weeks occupied with primarily one issue: uncovering Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's covert channel with the Syrians. Anyone who has ever approached the Syrian channel has been plagued by phone calls and casual conversations in an effort to discover the identity of the third party mediating between Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad, and to find out what Israel would receive in exchange for the Golan Heights.

For Olmert, there are a few advantages to the preoccupation with peace signals from Damascus: It helps him keep the Labor Party in the coalition and prove to the public that he is making every effort to prevent further conflict in the North. It's not clear what, if anything, will come out of Olmert's "July surprise". The response so far is not putting his mind at ease.

Gaza. Disagreement

Here are three reasons to take another look at the American agenda for the Israeli-Palestinian front, a document known as the benchmarks. First, the benchmarks haven't gone away. Second, the disagreement over them is far deeper than the vaguely dull reports have reflected. And third, it's unclear where the Americans are going and what their goal is.

Israeli sources who have read the document - which was compiled under U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, who is helping build up Abbas' forces - say he is cut off from reality. Dayton, it seems, is approaching the position reached by every American general who has tried to get involved in this murky business, from Anthony Zinni to William Ward. Dayton's Israeli counterparts rank him somewhere between naive and strange.

The Americans vehemently reject the Israeli response. For them, the benchmarks only reiterate the parties' previous commitments, and it's customary to fulfill promises in American culture. One of the items Israel objects to is the operation of Palestinian convoys from Gaza to the West Bank, saying such convoys could be used to transfer technology on manufacture of Qassam rockets. But, the Americans say to Israel, you committed to convoys in a November 2005 agreement. The situation has changed since then, the Israelis argue; Hamas wasn't in power at the time (I have a news item with some more details about this topic here: Dayton, the top American security envoy to the Palestinian Authority, has criticized Israel for its failure to help define a "security horizon" for the Palestinians and its refusal to ease conditions in the territories. In his reports to Washington, Dayton says forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas have improved their performance in recent battles with Hamas.)

This doesn't sway the Americans. The agreement wasn't conditioned on the results of the Palestinian election, says a senior American official, adding that Israel can't unilaterally release itself from adhering to an agreement signed by the prime minister and defense minister. As to why the United States didn't coordinate the benchmarks with Israel ahead of time, the official says that when the Americans presented the document, they said it was their position on the necessary steps and had no intention of holding negotiations.

Washington. A request

It's an old story - eight years have passed since then - that has arisen once again, and not coincidentally. Binyamin Netanyahu's supporters will use it to try to show that Ehud Barak is not suited for another stab at the premiership. They have apparently reached one of two conclusions: either that Barak is due to win the Labor primaries runoff and that attacks on him must begin now, or that his victory is not assured and that this is the time to try to help his opponent, Ami Ayalon, whom Netanyahu prefers as a rival in a general election.

At the end of the 1990s, the United States and Israel discussed a boycott of Russian companies that were leaking nuclear know-how to Iran. The Clinton administration wasn't so excited about the idea, but a few limitations were passed into American law and others were implemented by executive order. Binyamin Netanyahu thinks the administration chose the executive order route to avoid more stringent legislation; such orders are both easier to impose and easier to cancel.

Al Gore, then U.S. vice president, was the key figure in the dialogue with Russia. Gore and his national security adviser, Leon Fuerth, thought a boycott of Russian companies would delay the positive developments in Russia and was therefore not in America's best interest. Fuerth said that while he understood the Israeli concerns, they were not the only factor that needed consideration.

When Ehud Barak was elected prime minister, succeeding Netanyahu, then-U.S. president Bill Clinton renewed his request that Israel reduce its public pressure on the U.S. administration regarding the Russia-Iran issue. Barak acceded, but at the end of October 1999, some four months after becoming prime minister, Barak changed his position and decided to support American legislation meant to impose sanctions on Russia over assistance to Iran. "We won't wage a public campaign, like the Netanyahu government, but if we're asked, we will express our opinion," a Barak aide said at the time.

What does this story show? Several Americans involved in the talks say Barak made a reasonable decision under the circumstances. That's how you conduct a relationship with a supportive superpower - sometimes you insist, sometimes you accede to their requests. Another way of looking at these events, however - the one that Netanyahu will surely choose - is that Barak made a serious strategic mistake. "Barak needs Clinton in the peace process, and therefore decreased pressure regarding the Iranian issue," one of Barak's aides was quoted as saying at the time. That is precisely the quote that Netanyahu can point to as incriminating. "In that period," a former Barak administration official said this week, Barak "lived with the feeling that he and Clinton were running the world, and made a lot of mistakes like that."

Regarding the Russian leak of the 1990s, Netanyahu, as he did in his speech in the Knesset this week, will argue that the Ehuds - both Olmert and Barak - have never correctly identified the strategic picture. Netanyahu will say that their mistakes have damaged Israel's strategic situation.

"Washington is worried about the Israeli government's weakness," Netanyahu told the Knesset on Tuesday. One can argue about the reasons for this, but it is not a baseless statement.