Sun. 2 Jan. 2011
YEDIOTH AHRONOTH
Ø Report: Breakthrough achieved towards Israel-Syria talks….1
Ø WikiLeaks cable: Israel preparing for large scale war………2
ABOUT.COM
Ø The Dud Behind Syria's Alleged Back-Channel Negotiations With Washington……………………………………………3
JERUSALEM POST
Ø Robert Ford outlines Syria concerns………………………...6
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Ø Is Israel a democracy? Five actions in 2010 that fueled the debate…………………………………………….………….8
PAKISTAN OBSERVER
Ø Zionist crimes & blind world…………………………..…..12
HAARETZ
Ø Israel is more a third-world state than democracy………....16
Ø U.S. officials: Barak 'deceived' us about his role in peace process……………………………………………………...19
NYTIMES
Ø Editorial: China’s Naval Ambitions………………………..21
ARGUS LEADER
Ø Why Christians fled - and are fleeing…By James AbuRezk...23
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Report: Breakthrough achieved towards Israel-Syria talks
Kuwaiti newspaper claims Syrian foreign minister told US Damascus was ready to reopen direct talks with Israel; says breakthrough strongly linked to appointment of US ambassador in Syria
Roee Nahmias
Yedioth Ahronoth,
1 Jan. 2011,
A Kuwaiti newspaper reported Saturday that there is "unprecedented Syrian willingness" to enter back into negotiations with Israel.
The report, which is based on US sources among others, stated that Washington is engaged in secret talks with Syrian senior officials regarding peace talks with Israel. The report has not been confirmed by any other source.
According to the report, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem signaled the US two weeks ago that "the Syrians are ready to reopen direct talks with Israel and achieve peace." Moallem is in close contact with US government official Dennis Ross.
US President Barack Obama believes, based on such sources, that peace between Israel and Syria would help advance the region. There are no further details regarding the Syrian messages to the US, however Ross has informed the administration that he has "discerned unprecedented Syrian willingness to distance itself from Iran, cool off relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and cooperate with the US on the war on terror." The report also noted that Israel has shown willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights.
Getting Israeli green light
Several weeks ago, Ross visited Israel in what the report described as a visit aimed at securing an Israeli green light to negotiations. According to the newspaper, there is a strong link between the surprising breakthrough and the appointment of Robert Ford as the US's new ambassador to Syria. There has been no US ambassador in Damascus for the past five years since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Congress is now in recess and cannot oppose the appointment.
The report quoted other sources which it described as conservative elements in Washington saying that economic sanctions were suffocating Iran and have led Syrian President Bashar Assad to pull himself out of the alliance with Iran. They were further quoted as saying that Assad believes that peace will protect his government from an international tribunal investigating Hariri's murder. Nevertheless, the report was not supported by other sources.
Meanwhile, former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz addressed contacts with Damascus Saturday and said: "The meaning of peace with Syria will be overwhelming concessions in the Golan Heights, I don't know how far. One has to ask whether the public is ready for this. A leader who will take the lead and present an agreement to the public would have the people's support. "
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WikiLeaks cable: Israel preparing for large scale war
Yedioth Ahronoth,
2 Jan. 2011,
Israel's army chief told a US Congress delegation in late 2009 he was preparing for a large war in the Middle East, probably against Hamas or Hezbollah, leaked US diplomatic cables showed on Sunday.
"I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite," Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying in a cable from the US embassy in Tel Aviv.
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The Dud Behind Syria's Alleged Back-Channel Negotiations With Washington
Pierre Tristam,
About.com (part of New York Times company)
1 Jan. 2010,
Syria is among those last few remaining nations (North Korea and Iran are a couple of others) that still act as if the cold war never ended. It merely did a costume change, with the likes of Syria, Iran and North Korea picking up the mantle the Soviet Union so ingloriously shed in 1989. Those three countries like their enmities sharp and undiluted by the taint of compromise. And they like their enmity focused. The target is either the United States or Israel, or both.
There's a reason for the simplified belligerence. All three regimes are, like the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s, bankrupt, illegitimate, regressive and, to the people under their boots, stupefying. (The same can be said, obviously, of almost every Arab and North African nation from Morocco to the shores of the Tigris, with all those nations being American allies, though the repression is slightly more subtle, and economic liberalism a bit more pronounced, thus giving the masses at least a chance to pretend that things may be getting better.) One of the only ways to keep up the pretense of power is to do so under the guise of nationalism, in Syria's case, theocratic purity, in Iran's case, or ideological purity in North Korea (keeping in mind that the purity at stake is about as pure as the ground beneath Love Canal in the late 1970s or, if you prefer, as pure as Leonid Brezhnev's arteries around the same time).
In sum, those three amigos of repression and regression need the United States and (or) Israel. If those two nations hadn't existed, Syria, North Korea and Iran would have had to invent them. It's not that without them the three nations themselves wouldn't exist. But it's just as certain that, in Syria's case, without Israel, the Syrian regime would certainly collapse, just as without the United States and Israel to divert masses of discontent toward, the Iranian regime would collapse. Making peace between Israel and Syria is not the issue. Making peace and staying in power is. On both sides, by the way: the Benjamin Netanyahu regime is just as dependent on belligerence toward Arabs and Iranians. But at least in Israel proper, the voting booth still works.
So it was surprising to read in a Kuwaiti newspaper today that Syria may be rethinking its trusty hatreds. "The United States has been in secret contact with Syrian officials in the hopes of realizing a comprehensive Israel-Syrian peace treaty, the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper reported Saturday." That's according to Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. "The past few weeks had witnessed an 'unprecedented Syrian cooperation' in the peace process, prompting Washington to talk with Syrian officials to reach a peace agreement between Syria and Israel, informed sources told al-Rai."
But then there's this: "Sources said that Obama adviser Dennis Ross told the U.S. administration that he found 'Syria ready to move away from Iran and reduce relations with Hezbollah and Hamas, and work with the United States in the fight against terrorism.'"
I say but, because wherever Dennis Ross' voice prints are, so are red flags. At least when the possibility of peace is at stake. Dennis Ross is not a disinterested diplomat like, say, James Baker III. He's more of a Kissinger type, running everything by Israel first to see if the thinking fits, then presenting those moves to the Arab side. He's not the sort of diplomat Arabs instinctively trust, primarily because they know his frame of reference is Aipac, the Likudist pro-Israel lobby, His record is abysmal: he was the lead negotiator for both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations' efforts, if you can call them that, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yet Barack President Obama, in one of his many astoundingly obtuse appointments, chose Ross to do it all over again, as if the Clinton and Bush fiascos were mere mulligans.
What all this tells me is that it's more likely that Ross is firing up trial balloons and watching to see how the Syrians will react as opposed to this being a genuine Syrian overture for peace. Because in reality what has changed on the Syrian side in the last couple of years? Nothing. There's been no incentive to move away from Iran other than Obama's speeches. The only difference is Lebanon: just as James Baker gave Lebanon to Syria in 1991, in exchange for Syria joining forces on the American side in Operation Desert Storm, Ross may--just may--be borrowing a page from Baker's book in this case and letting Lebanon be the sacrificial lamb again, if Syria were to sign on the dotted line. Syria was forced to exit Lebanon in 2005, after a 29-year occupation, following its rather obvious complicity in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
It would work like this: The United States would implicitly endorse a return of Syria's overt influence, if not quasi power grab, over Lebanon, in exchange for Syria abandoning its alliance with Iran (and therefore its protective and arms-supplying role with Hezbollah) and imposing its hegemony again over most or all of Lebanon. The Obama administration would un-turban two beards with one shot: Iran would be significantly more isolated, and Hezbollah would be emasculated. Plus, Syria would sign a peace treaty with Israel and get its Golan Heights back.
If it sounds too symmetrical, too calculated, that's because it is. It also sounds exactly like the sort of deal the State Department would work out, lost in Foggy Bottom's assumptions that all those neat tricks can be pulled off just by lining up toe dominoes the right way. It's also reflective of the old American attitude that the agenda can be set in Washington, and that smaller powers (Hezbollah, the Palestinians, the Lebanese) will simply walk in lockstep to whatever the greater powers impose. That hasn't been the case for almost a century of American involvement in the Middle East. It'[s not about to change. What's beyond belief is that the Obama administration would still be playing these games. Assuming, that is, that Ross is at the controls. But why wouldn't he be? No one else is from the American side. Hillary Clinton is MIA again, Obama appeears himself emasculated in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, poor Richard Holbrooke is dead, so by process of elimination, Dennis Ross has arisen again.
Lazarus, take cover.
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Robert Ford outlines Syria concerns
Pick for envoy says US won't relax sanctions on Syria while it supports terror.
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Jerusalem Post,
03/17/2010,
WASHINGTON – Robert Ford told US senators at a confirmation hearing Tuesday on his nomination as the next US ambassador to Syria that the US would not relax sanctions on Damascus as long as the government continues to support Islamic militant groups.
Scrapping the sanctions is one of Syria’s top priorities, but Ford made clear such a move wasn’t currently in the cards, even as America reaches out to Damascus by returning an ambassador after a gap of five years.
“We will maintain sanctions on Syria as long as it supports terrorist groups like Hizbullah and Hamas,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He also argued that directly conveying America’s perspective to Syria was important to advancing US interests, and said, “Unfiltered straight talk with the Syrian government will be my mission priority.”
He then enumerated a number of issues he would be addressing with the Syrian regime upon confirmation, including its relations with Iran, Lebanese sovereignty and the importance of restarting peace talks with Israel. Indirect discussions were held under the auspices of Turkey until Syrian President Basher Assad called them off during the start of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza last winter.
US Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) suggested that talks with Syria could bear more fruit than the current stalled negotiations with the Palestinians.
“That avenue may offer more promise, at least initially here, than the relationships between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he told Ford.
Ford himself pointed to significant progress during the Turkey-mediated process.
“My understanding is that the indirect discussions between Syria and Israel in 2008, conducted through Turkish mediation, made considerable headway,” he said.
He added that Israelis needed a clearer picture of
how committed Syria was to a different regional framework. Israel has insisted that the Syrians must break ties with Iran and Hizbullah as part of a move towards peace with the Jewish state – steps the US would like to see as well – but Syria has refused the demand.
“The Israelis want to carefully understand the Syrian commitment to what a peace agreement means, in terms of normal relations and Syria’s role in the broader regional stability question, and that is a fair question,” Ford said. “It is important therefore that we find a formula to get the Israelis and the Syrians back to these negotiations so that we can see how far the Syrian government is willing to go.”
The committee chairman, John Kerry, cautioned against raised expectations.
“All of us should be realistic about what engagement can accomplish,” he said at the beginning of the hearing. “A Syrian realignment won’t come quickly or easily.”
Critics of the return of an ambassador to Syria have argued that the move is a reward Syria doesn’t deserve, after showing little regard for American interests. A handful of senators have said they would oppose the nomination, but the appointment is expected to be approved.
Ford, a former US ambassador to Algeria and most recently the deputy chief of mission in Iraq, defended the approach of having an American envoy in the country.
“Returning an ambassador to Syria would not be a reward to Syria. Nor would it mark a change in the fundamentals of our concerns with that important country. Rather, it would mark a change in the way we try to secure our national interests in Syria,” he argued. “Returning an ambassador would mark a change in how we try to persuade, how we try to press Syria.”
The American ambassador was recalled in 2005 following the assassination of anti-Syrian Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, a crime widely believed to have been carried out at the behest of Damascus. The assassination and UN investigation into its perpetrators was not addressed at the hearing.