A Dumb Idea

One of the striking things about Olmert’s new negotiations with Syria is that very few people are coming out and saying that the talks are a bad idea.

Ehud Barak, who probably has been kept a little bit more in the know by Olmert than most of us (and, in the last month, than Tzipi Livni) spoke about how he’s always favored negotiation. We just have to be careful about Syria and understand that nothing can be accomplished (assuming any treaty will be an accomplishment) quickly.

That seems to be the pattern. MK Michael Eitan of the Likud says on A7 today that “negotiating with Syria is like negotiating with Iran”—which one presumes means it’s a futile or dangerous idea—but says he’s in favor of negotiations. Netanyahu is in no position to say he’s against negotiations, he negotiated when he was prime minister. Various other people in different parts of the political spectrum have said similar things.

For the record (just scroll down a bit), I think the negotiations a re a dumb idea. Since it appears impossible to conclude them successfully, they tend to increase the likelihood of war. But even I haven’t said we can just decide to back out once we’ve begun, because that implies the relations between Israel and Syria are fast deteriorating toward war, and war is to be feared. Winding down these negotiations without damage will take time, patience and finesse to ensure that missiles don’t start raining down on Tel Aviv soon after they end. If they do start raining down on Tel Aviv we’ll have to go after the people firing ‘em, and that will be no fun at all.

The difference between Syria on the one hand and Hamas and the Arabs in Judaea and Samaria on the other hand is that the latter two are already doing us all the damage they can muster. No matter what we do in a military way, things won’t get substantially worse. Syria and Hizbullah could in principle do us a lot more damage than they’re doing now, and people are afraid of that.

Even politicians on the right are not saying outright that the negotiations are a mistake, though they may believe it, because you cannot tell the Israeli public that the prospect of peace with Syria is a mistake. Few people have confidence in Assad but equally few are willing to admit that a peace treaty is simply not among the options that the real world offers. That’s a regrettable weakness but politicians spend their lives accommodating their constituents’ regrettable weaknesses.

In fact, I think that both Syria and Israel were better off before the news of negotiations broke, before they were both committed to succeeding or failing at peacemaking. Not negotiating also means not forcing a confrontation once negotiations break down, as they almost inevitably will. If you can’t solve a conflict, the next best policy is benign neglect.

For Syria as well as Israel, open war would be an unmitigated disaster. They say Assad has been under enormous pressure from the Americans, because they boycott hum and because they press the international enquirey into the murder of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri; that he wants negotiations, not peace but simply negotiations, to get American pressure of him. If so he’s not a lot more farsighted than Olmert. The ante in this poker game is liable to be a lot higher than he anticipated.