RECKLESS ABANDON: CAN EITHER ISRAEL OR THE U.S. AFFORD RABIN’S BID TO ‘BET THE (GOLAN) FARM’?

(Washington, D.C.): In the face of the
palpable failure of his first
peace-making gamble with the PLO, Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is making
the sort of mistake that keeps casinos
around the world profitable: He
is recklessly putting all his chips on an
even wilder bet — a peace treaty with
Syria.

Regrettably, in so doing, Rabin is
playing with loaded dice against one of
the most notorious hustlers on the
international stage. Worse yet, the
“chips” he is now playing fast
and loose with are nothing less
than the future survival of the Jewish
state and — in the hopes of mitigating,
or at least sharing the risk —
the lives of American
“peacekeeping” troops he
apparently wants to install on the Golan
Heights. In fact, without the
prospect of such an ostensible U.S.
safeguard, it seems unlikely that the
majority of Israelis would tolerate any
further risk-taking by the Rabin
government.

Consequently, American Jews
and others committed to the security of
Israel will shortly be asked to support
Prime Minister Rabin’s bid to “bet
the (Golan) farm” in this manner.
They will be told that the deployment of
a U.S. military tripwire there is a
critical ingredient to both the future
defense of Israel and the preservation of
close U.S.-Israeli ties. Unfortunately,
neither of these contentions is likely to
prove true. To the contrary,
enmeshing the United States in a Golan
peacekeeping mission may translate into
immense new vulnerabilities for Israel
and add a highly corrosive element in
this vital bilateral relationship.

Assad — A Man Who Cannot
Be Trusted

A central tenet of the Rabin gamble on
Syria is the proposition that its
despotic ruler, Hafez Assad, is a man of
his word. If he enters into a deal with
Israel, so this reasoning goes, he can be
relied upon to honor his commitments and
he will have the power to ensure that his
constituents do so as well. The Rabin
government seems to believe that a new
land-for-peace deal with a man who
putatively exhibits these qualities is
the only way to recover from the
political costs of having made such a
deal with Yasser Arafat, a man virtually
everyone agrees does not.

In fact, the record of
Israeli-Syrian agreements demonstrates
that Assad is can be as unreliable as
Arafat. Indeed, Syria’s dictator has
repeatedly shown himself willing to
violate his solemn commitments — or to
allow them to be violated by his proxies
— when it suits his purposes.
Consider the following examples:

• Syrian terrorist and military
  attacks against Israel increased
  after Assad’s Ba’ath Party came
  to power in 1963, leading
  ultimately to Syria’s involvement
  in the 1967 Six Day War in
  violation of the 1949 armistice
  agreement between the two states.
• Major violations by Syria of the
  cease-fire and disengagement
  agreements occurred after the
  1973 Yom Kippur war. Between
  October 1973 and May 1974, for
  example, Assad’s violations of
  the cease fire on the Golan
  heights resulted in the deaths of
  54 Israeli soldiers and six
  civilians killed and 176 soldiers
  wounded.⁽¹⁾
• Shortly after the 31 May 1974
  cease-fire was replaced by a
  disengagement-of-forces accord,
  Assad took a number of steps that
  deliberately violated the terms
  of that agreement. These included
  sealing the border and stationing
  larger numbers of weapons in a
  “reduced forces zone”
  on the Golan than were permitted.
  Ironically, it fell to
  then-Defense Minister Shimon
  Peres to reveal the latter
  violation.⁽²⁾
• In the following year, terrorists
  crossed the ostensibly
  “sealed” Syrian border
  to murder Israeli civilians and
  Syria beefed up its military
  presence and capabilities on the
  Golan plateau: For example, it
  paved a road on the Mount Hermon
  ridge; it declined to relocate
  civilians to the abandoned town
  of Quenitra in favor of increased
  troop deployments there; and it
  installed mortars and tanks in
  excess of the levels allowed by
  the disengagement agreement.⁽³⁾
• In March 1976, Assad reached an
  understanding with Israel
  limiting Syrian forces in
  Lebanon, then engulfed in civil
  war. It included: a ban on the
  deployment of Syrian combat
  aircraft, naval vessels,
  surface-to-air missiles, tanks
  and aircraft anywhere within
  Lebanese territory; a ceiling of
  one Syrian brigade there; and a
  complete ban on Syrian troops in
  South Lebanon.⁽⁴⁾

Within two months, Syria had
160 tanks and 6,000 troops —
substantially more than a brigade
— in northern Lebanon. Today, it
has an estimated 30,000 troops
there.

• In January 1977, Syrian forces
  moved south of the
  “redline,” retreating
  only after Israel threatened
  military action. Later that year,
  Assad reneged on a commitment to
  support the Christian Lebanese
  community against the PLO,
  encouraging the latter not only
  to attack the former but also to
  conduct strikes against Israeli
  civilians. Such behavior
  eventually precipitated Israel’s
  “Operation Litani” in
  the spring 1978.
• From early 1979 until June 1982
  when Israel once again was
  compelled to strike at terrorists
  based in Lebanon, Assad’s forces
  repeatedly violated the
  “redlines”: Syrian
  warplanes began mixing it up with
  Israeli fighters over Lebanon;
  Syrian helicopter-backed army
  units launched devastating
  attacks against the Christian
  Lebanese community of Zahle;
  Syria deployed surface-to-air
  missiles in the Bekka Valley and
  elsewhere in Lebanon; Syrian
  ground and air units also engaged
  Israeli forces during the
  latters’ 1982 incursion into
  Lebanon.
• As recently as July and August
  1993, Syria violated the
  “redline” agreements
  when it aided and abetted attacks
  against Israeli forces and
  civilians by assisting in the
  shipment of Iranian Katyusha
  rockets to terrorist
  organizations based in Lebanon.

Israel Is Not The Only
Victim of Assad’s Duplicity

What is more, Hafez Assad’s
untrustworthiness is not limited to his
dealings with Israel. He has
proven no more faithful to his
commitments to fellow Arabs made
in September 1989 concerning respect for
Lebanese sovereignty and the redeployment
of Syrian forces.⁽⁵⁾
These agreements were reached in Taif,
Saudi Arabia under Arab League
sponsorship and with the active support
of the Bush Administration.

In fact, Syria continues to violate
the obligation freely assumed in those
accords to withdraw its troops from all
but the eastern Bekaa Valley by 22
September 1992. The government of
Hafez Assad has, instead, continued to
refuse to fulfill its commitment to
relinquish physical control over Lebanon.

Even if Hafez Assad has somehow been
transformed from a thoroughly
unscrupulous, devious individual into a
model of integrity and dependability, one
natty problem remains: He is an old man,
reportedly afflicted with cancer. There
are serious doubts about succession
arrangements; there can be no certainty
that the next Syrian despot will chose to
honor this one’s commitments, even if —
against all odds — Assad chooses to do
so.

U.S. Forces on the Golan
Are No Hedge Against Assad’s Cunning

Against this backdrop, it is obvious
why the Israeli people are reacting with
considerable skepticism to the idea of
giving up the Golan in exchange for yet
another set of promises from Hafez Assad.
Even many of those who were willing to
make a leap of faith concerning Rabin’s
September deal with Yasser Arafat —
something increasing numbers of Israelis
have already begun to regret⁽⁶⁾
— are much more cautious about any deal
with Assad’s Syria.

Consequently, the difficulties of
selling an agreement that would return
Golan to effective Syrian control may
lead Rabin to ask that U.S. peacekeeping
troops be deployed there. Little good is
likely to come of such a deployment,
however: Should Hafez Assad
and/or his Iranian allies and their
terrorist cadres decide — once the
strategic high ground of Golan has been
regained — that they have little use for
the peace the Americans are supposed to
“keep,” it is doubtful that a
U.S. human “tripwire” will keep
new blood from being shed there. In
all probability, some of it will be that
of the American forces.

Consider the following, serious
problems with such an American deployment
on the Golan Heights⁽⁷⁾:

• Terrorist Attacks Against
  U.S. Forces on the Golan:
  The Golan Heights exceedingly
  limited road system would mean
  that U.S. troops operating there
  would be at considerable risk of
  ambush or violent harassment from
  a hostile population — a sort of
  Intifada or Somalia on the Golan.
  Even though that population would
  likely be comprised predominately
  of Syrian military personnel and
  their dependents (as was the case
  prior to the Six Day War),
  Damascus can be expected to
  disavow any responsibility for
  such attacks.
• Attacks From Lebanon
  Precipitating Israeli Retaliation
  There: Should Israel be
  compelled once again to respond
  to Katyusha rocket strikes or
  other terrorism in South Lebanon,
  geography dictates that it would
  have to use two lines of attack:
  the coastline road and the Hula
  Valley road at the foot of the
  Golan Heights. Mobilization along
  the latter could arguably pose a
  threat to Syrian forces on the
  Golan and be seized upon as a
  pretext for Syria to build-up its
  armored forces in the vicinity.
  An outbreak of hostilities in
  areas where U.S. forces are
  deployed could easily ensue.
• Syrian Threats to Jordan:
  In the absence of Israeli control
  of the Golan Heights — offering
  Israel the inherent capacity for
  a swift armored move against
  Damascus — Syria may see fit to
  threaten Jordan yet again. The
  Syrian Black September operation
  in 1970 and military pressure on
  Jordan a decade later in
  connection with Assad’s campaign
  against the Muslim Brotherhood
  were properly seen as posing an
  existential risk to Israel. A
  repetition of such aggressive
  behavior in the future would
  surely be viewed the same way,
  possibly precipitating conflict
  on the Golan and elsewhere.
• Israel Would Be Obliged
  to Rely Upon the U.S. for Early
  Warning: Today, Israeli
  facilities atop the Golan’s Mount
  Hermon provide critical early
  warning of attack from Syria. The
  loss of these assets would
  increase Israel’s reliance upon
  the United States for such vital
  intelligence. Even if such
  monitoring stations were not
  liquidated altogether and were
  instead turned over to American
  personnel to operate, this
  dependency — which the Gulf War
  suggests can be dangerous for
  Israel — would grow even as
  Israel would be obliged to rely
  ever more on preemptive
  strategies for its security.
• U.S. Peacekeepers Would
  Have a Disproportionate Impact on
  Israeli and Syrian Options,
  Calculations: Short of a
  full-fledged U.S.-Israeli mutual
  security pact — which, for good
  reasons, is not under
  consideration by either the
  United States or Israel — it is
  probable that a deployment of
  U.S. forces on the Golan Heights
  will have marginal influence on
  Syrian decisions to attack
  Israel. After all, if Syria
  violates a peace treaty with
  Israel it will have accepted, and
  discounted, the risk of U.S.
  displeasure.

Should Israel, on the other
hand, conclude that — by virtue
of its exposed position (akin to
that it was in prior to the 1967
war rather than that it enjoyed
in 1973) — preemption of
threatening Syrian movements is
necessary, the Jewish State is
likely to find the presence of
U.S. troops in the path to be a
much more formidable deterrent
consideration. Not only will
going to war almost certainly
mean ignoring American appeals
for further diplomatic activity,
it will mean endangering U.S.
military resupply and other
support that may be required to
secure victory.

As Mark Langfan notes in his Security
Affairs article:

“The obvious goal of
any peace agreement between
Israel and Syria would be to
create ‘greater stability.’ It
appears that any
Syrian-Israeli ‘peace’
arrangement which requires
U.S. peacekeeping forces to
be placed on the Golan
Heights would in fact be more
‘destabilizing’ than the
current status quo.
Given the high risk to U.S.
troops…U.S. policy-makers
would be well-advised to
thoroughly and slowly work
through future difficulties
on paper before U.S. troops
are risked on the
ground.” (Emphasis
added.)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
strongly believes that the dangers
American troops would face were they to
be deployed as human trip-wires on the
Golan Heights have assuredly not been
“worked through” by U.S.
policy-makers. To the contrary, Washington’s
amateurish and ad hoc
decision-making on Bosnia appears the
very model of deliberation and careful
strategic planning compared with that the
Clinton Administration has exhibited to
date in planning for a United States
presence on the Golan.

The Center is gravely concerned that,
in the course of a trip to the Middle
East this week that is expected to focus
on advancing the Israeli-Syrian
“peace process,” Secretary of
State Warren Christopher intends further
to commit the United States to providing
peacekeeping forces for the Golan. Should
he do so — and should that commitment be
reflected in a new Arab-Israeli agreement
— several results are predictable:

• Americans will lose their
  lives on the Golan. When
  that occurs, U.S.-Israeli
  relations will ultimately pay the
  price. Inevitably, enemies of
  Israel will seize upon such a
  development to contend that
  American soldiers are being
  obliged to die for Israel’s
  defense — something successive
  Israeli governments have properly
  and assiduously resisted.
• Israel will be more
  vulnerable to attack — not
  less — and increasingly
  dependent upon the United States
  for its security. Sixty
  years ago, Winston Churchill
  warned against the practice of
  weakening one’s friends; it is no
  more prudent a policy today than
  it was then. The truth of the
  matter is that the United States
  is ever less able to fulfill
  whatever security guarantees it
  might make to Israel.
  Unfortunately, it must also be
  noted that Washington has shown
  itself unreliable when asked to
  honor past security commitments
  to Israel (and, for that matter,
  to other allied nations).⁽⁸⁾
• Syria is increasingly
  capable of exploiting Israel’s
  vulnerability and ever less
  susceptible to U.S. pressure.
  With its ongoing build-up in
  conventional arms and weapons of
  mass destruction — including a
  recent $500 million purchase from
  Russia — Syria is eliminating
  what remains of the Israeli
  military’s “qualitative
  edge.” With its drug trade,
  strategic relationship with Iran,
  growing oil revenues and
  counterfeiting of U.S. currency,
  moreover, Syria is more and more
  insulated from U.S. economic
  suasion.

Under such circumstances, an
Israel-Syria “peace agreement”
built upon the return of the Golan
Heights to Hafez Assad and deployment of
U.S. peacekeepers is a formula for
disaster. As a result, it is incumbent
upon those committed to both
American and Israeli security and to
strong relations between the two nations
to refuse to go along with Yitzhak
Rabin’s reckless Syrian gamble.

– 30 –

1. See, Alan
James, “The United Nations on Golan:
Peacekeeping Paradox,” International
Relations, Vol. IX, No. 1, May 1987,
p.66.

2. See the New
York Times, 18 December 1974, p.16.

3. James, op.cit.,
p.74.

4. Yair Evron, War
and Intervention in Lebanon, Johns
Hopkins University Press: Baltimore,
1987, pp. 46-47.

5. In this
connection, see the Center’s Decision
Briefs entitled Will
Lebanon Ever Escape Syrian Imperialism?
Don’t Hold Your Breath!“,
(No. 92-D
122, 2 October 1992) and Syria’s
Terrorism, Hegemony in Lebanon Makes
Mockery of Mideast Peace Process,
(No. 92-D
136, 2 November 1992).

6. According to
today’s New York Times,
“[Israelis’ displeasure], greatly
deepened by a steady stream of violent
attacks against Israelis by Palestinians,
is reflected in Mr. Rabin’s shriveled
ratings in opinion polls, which are the
lowest they have been since he took
office in 1992.”

7. The first three
of these problems have recently been
discussed in a thoughtful article
entitled “U.S. Troops on Golan
‘Quicksand,'” which appeared in the
January-March 1994 edition of Security
Affairs. Its author is Mark Langfan,
a specialist in the implications of
Israel’s geography for her security.

8. For a thorough
accounting of this odious record, see
Irving Moskowitz’s monograph entitled,
“Should America Guarantee Israel’s
Safety?” Americans for a Safe
Israel, 1993.