No ‘Thanks’ Due Syria, Iran: U.S. View of Sponsors of Terrorism a Prelude to October Peace Conference Fiasco?

(Washington, D.C.): In the past few
days, President Bush has acted in a
manner that can only reinforce Israeli
concerns about the prospective Middle
East peace conference and embolden Arabs
who hope to use to Israel’s detriment the
“process” that conference is
supposed to initiate.

The President has seemingly chosen to
ignore the direct responsibility
Syria and Iran have for the continuing
captivity of American and other hostages
in Lebanon. He has done so by
“thanking” those nations for
their help in releasing Edward Tracy. In
this way, he has lent legitimacy to the
preposterous notion currently being
promoted by both Damascus and Teheran:
they have no knowledge of the whereabouts
of the hostage-takers and little, if any,
influence over the latter’s behavior.

This is, on the face of it, complete
and pernicious rubbish. Just as the
terrorists who blew up the Marine
barracks in Beirut and who destroyed Pan
Am 107 could not have pulled off their
atrocities without the training,
material, logistical, intelligence and/or
financial support provided by the Syrians
and Iranians, so those who have seized
and brutalized innocent Western civilians
rely upon the generous patronage of Hafez
el Assad and the mullahs in Teheran.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu put this reality —
and its policy implications — starkly in
an interview on This Week With David
Brinkley on 11 August 1991:

“…[Syria and Iran] control
the hostage-taking. Syria
apparently did not like a
hostage-taking that was done by
groups that weren’t authorized to
do it. So, within 48 hours, they
had a French hostage [Jerome
Leyraud]…released. They have
the capacity to release everyone.

“Unless the United States —
unless the West — tells Syria
and Iran: ‘Look, we know you’re
behind the hostage-takers. We
know it’s within your power to
have them all released. Have them
all released; cough them up; the
jig is up.’ If you don’t say that
very clearly and if you don’t
impress it upon these governments
who now need you and depend on
you and depend on Western aid, if
you don’t take that policy, then
[Israel] might effect an exchange
— but you’ll have more hostages.
The supply is limitless.”

Unfortunately, more
hostages in captivity may be the ultimate
product of the course adopted by
President Bush. Far from telling
Syria and Iran the ‘jig is up’ he went
far beyond merely expressing his
appreciation to Damascus and Teheran. He
also suggested a sort of moral
equivalency between the hostages
taken by their proxies and Israel’s
detention of terrorists
captured while conducting — or
organizing — attacks on the Jewish
state. Worse still, the President
pointedly demanded that Israel agree to
release all such detainees forthwith.

In
issuing these statements — unsettlingly
reminiscent of the ethnocentrism and
myopia that destroyed an earlier
presidency over the Iran hostage crisis
and encouraged the present debacle in
Lebanon — Mr. Bush has not only further
complicated the job of securing the
release of all Western hostages. He has
also signaled the shape of things to come
as the so-called Middle East “peace
process” gets underway.

In particular, the Bush
Administration’s respective treatment of
Syria and Israel looks like a dress
rehearsal for what will predictably occur
in the course of the planned peace
conference: Washington will be disposed
to congratulate and reward Syria for
minor tactical adjustments in its
position (comparable to its present
“help” in securing the release
of one or two hostages not to be confused
with a wholesale renunciation of support
for terrorism, accompanied by the
appropriate political, legal and
financial implementing actions). Having
learned nothing from its earlier,
disastrous dalliance with another Arab
despot — Saddam Hussein — regional
specialists from the State Department
will insist upon such an American
response, lest the present purported
“opportunity” for
“progress” be jeopardized.

On the other hand, the Administration
will tend to measure the success of its
diplomacy by the degree to which it can
induce Israel to depart substantially
from principled, prudent positions.
Today, the issue is whether Israel should
trade its prisoners in the hope of
earning good will that might
free non-Israeli hostages in Lebanon. Can
there be much doubt that tomorrow the
United States will be any less willing to
extort Israel to trade land in the hope
of earning good will that might
produce something resembling peace for
the Israeli people? Damascus
appears already to be testing this
proposition; according to this morning’s Washington
Post, Assad’s foreign minister has
asserted that “Israel would have to
stop building settlements in the occupied
territories before the…Middle East
peace conference could convene.”

In this connection, the Center for
Security Policy strongly concurs with the
sentiments expressed in the attached lead
editorial in this week’s New Republic
(a copy
of which is attached). It urges the
President and the Congress to pay special
heed to — and to eschew the policy
described in — its concluding paragraph:

“Peace negotiations…are
likely to be long and drawn out.
It is the Bush Administration’s
legitimate role to find ways to
help the Arabs and the Israelis
reach accommodations, but not to
pressure Israel to make
concessions. Syria, mastermind of
the Pan Am massacre, does not
deserve U.S. favoritism….But we
expect that Assad is banking on
President Bush to put pressure on
Israel, which both the United
States and Israel would likely
regret. And given the
president’s record of
misunderstanding Arab tyrants, we
fear he will try to give Assad
what he wants.”
(Emphasis added.)

The United States stands to make matters
substantially worse, not better, in the
Middle East if it permits American policy
to be driven by a blind attachment to a
peace “process.” That will be
particularly true if the Bush
Administration winds up mindlessly
rewarding dangerous adversaries like
Syria (lest it “revert” to form
or otherwise jeopardize that process)
while extracting unwise concessions from
valuable friends like Israel who want
nothing more than genuine peace.