ForMin Lieberman Sez "Go To Hell, Syria!"

The Geek has posted a number of times regarding the cruciality of the Golan Heights to a comprehensive Mideast peace. For Syria there is only one real requirement for peace with Israel. That is the return of the Golan to Syria.

Syrian president Bashar Assad made that requirement clear again last Friday in an Army Day Speech. He implied that other matters could be negotiated, but not the status of the Golan.

The embattled, very hardline Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, rejected the Syrian position with a strangely worded statement today. He said that Israel was willing to start negotiations with Syria "without preconditions." Then he went on to add, perversely, that in "any agreement," the Golan Heights "must remain under Israeli control."

Whether the Israeli ForMin was speaking in English or Hebrew, the Geek knowest not. But in either language, the second part of the statement renders the first part (in the words of Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Zeigler) "inoperative." The overly muscular (in the cranium at least) Lieberman might just as well have said, "Give peace a chance? No way!"

If the Obama administration had the sense necessary to get out of the rain it would be putting pressure on Israel to abandon its Golan land grab rather than insist on a zero expansion in the "settlements" on the disputed West Bank territory. The Palestinians--and the Arabs generally--will not accept a settlement halt as a reason for reciprocal movements. No, they will simply have another set of requirements which must be fulfilled before responding in kind.

Bashar Assad and the Syrian government are, in comparison, rational. Get the Golan back and peace is just jake with them. It would probably be enough to convince the Syrian regime to go ahead with a real peace treaty rather than the Egyptian style "cold peace."

Lieberman has promised to resign if he is indicted for his various alleged mal- and mis-feasances. Those who want to see more of a semblance of peace in the Mideast must be hoping that the Israeli Attorney General will do so without delay. Then, perhaps, just maybe, the US can lean on the Netenyahu government to start working on a deal which sees the Golan back under Syrian control even if that implies some sort of dual authority to protect in the near- and mid-term the interests of both Arabs and Jews living in the region and an equitable sharing of the water resources of the place.

At the moment all that can be said of the Israeli ForMin is that his views on the Golan are (in the fine phrase of George Kennan,) "primitive and unconstructive." To put it mildly.