News Analysis: Rabin Still Trying to Woo Syria, Despite Recent Sobering Developments

The news concerning Syria has been gloomy of late.

Arms purchases to fuel a disastrous war that may loom just over the horizon; a continuing gap between Damascus and Jerusalem over the formula needed to advance the peace process; complicity in the disappearance of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad — this is what the Israeli public has heard concerning Syria in recent weeks, from both news media and government officials.

But some political commentators say that in the topsy-turvy Middle East, much of the bad news may actually be good, as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin uses these developments to signal to the Syrians his seriousness about reaching an accord with them.

According to this school of thought, the expected visit by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region in July proves that the possibility of advancing the negotiations between Israel and Syria is open.

Whatever Syria’s intentions regarding reaching peace on terms acceptable to Israel, it has plainly not started down the path of disarmament. Israeli officials have leaked reports in recent weeks that Syria is once again purchasing modern weaponry from Russia, and on Tuesday, Rabin confirmed these accounts.

Briefing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Rabin said Syria had obtained large numbers of the latest model T-72S tanks.

This followed a barely veiled prediction earlier in the week that Russia would soon make available to Syria its SA 10 ground-to-air missiles, equivalent to the American Patriots.

This prediction came from the Israeli air force chief, Maj. Gen. Herzl Bodinger, who said the air force was doing its best to study these missiles and develop measures to counter them.

For the Israeli public, however, news of these weapons came as little surprise, because an ominous possible future clash with Syria had already been sketched out by none other than Rabin himself.

COULD LEAD TO WAR IN THREE TO SEVEN YEARS

The premiere warned, late last week, that failure to reach agreement with Syria could well lead to war “within three to seven years.”

Such a conflict could make Israel’s experience in the 1991 Persian Gulf War “look like kid’s stuff,” the prime minister predicted. He noted that the Syrian array of ground-to-ground missiles was substantially more powerful and more threatening than the Scuds that were then at Iraq’s disposal.

Rabin was widely criticized for sowing fear among the public. Opposition figures, and also independent commentators, argued that a national leader ought to ring out warning to a potential enemy, thereby strengthening his own country’s deterrent posture.

Instead, they argued, Rabin dwelt on the vulnerability of Israel’s soft underbelly — that is, its civilian population, concentrated largely in the coastal plain around Tel Aviv and Haifa and furnishing a tempting target in an all-out war.

Similarly, his remarks to the Knesset committee, both on Syria’s military programs and on his own readiness to trade land for peace with Damascus, triggered the by-now standard polemics between coalition and opposition members.

Rabin’s supporters extolled the advantages of a comprehensive peace that would include the Syrian-Lebanese front, while the opposition underscored the value of the Golan Heights as a strategic bastion protecting the north of Israel. The critics were not comforted by Rabin’s assurance that no settlements on the Golan would be dismantled in the first stage of a Syrian accord.

But political observers see Rabin’s various comments as designed to signal to Syrian President Hafez Assad that Israel, having concluded the first phase of its interim agreement with the Palestinians, is more ready than ever to do business with Syria.

This same interpretation has been attached to the prime minister’s repeated assertions during the past two weeks that the gap between the Israeli and Syrian positions regarding land-for-peace remains “very wide.”

Signaling Israel’s good faith, while insisting that much work needs yet to be achieved, is an obvious and well-tried method of prodding the other side in a negotiation.

And it seems to have worked — at least to the extent of persuading the American secretary of state to try his luck on another Jerusalem-Damascus shuttle in mid-July.

Earlier, the secretary was reported to be reluctant to take to the road again, for fear of coming back with no progress to show for his effort.

COOL TO CLAIM SYRIA WAS INVOLVED WITH ARAD

By the same token, some observers this week noted the markedly low-key tone of official Israeli reactions to a German television program that claimed that Syrians were much more closely involved in the imprisonment of missing navigator Ron Arad than had previously been suspected.

Israeli officials cast doubts on the accuracy of the program’s findings, and continued to focus the responsibility for Arad’s life and well-being on Iran rather than Syria.

In the same vein, too, Bodinger took deliberate care in his briefing Monday to stress that the air force’s ongoing actions against Hezbollah installations in Lebanon — including some in areas of Syrian control –are in no way designed to provoke or embarrass the Syrians. Damascus well understood Israel’s motives and its purpose, the air force chief said.

But will this Israeli wooing of Syria work? Will it lead to movement in the Syrian position on the nature of the peace? Will it bring Syria to drop its demand for a commitment from Israel to total withdrawal from the Golan before a Syrian pledge to establish full normalization?

Assad, sphinx-like as always, has offered few clues to visiting Western statesmen, from whom Israel garners the information for its own assessments of the Syrian leader’s intentions.

The gradual but significant return of Russia to the arena, both as an arms supplier (though now accepting only hard cash, not credit) and a political player, will clearly influence Damascus — but to what extent remains a riddle.