Still, the active involvement of the Clinton administration in the current negotiations opens the possibility that U.S. surveillance satellites and electronic monitoring equipment might provide the basis for a mutually acceptable solution to the problem of how to garrison the Golan.

Turning the area into a massive demilitarized zone, albeit one under formal Syrian sovereignty, not only would remove Israel’s present capacity to strike the Syrian capital without warning, but also would reassure Israel that Syria has no intention of launching an attack against the Galilee. Working out the details of such an arrangement will not be easy, but its outlines at least can be envisaged by both parties.

The Role of Lebanon:

The trickier strategic problem concerns the future of the only remaining battlefield in the Arab-Israeli conflict: southern Lebanon. Bringing the Lebanese government into the talks adds one more set of security interests to the mix.

Syrian officials calculate that three-party bargaining will work to Israel’s disadvantage. Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa stopped in Beirut on his way home from the December 1999 Syrian-Israeli talks in Washington and publicly stated that “neither the Syrians nor the Lebanese will sign a peace settlement without the other.” Lebanese Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss quickly took steps to coordinate his government’s demands with those of Damascus: He told reporters on 21 December 1999 that Beirut would no longer insist, as it had since March 1949, that seven villages along the border with Israel be restored to Lebanon.

This leaves Beirut with six primary objectives, as reported in the Daily Star of 22 December 1999: “An Israeli troop withdrawal [from Lebanese territory], the rejection of permanently settling the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, no guarantees for the SLA [South Lebanese Army] militiamen, the return of the ‘Shebaa farms’ adjacent to the Golan Heights which were annexed by Israel following the 1967 war, financial compensation for damages and deaths caused by Israel’s policies against Lebanon, and the cessation of alleged water thefts [from the Litani and other rivers in southern Lebanon].” These objectives are not in complete harmony with Syria’s, whose leadership might be perfectly happy to trade the right to prosecute the SLA or Israeli reparations to Lebanon for the return of the Golan.

Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad:

Including Lebanon complicates the negotiations in another way—by introducing actors that none of the governments involved is able to control. Israeli leaders are almost certain to insist as part of any peace deal that Syria promise to stop Islamist militants based in southern Lebanon, particularly guerillas loyal to such organizations as Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad, from launching attacks against Israeli territory.

But, in fact, Damascus has very little influence over the guerillas, whose ties to Iran are stronger than their link to Syria. Hizbollah refrained, no doubt in deference to Syrian wishes, from retaliating in the wake of an Israeli bombardment on 16 December 1999 that killed 18 schoolchildren. But the organization’s deputy secretary general told reporters two days later that Hizbollah would not limit its future operations out of respect for the talks.

On 31 December 1999, Hizbollah’s secretary general Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah told a rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs that “Israel is the enemy, and it will never be a neighbor or a nation.”” “On this last day of the century,” he went on, “I promise Israel that it will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with blood.” At virtually the same time, Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering in Tehran on Jerusalem Day that the only way to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict was for Israel to be destroyed.

Syria’s inability to impose its will on Islamist militants in Lebanon is further illustrated by recent events around the northern city of Tripoli. On 31 December 1999, armed members of Majmuaah al-Qaida (The Vanguard)—a dissident offshoot of Jama’ah al-Islamiyyah (The Islamic Group), based in the hills east of Tripoli—ambushed a Lebanese army patrol, killing four soldiers and capturing a senior officer and an enlisted man. The body of the latter was found on 1 January 2000 in the town of Sir al-Dinniyyah; the officer was killed two days later. Skirmishes between the army and the militants went on for five days before order was restored.

Popular discontent in the northern countryside is fueled not only by the government’s inability to ensure the supply of fresh water to outlying communities, but also by spiraling unemployment and the deteriorating position of agriculture in the economy. Both trends generate disaffection in the south as well, thereby contributing to the strength of Hizbollah and other militant Islamist organizations.

Syria’s Dilemma:

Syria is in no position to guarantee that Islamist militants in Lebanon will stop attacking Israeli targets once a peace agreement is concluded. Officials in Damascus recognize the problem and have attempted to sidestep it by relegating the Lebanese track to the back burner until a deal is reached on the Golan. Al-Sharaa insisted on 20 December 1999 that “the issue of the Lebanese resistance is a matter for Lebanon to discuss.”

Events on the ground—such as the 30 December 1999 suicide bombing against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon—will most likely interfere with this project and force Syria to incorporate both Lebanese and Islamist interests into the peace process. The resulting four-sided game will tax the skills of even a master strategist like Syrian president Hafez al-Assad.

Fred H. Lawson is a professor of government at Mills College. The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. This Information Brief does not necessarily reflect the views of the Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund.

This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 29, 22 March 2000.