Since I credit diplomacy more than prophecy, I am astonished and dismayed by the continuing bloodshed in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza.  In June I told an Israeli-born friend, in London, of a report in the Guardian (June 28) that Hamas was ready to recognize Israel’s right to exist.  Wasn’t that a hopeful sign?  She replied that I obviously hadn’t heard of the abduction of Gilad Shalit.  I had not (it was in paragraph three).  My bubble of optimism was punctured, but even the pessimist in me was surprised that Hezbollah would be capable of attacking Israel with hundreds of rockets daily, for weeks.  Today is no exception, and Hezbollah’s capacity seems undiminished after as many weeks of Israeli air strikes and incursions into Lebanon (costing hundreds of Lebanese civilians their lives). 

How is it possible for this to continue?  Israel can depend on the US for an endless resupply of weaponry.  But where is Hezbollah getting its missles?  Most of them are Iranian Katyushas–but how have they reached Hezbollah in Lebanon from Iran?  Through Syria or by sea, one would assume; and the US State Department has named Iran and Syria as Hezbollah’s sources of outside support. 

But Syria shares no border with Iran, and has less than 200 kilometers of coastline, all on the Mediterranean.  Lying between Iran and Syria is Iraq, which is in the midst of a civil war and is under occupation by nearly 150,000 US and coalition troops.  Two more questions come to mind.

The first is this: why is the US refusing to talk to Syria, which controls a crucial half of Hezbollah’s supply line?  Syria is overwhelmingly Arab and Sunni, while Hezbollah
and Persian (nonArab) Iran are overwhelmingly Shi’ite.  Israel possesses something of
great value to Syria: the Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 war and
now occupied by scores of Israeli settlements as well as Syrians.  Thomas Friedman, in "Talking Turkey with Syria," in the New York Times (July 26; registration required) writes:

Syrians will tell you that their alliance with Tehran is ”a
marriage of convenience.” Syria is a largely secular country, with a
Sunni majority. Its leadership is not comfortable with Iranian Shiite
ayatollahs. The Iranians know that, which is why ”they keep sending
high officials here every few weeks to check on the relationship,” a
diplomat said.

So uncomfortable are many Syrian Sunnis with the Iran
relationship that President Bashar al-Assad has had to allow a surge of
Sunni religiosity; last April, a bigger public display was made of
Muhammad’s birthday than the Syrian Baath Party’s anniversary, which
had never happened before.

Syrian officials stress that they formed their alliance with
Iran because they felt they had no other option. One top Syrian
official said the door with the U.S. was ”not closed from Damascus.
[But] when you have only one friend, you stay with him all the time.
When you have 10 friends, you stay with each one of them.”

This Syrian official may be coming down with the same cognitive virus that has debilitated the Bush regime: the delusion that talking with someone means he’s your friend.  Another New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in "Talking About Terror," (Aug. 6) reports the following exchange with an unnamed Washington "policy maker":

M [Brooks]: Is it possible to flip Syria?

P [Policy Maker]:
The U.S. and others have channels open to Syria, but its interest
diverges from ours. Its interest is the increased weakness of the
Lebanese government  [which, by the way, claims, with Hezbollah, that the Shab’a Farms area of the Golan Heights belongs to Lebanon, not Syria].

The Bush administration keeps intimating that secret talks are going on with Syria.  Unfortunately the Syrians don’t seem to know this.  Hey, and so what?  Syria’s interest diverges from ours–and since when do you talk to someone whose interest does that?  Pointless, right?  (Or are those maybe simply the circumstances of diplomacy?)

At least we should be reassured that Brooks has located someone who claims to do policy, rather than politics, in…er…well he says "Washington" and not "the Adminstration" but…we can hope.  Or can we?  Sidney Blumenfeld writes in "The NeoCons Next War," in Salon (Aug. 3; advertisements) that the policy that is playing out now was set before W. Bush took power:

senior
national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves
a 1996 neocon manifesto
against the Middle East peace process. Titled "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," its half-dozen authors included
neoconservatives highly influential with the Bush administration —
Richard Perle, first-term chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Douglas
Feith, former undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, Cheney’s
chief Middle East aide."A Clean Break" was written at the request of incoming Likud Party
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and intended to provide "a new set of
ideas" for jettisoning the policies of assassinated Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Instead of trading "land for peace," the
neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established
negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of
Likud’s terms, "peace for peace." Rather than negotiations with Syria,
they proposed "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria."
They also advanced a wild scenario to "redefine Iraq." Then King
Hussein of Jordan would somehow become its ruler; and somehow this
Sunni monarch would gain "control" of the Iraqi Shiites, and through
them "wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and
Syria."

Netanyahu, at first, attempted to follow the "clean break"
strategy, but under persistent pressure from the Clinton administration
he felt compelled to enter into U.S.-led negotiations with the
Palestinians. In the 1998 Wye River accords, concluded through the
personal involvement of President Clinton and a dying King Hussein, the
Palestinians agreed to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel and
Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from a portion of the occupied West Bank.
Further negotiations, conducted by his successor Ehud Barak, that
nearly settled the conflict ended in dramatic failure, but potentially
set the stage for new ones.

And then:

At his first National Security Council meeting, President George W.
Bush stunned his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, by rejecting
any effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Powell
warned that "the consequences of that could be dire, especially for the
Palestinians," Bush snapped, "Sometimes a show for force by one side
can really clarify things."

Sometimes. 

Hussein, unfortunately, died in 1999, before he could be crowned King of Iraq.  Which brings me to my second question: What’s going on with the other crucial half of Hezbollah’s supply line?  Thousands of Katyushas have been crossing Iraq: why haven’t our friends there–or our troops–intercepted them?   It’s not as though Iraq doesn’t "know what it has to do."