TEL AVIV — Could President Trump’s object of desire, the Nobel prize, be awarded for his latest mediation between Israel and its northern neighbors, rather than his faltering attempts to end the war in Europe?
Few here believe that this country’s decades-old metaphor for peace on earth — Israeli tourists enjoying a plateful of hummus at Damascus — is around the corner. Israel’s northern neighbors and former formidable enemies, Lebanon and Syria, are unlikely to soon follow Egypt and Jordan in maintaining formal, albeit cold, peace agreements, or to join the Abraham Accords that Mr. Trump brokered in his first term.
Yet American negotiators are shuttling between capitals, and while Israelis are wary of their neighbors’ leaders, they can see reasons for reaching understandings with them. Mostly, they eye the prospect of further weakening of the Islamic Republic’s regional allies.
Israeli officials say negotiations over non-belligerence agreements with Syria are progressing and could be formally announced during the United Nations’ annual meeting of heads of state at the end of September.
“It is clearly in Israel’s interest to reach a security agreement with Joulani,” a Haifa University professor emeritus of Mideast studies, Amatzia Bar’am, tells the Sun. Like many Israelis, he often refers to the Damascus acting president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, with his wartime moniker.
The one-time jihadist hardly maintains full control over former ISIS and Al Qaeda comrades, and his hold on power is far from guaranteed to last. Mr. Trump, though, met with him during a trip to Riyadh, and enthusiastically endorsed the Syrian’s new-found moderation.
Washington’s top envoys to the region, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, and special envoy Morgan Ortagus, conferred with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top advisors on Sunday. On a follow-up visit Monday to Beirut, the American diplomats were joined by Senator Lindsey Graham.
As in Syria, Washington is eager to build on Beirut’s declared resolve to disarm Hezbollah. While some Israelis are skeptical, Mr. Netanyahu, after his meeting with the American envoys, became the first Jerusalem premier to publicly praise Lebanon, a country that Israel fought several times since the 1980s.
The Lebanese government’s “momentous decision” to disarm Hezbollah, Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement on Monday, presents “a crucial opportunity for Lebanon to reclaim its sovereignty.” Israel is ready to support Lebanon “in its efforts to disarm Hezbollah and to work together towards a more secure and stable future for both nations,” he said.
President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam followed their decision by drawing up initial action plans to go after the terror group’s strongholds and confiscate its weapons. It won’t be easy. Hezbollah, perhaps in a sign of panic, is threatening to rekindle Lebanon’s civil war of the 1990s.
“We will not be humiliated,” Hezbollah’s secretary general, Naim Qasem, said in a speech Monday. “If the Lebanese government continues in this process, we will no longer consider it the sovereign of Lebanon.”
Last winter Israel decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership and eliminated much of its missile arsenal. The Israel Defense Force then established five strongholds in Lebanese territory. The current negotiations envision an agreement that, once Lebanon shows serious resolve in disarming Hezbollah, Israel would start withdrawing and reduce its air assaults over Lebanese skies. Israel could also share intelligence with Lebanon.
Even as Beirut’s resolve is yet to be tested, Israelis are cautiously optimistic. “For the first time, the Lebanese government is taking real steps toward disarming Hezbollah,” a former Knesset member and an IDF top commander, General Ephraim Sneh, told I24 News.
Syria’s Mr. Sharaa could be an asset in that effort. His predecessor, Bashar Assad, was an ally of the Islamic Republic, which used Syrian territory to transfer weapons to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Now, “an Israeli security agreement with Syria will help the Beirut government to disarm Hezbollah,” Mr. Bar’am says.
Such an agreement will reportedly include Israeli withdrawal from most of the Syrian territory that it has captured since the fall of Assad. It would also reduce air flights over Syria. Crucially, an agreement would create a mechanism to send food, medicine, and fuel to the Druze Mountain, which is nearly 40 miles into Syrian territory. The IDF is unlikely to withdraw from the strategic Syrian Hermon money train.
Mr. Sharaa, a Sunni, is already acting against Iran’s attempts to rearm Shiite Hezbollah. While formal peace treaties are far away, calming the Syrian and Lebanese borders could be a good start.
It may not win Mr. Trump the Nobel. Yet, announcing concrete steps for Mideast peace during the UN annual meeting will be more productive than the initiative by France and other European countries to recognize a nonexistent Palestinian state.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
