NYTimes130200

A Middle East Version of 'You've Got Mail'
(Across battered Lebanon, Israel and Syria hold a conversation in
blood.)

February 13, 2000 - New York Times

By SUSAN SACHS

CAIRO, Egypt -- Perched on the border between Syria and the
Israeli-held Golan Heights is a divided town where relatives take
up a megaphone once a week to shout out news to one another
across the disputed terrain. When the leaders of each country
recently wanted to send a message to one another after the
breakdown of peace talks, they used their own "shouting
valley." It is called Lebanon.

The deadly fighting in Lebanon in the past week -- escalating
from Hezbollah ambushes and rocket attacks to bombs dropped
from Israeli aircraft on electrical generating plants -- is a familiar
manifestation of a peculiarly Middle Eastern form of communication
between governments.

Civilians in Lebanon and northern Israel, of course, pay the bills,
which come in the form of scars from flying glass, ruined houses,
loss of electricity in mid-winter, days and nights spent in
underground shelters, and corpses. They must wonder: wouldn't a
phone call, a poison pen letter or e-mail work as well?

There may be no logical answer to that question. This is the way
Syria and a succession of Israeli prime ministers have messaged
each other for years.
Across the battered land of Lebanon they have set loose their
proxies in the militant Hezbollah, a militia whose supply lines
are controlled by Damascus, and in the Israeli-supported South
Lebanon Army, whose mercenaries shield Israel's northern border.
(Responses are not limited to proxies. That's where Israel's air
force comes in.)

But this latest lethal dialogue is not exactly like so many previous
outbreaks of killing in Lebanon. The message from Syria this time
appears aimed directly at the Israeli public and specifically at those
who say they want to hold on to the Golan Heights even at the cost
of a peace treaty.
Brutal but clear, it is a reminder from the Syrian president, Hafez
Assad, that Syria counts.

Israel's bombardment of targets all over Lebanon was equally clear. It
warned Damascus that pushing Israel too far would risk military
humiliation.

It is instructive to examine the sequence of events. In mid-January,
negotiations at Shepherdstown, W.Va., between Syria's foreign minister,
Farouk al-Shara, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, ended with
no agreement and with sour feelings on both sides.

Soon afterward, Israelis opposed to a peace treaty that includes a full
return of the Golan Heights to Syria held a mass demonstration. That
protest was broadcast on television sets in living rooms across Syria
and it was presented to Syrians, who are unfamiliar with the push and
pull of interest groups in a democracy, as a proof that the Israeli
government was not really interested in letting go of the Golan.

In Damascus a few weeks ago, one hard-line government official
expressed this view when he dismissed the notion that Barak may
want to make a deal but can only do so with the support of a majority
of Israelis.

"We could also get 100,000 people on the street to protest against the
peace," he said, adding with pride that Assad is confident enough of
his position to make peace anyway.

Within the Syrian leadership, there are more sophisticated people who
understand that Barak must take into account Israeli public opinion.
One way to interpret the Hezbollah activity since the breakdown of
Syrian-Israeli peace talks is as a message to those hesitant Israelis. In
essence, it is this: You cannot ignore Syria if you want security in
northern Israel.

Assad's actions have always sent a similar message: Peace is peace and
no peace is no peace. There is no half-way point between the two that
will guarantee a good night's sleep every night to Israelis living in towns
and settlements close to Lebanon.

It was a given that Israel would respond forcefully to the Hezbollah
attacks that have killed seven of its soldiers over the last two weeks,
as well as the second-in-command of the South Lebanon Army. Again,
that is part of the calculation in this murderous discourse.

In the past, when the tit-for-tat violence reached a certain intensity,
the United States would step in. This served Syrian officials, who have
long preferred to have Washington intimately involved as a referee and
go-between in any dealings with Israel. The reactions of Syria's
government-owned newspapers last week underlined the point. The
solution to the violence in Lebanon, they maintained, is immediate
American intervention.

If this seems like a roundabout and costly way to get back to the
bargaining table, it is. "This was an escalation with the intent to
reactivate the peace process," said Tahseen Bashir, a military analyst
in Cairo and a former Egyptian diplomat. "But it could get out of
hand."