Syria

Human Rights Watch -- which everyone knows is hopelessly obsessed with Israel and unwilling to criticize Arab autocrats -- issued a statement today that slammed the Syrian government for its "grow[ing] repression" of activists and journalists and urged Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, to press the issue with Syrian officials during her visit there next week.

Another voice in Washington -- actually, another eight voices -- urging President Obama not to appoint an ambassador to Syria.

This time it's a group of Republican senators, who sent a letter yesterday to secretary of state Hillary Clinton that basically dubbed the nomination a concession to Bashar al-Assad. The letter asked if the Obama administration will sanction Syria for failing to meet its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, and argued that the recent Assad-Hassan Nasrallah-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meeting should spike the nomination.

Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem, in Cairo this week for an Arab League meeting, did an interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and partially walked back his comments (عربي) about allowing Israel to return the Golan Heights in stages.

"This is not true. What we are interested in doing is recovering every inch of the Golan, up to the June 1967 borders, because this is Syrian land, and this is a matter of our national honor... any dialogue with the Israelis must begin with this objective -- the full return of the Golan, up to 1967 borders -- and the details will be discussed later."

I don't want to read too much into Moallem's wording, but that last part -- "the details will be discussed later" -- is carefully phrased. Moallem seems to leave the door open for the Israeli government to return the Golan in stages, as long as Israel commits up front to eventually returning the whole thing.

He seems to split the difference, in other words, between the historic Syrian position -- the full return of the Golan is a precondition for talks -- and his phased-return comments in December.

The Arab League -- meeting today in Cairo -- voted to endorse "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. American mediators, presumably led by George Mitchell, will shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Can the U.S. stop Israel from attacking its neighbors? Sen. John Kerry thinks the Israeli government wouldn't bomb Iran without American approval.

Kerry's actual remarks are a little more caveated than the Ha'aretz headline suggests, but my interpretation is that he doesn't think Israel will attack Iran unless Obama admits diplomacy has failed and gives Netanyahu the green light.

Evan mentioned on Wednesday that there's slowly-mounting opposition in Washington to President Obama's decision to name Robert Stephen Ford as the new U.S. ambassador to Syria.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports this morning (عربي) that the Israeli government is also lobbying against Ford's nomination (or against Obama naming any ambassador to Syria; this isn't about Ford personally). Defense minister Ehud Barak made that request during a visit to Washington this week; so did an unnamed envoy from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now that President Obama has nominated Robert Stephen Ford to be the next U.S. ambassador to Syria -- the first since relations deteriorated in 2005 -- all eyes turn toward the confirmation process.

Senators don't make a habit of turning ambassadorial nominations into blood baths, but there is bipartisan distrust of Syria, and one Democratic lawmaker has already signaled his disapproval of Ford' nomination.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post while on a trip to Israel, Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) called Ford's nomination a "mistake."

In the department of "things that should have been done a long time ago," the U.S. State Department has finally lifted its Syria travel warning.

I was never entirely clear on why Syria fell under a travel warning in the first place: The State Department's warning (which has since been removed from the Internet) never referenced any specific threats -- just some ominous language about "large-scale demonstrations" in Damascus, and the fact that Hamas and Hizballah have offices in the country. It always struck me as a product of politics, not legitimate security concerns.

In any event, glad to see it has been lifted. The State Department's full announcement is after the jump.

The Washington Post has 600 words of hand-wringing conventional wisdom on its editorial page this morning: Syria is bad, Syria will always be bad, and engagement with Damascus is pointless.

I don't agree with the overall conclusion -- I agree with Andrew Tabler that engagement could bring a meaningful change in U.S.-Syrian relations (though I take issue with many other points in his essay) -- and the editorial also plays loose with the facts. Here's the most egregious example, referring to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

He has promised to check suicide bombers bound for Iraq but has never done so.

I guess Fred Hiatt and the gang over at WaPo don't have access to Lexis-Nexis? Or Google?

A bit of unequivocally good news: The White House today nominated Robert Stephen Ford as the next U.S. ambassador to Syria.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is once again defending his foreign ministry from criticism -- this time, after some belligerent comments about Syria from Avigdor Lieberman.

Lieberman, you'll remember, warned Syrian president Bashar al-Assad that his regime would fall in case of another Israeli-Syrian war. He defended his comments yesterday in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 news; he blamed the "Israeli left" for over-reacting to his remarks, and denied that any Israeli-Syrian talks are taking place behind the scenes.

Benjamin Netanyahu wants everyone in his cabinet to shut up about Syria.

Ehud Barak started this week's escalating Israeli-Syrian spat when he made the wholly sensible argument that the two countries could be headed for another war if they don't resume peace talks.

President Obama plans to appoint Robert Stephen Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria, according to a report (عربي) in An-Nahar.

George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, reportedly told Syrian president Bashar al-Assad about the appointment during his visit to the region earlier this month. No word on how Assad reacted to the news.

As I wrote Tuesday night, I don't think another Israel-Hizballah war is imminent: Both sides are preparing for a war, but neither wants to start one. That said: If another war does start, it will almost certainly involve Syria.

Israeli and Arab media have been abuzz for months with stories of Syrian involvement in Hizballah. We mentioned a few of them on Tuesday: The report in Qatar's Al-Watan that Syria pledged to support Hizballah, and the recent rumors that Syria has mobilized thousands of reservists.

As I said earlier, undersecretary of state Jeffrey Feltman and former deputy national security advise Elliott Abrams had a few interesting exchanges at today's Hudson Institute book event.  One was on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, where Feltman (a career civil servant, I should mention) defended the Obama administration's decision to call for a complete settlement freeze. Matt Duss has a good write-up of that back-and-forth.

The other item worth mentioning is Syria. Abrams was quite critical of his former boss: He said former president George W. Bush's Syria policy was "too soft." And he blamed the Israeli government for "letting Syria out of the box we had carefully constructed for them," referring to Syria's (relative) diplomatic isolation vis-a-vis the West. (That's a reference to the Turkish-mediated talks which began in early 2007.)

Saad Hariri is back in Beirut after his 23-hour jaunt to Damascus to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. It was his first official contact with Syria since his father's assassination in 2005 -- and while it produced no concrete results, many Lebanese are hailing the visit as an important step towards reconciliation with Syria.

The question, particularly for supporters of Hariri's March 14 movement, is whether the two countries will reengage as equals -- or, as one Lebanese columnist put it, whether their relationship will be "as brothers, or as parent and son."

Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri is in Damascus today for talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Hariri landed a few hours ago; he was met by a presidential envoy and then motorcaded to Tishreen Palace, the presidential residence, for a meeting with Assad.

The Associated Press reports that Hariri was "greeted warmly" at the palace. He will attend a dinner banquet hosted by Assad, and the two men will hold several meetings over the course of Hariri's two-day visit to Syria.

Hariri has had no official contact with the Syrian government since 2005, when his father, Rafiq al-Hariri, was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut.

Just caught up with yesterday's post by Josh Rogin on Foreign Policy's Cable blog handicapping the United States' next ambassador to Syria.

Rogin says two men are topping the D.C. rumor mills: Jacob Walles, who left his position as consul general in Jerusalem in September for a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Nabil Khury, a "veteran Foreign Service officer of Lebanese descent."

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says neither Walles nor Khury are the "actual pick," according to his sources. He also says Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, is on the outs with Damascus and will be sent home once Obama appoints his counterpart.

Not a huge surprise here, but figured we needed to note it: All but six of Lebanon's 128 elected lawmakers voted today to approve Prime Minister Saad Hariri's 30-member cabinet, which includes two representatives from Hizballah.

The vote means that Lebanon's government has given de facto approval to Hizballah keeping its weapons, but nobody really expected otherwise. And it's a wise move: Hizballah seems to be headed down a political track now, and trying to take away their weapons could provoke them. The benefits outweigh the negatives.

Al-Jazeera notes that the approval sets the stage for a Hariri visit to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hariri has proved himself politically adroit in 2009, but I imagine that's gonna be an awkward handshake: "Hello. My name is Saad Hariri. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Has the Syrian government suddenly reversed decades of standing policy and dropped its demand that Israel agree to return the Golan Heights as a precondition for peace talks? Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks so.