Laura Rozen: UN hopes to hit ‘moving target’ of Syria talks by late January/Akiva Eldar: How to revive the Arab Peace Initiative/Chris Doyle: The closer Syria is to peace, the more violent it will be

UN hopes to hit ‘moving target’ of Syria talks by late January
Laura Rozen/Al-Monitor/December 23/15

WASHINGTON — United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura plans to hold the first talks in almost two years between representatives of the Syrian regime and opposition toward the end of January, a senior UN official said Dec. 22, though he acknowledged the Syria diplomatic process is a “moving target.”
“Almost everybody wants these talks to be successful so that we can finally get a political solution to this really unacceptable problem,” Michael Moller, the director general of the UN office in Geneva, said at a press conference Dec. 22.
“All I can tell you is that the intention is that he [de Mistura] starts here, in the Palais, sometime toward the end of January,” Moller said.
“Mr. de Mistura is … basically living on a plane these days, and every day there are evolutions in how things are being planned and being received by the different parties,” Moller said. “It makes it very, very hard to give you some idea of how this is going to evolve.”
The plans for renewed intra-Syrian talks, to be held at the UN Palais des Nations in Geneva, follows a series of recent meetings by the 20-member International Syria Support Group (ISSG) that have aimed to forge fragile consensus on a diplomatic path forward to end the more than 4½-year-old conflict that has killed over 200,000 people and spurred one of the largest refugee exoduses since World War II.
Those meetings of external powers, including the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, culminated in the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council last week of a resolution endorsing the ISSG’s proposed road map for a Syria political transition process that calls for the writing of a new constitution in six months and new Syrian presidential elections in 18 months. The political track is supposed to be accompanied by a cease-fire that would exclude continued combat against the Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra front.
De Mistura, speaking at a press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New York on Dec. 18, said the UN Security Council’s unanimous passage of Resolution 2254 showed growing willingness to make compromises to end the war.
“Mission impossible is becoming potentially possible thanks to what we saw today,” de Mistura said. “The international community has shown three times now unity. … So it’s going to be uphill, it’s going to be complicated, but it’s becoming possible.”
“Of course, it’s up to the Syrians, and the Syrian people will be helped if this unity we are seeing today will continue,” he said.
Kerry, who presided over the Dec. 18 UN Security Council meeting on Syria, said the world would observe within a month or two whether the Syria regime was prepared to seriously negotiate or whether its external backers were permitting it to stall.
The resolution “mentions transitional governance,” Kerry said Dec. 18. “And the target for that is within six months. Now, that means that within a month or so, two months, decisions are going to have to start to be made about the devolution of some power and the creation of a unity entity.”
“Now, either that happens true to the word of this, or you begin to see that this isn’t going to work,” Kerry said. “It’s that simple. But you’re not going to wait a year and a half or a year or six months to know that. You will see very quickly whether or not transitioning is beginning to take place. And everybody signed up to that.”
Lavrov, for his part, said he was not very optimistic.
“So I am not too optimistic about what has been achieved today, but a very important step has been made to create the requisite external conditions for Syrians to be able to do what we all expect them to do, and that is get down to agreeing on the issues that will determine the future of their country,” Russia’s top diplomat said at the Dec. 18 press briefing, speaking in Russian with a translator.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/12/syria-regime-opposition-talks-isis-mistura-moller-diplomatic.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=072959ea68-December_23_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-072959ea68-102494681

How to revive the Arab Peace Initiative
Akiva Eldar/Al-Monitor/December 23/15
The few Russian tourists who visited the Grand Park Hotel in Antalya, Turkey, on Dec. 17-19, despite the tensions between Moscow and Ankara, could not have known that the women and men conversing easily at adjacent tables represent an occupier and the occupied. Anyone following the deterioration in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue would have found it hard to believe that these men and women came to Antalya to look together for ways to save the two-state solution, using the Arab Peace Initiative. After breakfast they took their places around a long rectangular table in one of the meeting rooms.
Next to them at the table were also two Knesset members from the Zionist Camp and one from the Meretz Party. Present, too, was a former member of the Palestinian Cabinet, clerics from the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, a senior Arab League diplomat and three other diplomats — an American, a European and a Turk. For participants to express their views freely, the hosts from the API Regional Network asked everyone to avoid publicizing each other’s names and quoting them directly. Therefore, the insights from the conference will not be attributed to specific participants.
The first insight: The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative is in force. It is likely to be ratified at the upcoming 2016 Arab League conference in Morocco in March. Despite Israel’s refusal to adopt the initiative and to even discuss it, important Arab states — led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are still on board and are unwilling to amend its principles. Nonetheless, in light of the instability in Syria and uncertainty regarding its future, implementation of the article about normalizing relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal to the 1967 border lines is not conditional on its withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Suffice it for Israel to adopt the principles of the initiative — along with its willingness for land swaps in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — to launch steps for the normalization of ties with states such as Saudi Arabia.
The Arabs find it hard to understand why such a generous peace initiative is unable to capture the hearts of the Jewish-Israeli public. Among the centrist and left-wing Zionist parties there is a broad consensus in immediate recognition of the establishment of a Palestinian state, based on the June 4, 1967, lines. There is agreement that Israel must accept its responsibility for the refugee problem, including that of the 1948 refugees uprooted from their villages and lives in Israel, and toward efforts to resolve it — without full implementation of the right of return. According to the views of the Zionist Camp and Meretz representatives, dramatic gestures the likes of the Jerusalem visit by late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977 will make it easier for them to sell the initiative as part of a made-in-Israel diplomatic plan. Nonetheless, in their view, the road to regional peace goes through the ballot boxes. For a leader to implement a policy toward a comprehensive arrangement and an end to the conflict, the leader must convince the public that handing the West Bank over to the Palestinians will not turn it into a second Gaza. Therefore, it is essential to establish a regional-international security mechanism that will reduce the threat of a hostile takeover of Palestine by Hamas or other external forces.
Second insight: A US diplomatic initiative is unlikely in the short time left to President Barack Obama in office, including the transition period between the elections and the new president taking office. At best, as far as the peace camp is concerned, Obama will abstain from a US veto on a UN Security Council vote granting full recognition to an independent Palestinian state. Washington has already indicated to the Palestinians that US aid to the Palestinian Authority would be suspended if they appeal to the United Nations. The American representatives believe that in 2017 — the new president’s first year in office — he (or she) is not expected to focus on defrosting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Third insight: Europe is increasingly frustrated with Israel’s promotion of the settlement enterprise at the expense of the basic rights of the Palestinians. The sharp, almost rude language of the Israeli reaction to the EU decision to label settlement products increased the fury in European capitals. Even Germany, considered the protective shield of the right-wing Israeli government vis-a-vis the European Union, decided to implement the decision. Two new initiatives are being formulated these days in the EU, regarding the settlements. One, to avoid meetings with Israeli politicians who live in the occupied territories, such as minister Ze’ev Elkin and Knesset member Avigdor Liberman. The other, to ban the entry of settlers to EU member states, by a law requiring Israelis to ask for a visa ahead of the journey. This way, EU authorities could verify exactly where the applicant lives.
Several European states are trying to fill the vacuum left by the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. The French Foreign Ministry is trying to line up support for a European diplomatic initiative to promote recognition of a Palestinian state along with a formula expressing the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. At the same time, Spain is seeking support for an international conference next year, marking the 25th anniversary of the Madrid Conference (1991). That conference brought together representatives from Arab states, Israel, the United States, Russia, Europe, China, Japan and the UN, and launched talks (that proved fruitless) between the government of Yitzhak Shamir and the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. At the same time, plans are afoot to renew the activity of the five multilateral committees created as a result of the conference on the issues of arms control, economic cooperation, refugees, water and the environment.
Fourth insight: The Arab Peace Initiative serves as a common denominator for discourse among Muslim clerics and Jews. Serious peace talks, based on the Arab initiative, will help religious Muslim and Jewish elements to deal with radical religious organization taking advantage of the hostility toward the occupation and turning the political conflict into a religious war.
And a final insight: Now of all times, when the diplomatic process between Israelis and Palestinians is at a deadlock, and when no solution can be seen on the horizon, such ongoing encounters between the parties involved in the conflict together with religious figures and central international elements, are of outmost importance.The Arab initiative is the most important peace plan to be born ever since the start of the Jewish-Arab conflict. And so, it must be at the center of these meetings. It must not be allowed to die.
**Editor’s note: This article has been updated since its initial publication.
Akiva Eldar
www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/12/israel-palestine-peace-activists-gathering-antalya-reviving.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=072959ea68-December_23_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-072959ea68-102494681

The closer Syria is to peace, the more violent it will be
Chris Doyle/Al Arabiya/December 23/15
Easing out of 18 months of semi-hibernation, international diplomacy of the last quarter of the year on Syria saw a major surge. What went before would have certainly been in “Trump-speak,” low energy.
The reasons for this sudden dynamism are non-Syrian ones. The conflict was of limited interest to the outside world unless and until it affected it. A quarter of a million Syrians get killed, four million become refugees and even chemical weapons were used on civilians and yet grandstanding and posturing have been see-through covers for the disinterest. The U.S. under President Obama has been risk averse and conflict fatigued, Europe broke and distracted by its own internal challenges. Ending the conflict was, and still to a large extent remains, secondary to perceived external state interests within Syria, whether it was ensuring a favoured proxy prevailed or one’s enemy was bled dry.
Had a million Syrians been killed, would this have changed matters? Who knows? The U.S. and the EU have only sluggishly crawled out of their non-interventionist bed when international Jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS started gaining ground, not in Syria, but in Iraq. It was the ISIS capture of Mosul not Raqqa that triggered the U.S. and allies into action. Many international politicians have been calculating between two devils, ISIS or Assad and are prepared to back the latter no matter what responsibility the regime had for the disaster that Syria faces today.
In a space of only weeks, the refugees morphed from a distant, tired issue, to a front page tear jerking cause celebre with promises of homes being opened up to refugees all over Europe, and latterly to being a core part of an existential threat to the civilised world. The Syrian refugees were a respectable, worthy donor issue; non-controversial as long as they remained in the Middle East. When hundreds of thousands crossed into Europe, refugees became a threat, walls and barbed wire fences went up, and action sought. The reaction of some of the far right in Europe after the Paris attacks betrayed an almost opportunistic delight in attacking the Trojan horse Muslim refugees. Much of the media portrayed what was and remains a Syrian refugee crisis all of sudden as a European refugee crisis. Does anyone seriously believe the refugee issue will quieten in 2016?
Ambitious and almost fantastical
These international political efforts are likely to continue apace in 2016. The ambitious, almost fantastical Vienna plan envisages a national ceasefire within weeks in Syria. Has Vladimir Putin committed to stopping his bombing of Syrian opposition forces as part of this ceasefire? Remember Putin and Assad share a common desire to frame all the armed groups fighting the regime as terrorists, and so continue shelling these “targets” on that basis. The anti-ISIS coalition is not going to stop bombing ISIS targets so Putin will argue that Russia is doing the same, fighting terrorism.
But if there is a belated alignment of international pragmatic interests, it is far from clear that this extends to Middle East regional actors who have stoked the conflict. Iran and Hizbollah fear any political deal would dash their interests. Saudi still pushes for a complete outright victory against Assad to deny Iran whilst Turkey will promote its own favoured militias and any power that thwarts Kurdish aspirations.
Are Syrian actors any more ready for the painful tough compromises? The Syrian regime fears concessions as a fatal display of weakness. The formal position of the Syrian opposition groupings has not shifted from the Assad must go first position.
In the short term, political progress will be met by an intensification of fighting, something that is already a grim reality. Throughout this conflict, as indeed in other wars, the path to negotiations is typically the moment when those stakeholders who fear losing ground in talks, act as spoilers, even whilst professing peaceful intentions. The Syrian regime has already done this by inviting Russian and Iranian forces in to push towards better ceasefire lines, retaking the rest of Homs, and pressing northwards. The U.S., France and Russia are all upscaling their air attacks on ISIS.
In the short term, political progress will be met by an intensification of fighting, something that is already a grim reality
The Syrian political opposition is still an embarrassing mess. The U.S. and the ‘Friends of Syria’ back in 2013 supposedly blessed the Syria National Coalition as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people. External powers should never have expected to settle the debate as to who is legitimate or not. Only this month, a merry assortment of opposition figures turned up to Riyadh, devoid of several leading opposition constituencies not least the Kurdish PYD. The armed groups are represented but patchily.
Prior to the last Syria regime-Syrian opposition talks at Geneva II, 19 opposition groups issued a statement withdrawing all recognition of the Syrian National Coalition and rejecting them. Many may yet repeat such a position.
Even more likely is a serious meltdown in relations between al-Nusra Front and the groups with which it has been effectively embedded. A successful political process will force many to choose between their Syrian nationalist leanings and their Islamist ones. The consequent clashes may be a key feature of the coming months. If disunity in the Syrian opposition ranks remains a constant, the backers of the Syrian regime may also clash. Russia and Iran are perhaps best described as “frenemies,” the outer cooperation masking a deep suspicion of the other as well as competing bids for influence in Syria.
2016 challenges
The Vienna process is laudable but it has no answers to the daunting challenges in Syria. A national ceasefire in reality will require that plus dozens of locally mediated ones. Just how strong and well-resourced will any monitoring mission be in Syria? Will all sides consent to the tough confidence building measures necessary, such as the release of detainees? And how will the Syrian economy be rebuilt and transformed from a war economy to a productive peace economy. Some may think this is irrelevant but tens, even hundreds of thousands of armed men will be asked to stop fighting. Will they still get paid? What sort of jobs might be available for them if they wanted to retire from the conflict? What livings there are to be made in Syria frequently are conflict-dependent. The challenge for 2016 is how to translate increase international interest in ending the Syrian conflict into being both a regional and Syrian need. Codifying the illusory timetable in the latest U.N. Security Council Resolution is one thing, but translating this into addressing the real life, on the ground issues in Syria is quite another.