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Syria Israel
As of 1987, Syria had successfully vetoed its neighbors'
peace initiatives and constructed a credible unilateral military
deterrent to Israel. It had also outlined its position on
potential multilateral negotiated solutions to the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Syria had accepted United Nations Security Council
Resolution 338 of October 22, 1973, and indicated that such
acceptace implied acceptance of Resolution 242, which was adopted
after the June 1967 War. However, in 1986 Damascus suggested a
willingness to negotiate only a state of "nonbelligerency" with
Israel, not a comprehensive peace treaty. Whereas Resolution 242
specifically requires Arab recognition of Israel in return for
Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, Resolution 338 more
generally calls for negotiations between the parties concerned
"under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and
durable peace in the Middle East." Although Resolution 338 does,
in fact, call on the parties to start implementation of
Resolution 242, it does not spell out in its text Arab
recognition of Israel's right to exist. Although the distinction
appears to be semantic, Syria's refusal to endorse Resolution 242
without reservation remained a block to Syrian participation in
Middle East peace negotiations. Syria has indicated that it would
accept Resolution 242 only if Israel first withdrew from occupied
Arab territory and guaranteed Palestinian rights. At the same
time, some Syrian propagandists have maintained the more
intransigent definition of the entire state of Israel, rather
than the areas seized by Israel in the June 1967 War only, as
occupied Arab territory. When the Israeli Knesset voted in
December 1981 to permanently annex the Golan Heights, Syria
perceived the action as a renunciation of Resolution 242 and the
"land for peace" formula for resolution of the Middle East
conflict. In 1987 Syria viewed Resolution 242 as a virtually
obsolete framework for a settlement.
Instead, Syria advocated the implementation of the Fez
Resolutions that were sponsored by Saudi Arabia at the Arab
Summit at Fez, Morocco, in 1982. The Fez Resolutions demand
settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute at an international
conference to be attended by representatives of all Arab
governments, Israel, the PLO, and both superpowers.
Although Syria wants involvement in such diplomatic
initiatives, it has increasingly less faith that a negotiated,
peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict will fulfill its
demands. Accordingly, Syria has come to rely more heavily on the
hope that its military will ultimately secure its objectives or,
at the least, act as a credible deterrent to future Israeli
aggression. The Syrian-Israeli combat in Lebanon in 1982
increased Syrian confidence in confronting Israel on the
battlefield. Although the Syrian armed forces lost men and
military matériel, they performed well in several crucial
engagements
(see Syria and the Lebanese Crisis, 1975-87
, ch. 5).
Throughout 1985 and 1986, Syria and Israel engaged in
brinkmanship and saber rattling, as Syria brandished its new
military strength. For example, Syria deployed some of the troops
it had withdrawn from Lebanon to the Golan Heights. Then, on
November 19, 1985, Israel shot down two Syrian MiG-23 jets inside
Syrian airspace. In December Syria retaliated by deploying mobile
air defense missiles to Lebanon. Although the missiles posed an
identical tactical threat to Israeli reconnaissance flights over
Lebanon whether they were stationed in Syria or just across the
border, Israel regarded the move as a challenge to a longstanding tacit understanding that such missiles, if located in
Lebanon, would be subject to Israeli attack. Syria withdrew the
missiles within several weeks after the United States interceded
and mediated the dispute. On February 4, 1986, Israel intercepted
and forced down a Libyan executive jet, enroute from Tripoli to
Damascus, which was carrying Baath Party assistant secretary
general Abdallah al Ahmar and other senior Syrian politicians.
Israel had ostensibly been searching for Palestinian terrorists,
but Syria viewed the interception as a deliberate provocation and
an act of air piracy. Finally, in May 1986, it was revealed that
Syria had built revetments and entrenched fortifications in
Lebanon that faced Israel. Although the construction was
defensive, Israel viewed it as enhancing Syria's potentially
offensive position on the Golan Heights.
To underscore Syria's increasing belligerence, in an
important speech delivered to the People's Council in February
1986, Assad departed from his usually calm demeanor by declaring
that Syria would work to put the Golan Heights "in the middle of
Syria and not on its borders." Assad was engaging in hyperbole
and exaggerating Syria's true intentions. Nevertheless, in 1987
most Syrian and Israeli officials believed that, because of the
two countries' irreconcilable conflicts, the outbreak of war was
inevitable in the future; some felt it to be in the distant
future, while a minority, cognizant of the escalation of tensions
in 1985 and 1986, believed it to be imminent.
Data as of April 1987
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