The Danger of Uncertain Identities

...co-author, with Judith Miller, "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf" Daniel Pipes' new book is particularly timely, and not merely because its subject is Syria...

...But it was a quixotic endeavor...

...The Alawi, who constitute only 10 per cent of the Syrian population, are so heterodox that "by almost any standard they must be considered non-Muslims...

...The intrepid and insightful British diplomat Gertrude Bell, quoted by Pipes, observed early in this century, "Syria is merely a geographical term corresponding to no national sentiment in the breasts of the inhabitants...

...But Arafat soon proved too independent for Damascus' liking, and he spent a month in a Syrian jail...

...Sunni Arabs now comprise slightly more than half of Syria's population, the rest is divided among an astonishing array of Muslim and Christian sects...

...Hence, when the world was preoccupied by Saddam Hussein, the tyrant in neighboring Iraq—which has the same problems as Syria in a much more acute fashion—Assad used the opportunity to take Beirut and consolidate his hold over Lebanon...

...Pipes argues that only Zionism, the existence of another people who saw British Palestine as their national home, "turned Palestine into something worthy in itself for the Arab population...

...Indeed, it is impossible to understand events in the Middle East without understanding concepts like "Greater Syria" and the consequences for the region of its multiple uncertain identities...

...Despite the regime's professed concern for the Palestinians—the Syrian press, in lavishing its attention on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, scarcely ever mentions the Golan Heights—there has always been considerable tension between Damascus and the PLO, not to mention Palestinians generally...

...The current boundaries of Syria represent a never-entirely accepted division of an area of ancient record—yet unclear and shifting in its dimensions...

...In the end, of course, Arafat's nightmare came true anyway...

...That existed in Syria under the Ottoman Turks, among the most recent of a long list of foreign conquerors...

...Pipes, however, was never persuaded: In 1987 he predicted that it was simply a matter of time before Syria took over all of Lebanon...

...Pipes' story of Syria's impact on the Palestinians is fascinating...

...Syria's President Hafez al-Assad is an Alawi...

...The 1971 Palestine National Council, for example, affirmed that "the establishment of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine is illegal...

...Pipes does not address that situation, but it raises the very serious question of what exactly the PLO represented then—when the Carter Administration was prepared, even eager, to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians...

...Abdullah did not use terror and intimidation in his quest...

...Reviewed by Laurie Mylroie Fellow, Harvard Center for Middle East Studies...

...The PLO lost its territorial base and Palestinian camps in Beirut soon fell under a merciless Syrian-sponsored siege...

...The heterogeneous nature of Syria's population, the lack of identity with a Syrian state, and the underlying illegitimacy of Syria's present government is a formula for radical politics and persistent expansionism...

...Furthermore, many of the points made about Greater Syria are relevant to other parts of the Middle East, perhaps most notably Iraq...

...At times Syrian officials have claimed Palestine as part of Southern Syria, denying the legitimacy of a Palestinian identity as insistently as Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir ever did...

...King Abdullah, Jordan's first monarch, relentlessly pursued the vision of an Amman-based Greater Syria...

...Through the 1970s and the early '80s, when the PLO's territorial base was in Lebanon, its decision-making was subject to Syrian veto...

...Arafat feared what Damascus might do to his organization if he strayed too far...

...One element in the weakness of political loyalties is the chasm between ruler and ruled...

...Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, followed in quick order by Syria's assault on Beirut, validates his judgment...

...It first promoted Yasir Arafat and his Fatah faction after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 under the aegis of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser...

...A historically oppressed minority, viewed with contempt by Sunni and Shiite Muslims alike, the Alawi nevertheless rule in Damascus...

...Naturally, it is not the Syrians alone within the region of Greater Syria who have been unsure of their identity...

...The Lebanese are not the only ones who have suffered from the inherent restlessness of the regime in Damascus...

...With this history, it is hardly surprising that what Yasir Arafat in 1989 called his "peace initiative," aimed at taking advantage of the momentum and international concern generated by the Palestinian intifada, proved so hesitant and fleeting...

...He was assassinated by a hired hand of Haj Aminal-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, a relative of Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian leader of his day...

...For a brief period after World War I they hoped to reverse the terms of the Balfour Declaration through unity with the Arab government in Syria...

...When the PLO was founded in 1964, it laid veiled claim to Jordanian territory, as well as all of Israel...

...Pipes' broader message concerns the instability of the Arab states—the weakness of popular identification with existing regimes in their present boundaries...

...Inl983theSyrians expelled him from the positions in Northern Lebanon that he had managed to maintain after the Israeli invasion...

...While the passage of time has ameliorated the problem in important ways, it remains a significant issue in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, including the aspiring state of Palestine...

...That claim was loudly reasserted in the wake of the 1970 PLO uprising against King Hussein...

...The Palestinians, too, have been unsteady in their claims, as Pipes details...

...Minimally, "Greater Syria" embraces not only present-day Syria but also Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, parts of Turkey, and the West Bank—making for a great diversity of peoples...

...The reader of Greater Syria will find a highly useful, well-written guide to a complex issue that is at the heart of many of the region's most difficult problems...

...The Syrian Baath Party has always sought to dominate the Palestinian issue...

...That theme, a traditional one in the study of the Middle East, came to be widely considered passé over the past 20 years as many Arab governments seemed to acquire an unprecedented degree of stability...

...They reject virtually all aspects of Islamic law, such as its dietary restrictions, and consider the pilgrimage to Mecca a form of idol worship...

...As Pipes explains, Damascus views the Palestinians in the context of its aspiration to regional hegemony...

...It continued during the two decades of French imperial rule and persists in yet another form today...

...Not until the French Army drove the Amir Faisal from Damascus, as Paris forcefully claimed its share of the spoils of the World War I defeat of the Ottoman Empire, did the Arab attachment to Palestine emerge...

...A top Arafat aid charged "that crimes committed by the Assad regime against the Palestinian people 'surpassed those of the Israeli enemy.'" Nonetheless, among most Arabs and not a few Westerners, Israeli acts against the Palestinians produced more impassioned indignation and protest than the brutalities committed by Arabs against Arabs—just as is true now, whether it be Syria's repression of the Palestinians or the barbarities of the Iraqi Army in Kuwait...

...Rather, he was the victim of those methods...