Author: Ben Hubbard / Source: New York Times
Uriel Sinai for The New York Times
ERBIL, Iraq — In 2010, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria asked President Barack Obama in a private letter to sponsor new peace talks between Syria and Israel, a diplomatic chimera for a string of American presidents.
The major sticking point was control of the Golan Heights, a rocky, strategic plateau at the flammable juncture between the modern states of Syria, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, which Israel had seized in the Six-Day War of 1967.
The talks never took off, and in 2011 a civil war erupted in Syria that would destroy the country and reshape the regional order to such an extent that when President Trump on Thursday called for the United States to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, the shift was met across much of the Arab world with a shrug.
Today, the Gulf countries are more interested in partnering with Israel against Iran than in standing up for abstract notions of Arab dignity, and unrest and economic troubles have left other Arab countries more concerned with their own affairs.
As for Syria, its own war has left the country so weak and ostracized that few care what it wants.
“The Golan was always seen as the carrot that Israel would cede for peace with Syria, and now peace doesn’t matter, Syria doesn’t matter and maybe Syria doesn’t exist at the table as the legitimate owner of the land,” said Kareem Sakka, editor in chief of Raseef22, an Arabic news site.
The Golan Heights is a stunningly beautiful and strategic area that gives whoever controls it a distinct military advantage over the surrounding region. The Syrian military used it to shell the Galilee, and Israel seized it as a strategic asset that it considered necessary for its own security, displacing tens of thousands of the area’s Arab inhabitants in the process.
It was a stinging slap to the Arabs, who saw the Israeli occupation as yet another example of an international order that failed to enforce its own rules. Syria launched a failed attempt to take…
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