Speaking of which

Here's the new Bitter Lemons issue, having a go at everything I was just talking about. I see that Alpher's position has not changed from the way I described it. (I was surprised to see that he believed the Syria relationship had emerged unscathed, as I thought I remembered seeing a couple of aggressive quotes attributed to Assad in the media. But Alpher's take appears to be right.) The core of his argument:

"The conventional wisdom in some quarters holds that the Gaza war will oblige Obama to award the Israeli-Palestinian peace process higher priority on his Middle East "to do" list than he originally might have intended. I doubt it. Obama will quickly discover that the war weakened Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). And Israel's Feb. 10 elections are liable to produce a new Israeli government less interested in removing settlements and negotiating a final status agreement than its predecessor or, if interested, no more capable.

Meanwhile, Syria beckons. The prospects for a Syria-Israel peace process weathered this war well; the only casualty may have been Turkish mediation, reflecting the vociferous anti-Israel pose struck during the war by Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If the ranks of militant Islam in the Middle East were struck a blow in this war by the damage done to Hamas and by Hizballah's refusal to open a second, northern front, a successful Israeli-Syrian peace process would make a far larger contribution by blunting Iran's drive for hegemony in the Levant, weakening Hizballah, contributing a quiet Syrian-Iraqi border to facilitate a US withdrawal from Iraq, and removing Hamas' headquarters from Damascus. "

It's tough to dispute an argument that good, but elsewhere in the issue, Alon Pinkas (formerly of the Israel consulate in New York) makes a valiant attempt:

"[The Gaza crisis] positions the Israeli-Palestinian issue ahead of the Israeli-Syrian track. Many in the incoming foreign policy establishment in Washington entertained the thought of a "Syria first" policy. Syria is a country with which, supposedly, Israel has only a territorial dispute. Negotiations are seemingly simpler, the contours are clearer and the issues have already been more or less explored, studied, negotiated and exhausted. The Syria-first option's relation to a possible "isolate Iran" policy is almost self-evident. Simply put, all the administration has to do is to wipe the thin layer of dust off the December 2006 Baker-Hamilton "Iraq Study Group Report" and adopt it verbatim.

However, the Gaza crisis notwithstanding, the Obama-Clinton administration will quickly find out that Israelis in general, and the new prime minister elected in February in particular, are more inclined to deal with a Palestinian process than with Syria. Evacuating 85-95 percent of the West Bank is perceived as a political and demographic imperative by roughly 70 percent of Israelis, including substantial parts of the political right, provided the agreement is durable and sustainable. The Golan Heights are a different story. Israelis feel they understand the concrete value of the Golan and value the price of relinquishing control over it, but find it naturally difficult to envision the amorphous positive strategic returns, a much more intangible concept called "peace with Syria". They also feel no urgent need to do so at this moment. "

Pinkas is right about Israeli skepticism over Syria. The Golan is an incredibly valuable resource to Israel. It allows Israel to control its only natural source of fresh water, provides ample farm space, and is a strategic backstop against a Syrian incursion -- or random Syrian sniper fire, which in the past was a serious problem for Israeli civilians in the north. These advantages coalesced more than ten years ago in a national movement called "Ha'Am im ha'Golan" ("the nation is with the Golan") that today remains the dominant psychological force for most Israelis when it comes to that region.

But Pinkas is, I hope, wrong to project Israeli misgivings on an American administration. We don't yet know how Obama will interact with Israel. But part of the point that Pinkas himself is making is that Obama will want to depart from the Bush strategy of "provide money and weapons; activate unconditional 'green light.'" Presumably, under Obama, the Israel "security game" is going to get some new rules. And I suspect that those rules are going to be prejudiced toward the US's undeniable interests in bringing Syria into the fold.

As Pinkas says, Obama has about 75 days to make something happen before a new PM, presumably from Likud, is installed. It would not surprise me to see, after a few weeks of humanitarian packages to Gaza, a sudden pivot from the State Department to Syria, one which perhaps cuts Turkey out of the picture altogether. As I said before, Palestinians, and Israelis who want to focus on the Palestine track, have only one real chance to make their problem the priority: gift-wrap it.