Mahmoud Abbas has sent a delegation to Damascus to deliver a letter to Bashar Assad, expressing support and a desire for closer relations. It’s part — a distinctly unimportant part — of a wider effort by Arab states to bring Syria back into the Arab fold, and to pressure it, at the same time, to cut its ties to Iran.
A report on the visit is here: “Palestinian Authority Signals Warmer Ties With Syria’s Assad,” i24 News, January 9, 2022:
A group of envoys representing the Palestinian Authority delivered a letter for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday [November 9], in the latest instance of warming relations between Arab powers and the formerly shunned Damascus ruler.
The delegation — led by Jibril Rajoub, secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee — convened with Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad while on a visit to Damascus.
The letter, from PA President Mahmoud Abbas, “affirms the depth of relations between the Palestinians and Syrians and the Palestinian leadership’s desire to strengthen its relations with Syria,” delegation member Ahmed Hils said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The visit marks the latest in a series of overtures signaling closer ties with Assad, and could preface a possible return of Damascus to the Arab League, a regional organization of Arab states from which Syria was suspended in 2011.
In November, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed also met with Assad to discuss bilateral ties and opportunities for cooperation in the region.
News of the meeting [between Syrian’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and the P.A. delegation] drew alarm from the United States, prompting State Department spokesman Ned Price to voice Washington’s anxieties to reporters.
“We are concerned by reports of this meeting and the signal that it sends,” Price said, adding, “This administration will not express any support for efforts to normalize or rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad, who is a brutal dictator.”
The P.A.’s embrace of Assad takes place at a time when he has won his civil war, having regained control of all of Syria save for a small area around Idlib. During the civil war Iran provided Assad with financial support of at least $30 billion, as well as logistical support, great quantities of arms, training, and several thousand combat troops. But having won, Assad no longer needs Iran as he once did.
What Assad really needs now is money to rebuild his shattered country. The estimated cost of rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure is $400 billion. Iran cannot help with that. Iran’s currency has lost 90% of its value in the last two years. Its GDP is one-third what it was two years ago. It is currently in the 10th year of a historic drought that has devastated Iranian agriculture. Sixty-percent of Iranians now are living below the poverty level. Iran’s cupboard is bare; it has even had to cut its annual subsidy to Hezbollah by two hundred million dollars. It Is only the rich Arab states of the Gulf – the U.A.E., Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and, especially, Saudi Arabia, that have the wherewithal to help pay for Syria’s reconstruction.
Mahmoud Abbas has no moral qualms about dealing with Bashar Assad. Assad is a dictator, but then so is Abbas, who is entering the 17th year of his original four-year term. Assad is a thief, who has stolen from his country’s coffers $1.5 billion, and the Assaf-Makhlouf family has managed to accumulate between $50 and $120 billion from corrupt business deals. But then so is Mahmoud Abbas, who has amassed a family fortune of some $400 million. They should have no trouble understanding one another.
The P.A.’s “mission to Damascus” takes place in the context of Bashar Assad’s delicate dance with the Arab states that once shunned him. They recognize that he has won the Syrian civil war and that there is little point, having sent him to Coventry, in keeping him there; their aim now is to weaken the Syrian ties with Iran. The UAE has been at the forefront of efforts by Arab states to normalize ties with Damascus, and earlier last year it called for Syria to be readmitted to the Arab League. It reopened its own embassy in Damascus three years ago. And the U.A.E. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — the most senior Emirati dignitary to visit Syria in the decade since the eruption of a civil war – has been in talks with Bashar Assad, in the first high-level meeting between the Syrian leader and a high-ranking Arab official since the civil war began.
Egypt has also taken steps toward normalizing relations with Syria. A renewal of diplomatic ties began with a meeting between Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, on September 24, for the first time in nearly 10 years. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of Egypt at the United Nations in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, as part of a broader move by Arab countries to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world after ties had been cut since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister also met with Mekdad at the same venue, on the sidelines of the UNGA meeting.
Jordan has been actively lobbying within the Arab League for the re-admission of Syria. On October 3, the country’s official carrier, Royal Jordanian Airlines, resumed direct flights to Damascus for the first time in nearly a decade. On October 4, Bashar Assad called King Abdullah on the phone for their first conversation in ten years. This call resulted in Jordan’s decision to renew diplomatic ties with Syria. It is now engaged in talks with Damascus on the renewal of the extensive economic ties between the two countries that had been severed when the civil war broke out, and Jordan sided with the rebels.
In addition to Jordan, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Oman have now reestablished diplomatic ties with Syria.
Even Saudi Arabia has been moving toward reopening ties with Syria. In March 2021, Syrian Tourism Minister Mohammad Rami Radwan Martini attended a conference in Riyadh, becoming the first Syrian official to make a public visit to the kingdom since 2011. In May,Saudi Arabia reopened direct communications with Syria, after a visit to Damascus by the head of Saudi intelligence, Lieutenant-General Khalid al-Humaidan. There he met President Assad and the head of the National Security Office, Major General Ali Mamlouk.
What does this all mean? It means that the Arab states that once supported the largely Sunni insurrection against Assad’s Alawites have concluded that since he has won the civil war, there is no.benefit to be gained from continuing to keep Syria at arm’s length. They’ve concluded, too, that it makes sense to welcome Assad back into the Arab fold, and to try to weaken, or even end entirely, his alliance with Iran. Iran had at the beginning of the Syrian civil war recognized the Alawites who rule in Damascus as fellow Shi’a, and assumed that they would therefore be the natural, and permanent, allies of the Islamic Republic against the Sunni Arabs.
Iran miscalculated. Now the civil war is won, and Syria no longer has such a need for Iranian help. The tug of Arab ethnicity is turning out to be stronger than the sectarian tie between Alawites and Twelver Shi’ites. What better way for Assad to please his fellow Arabs, and hasten his country’s return to the fold, than by dramatically distancing himself from Iran? He’s already ordered the IRGC Al-Quds Force Commander, in Syria, Jaffar Ghaffari, out of the country for smuggling in Iranian goods and selling them on the black market, as well as for taking advantage of Syria’s natural and economic resources for Iran’s own gain, and for evading tax payments to the Syrian regime. Assad was also furious that Ghaffari, without Assad’s permission, stationed Iranian forces in places where Syrian troops and weapons were also located, and that then suffered when Israel attacked the Iranians. No doubt Assad will find other ways to demonstrate to his fellow Arabs his new willingness to cut ties to Tehran, possibly by closing down their bases, and ending their military presence altogether. What could the Iranians do about it, after all? They can’t ignore the will of the sovereign state of Syria. Were they to try to force Assad, against his will, to allow them to remain, the whole Arab world would rally against the hated Persians.
The U.A.E. reestablished relations with Syria three years ago. Its Foreign Minister has also met with Bashar Assad. Jordan has opened its embassy in Damascus, and called for Syria to be re-admitted to the Arab League. The foreign ministers of both Egypt and Kuwait met with Syria’s Foreign Minister Mekdad this past September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Aside from the U.A.E. and Jordan, Bahrain and Oman have reestabilshed diplomatic ties.
Even Saudi Arabia has shown an interest in renewing ties with Syria. In March 2021 Syria’s Tourism Minister, Mohammad Rami Radwan Martini, attended a conference in Riyadh, becoming the first Syrian official to make a public visit to the kingdom since 2011. In May, Saudi Arabia reopened direct communications with Syria, after a visit to Damascus by the head of Saudi intelligence, Lieutenant-General Khalid al-Humaidan, where he met President Assad and the head of the National Security Office, Major General Ali Mamlouk.
Now, very much bringing up the rear, come the messengers of the tiny pseudo-statelet of the Palestine Authority, dutifully following the example of the real nation-states – the U.A.E., Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Oman – that have in various ways demonstrated their intent to bring Assad back into the Arab fold and to distance him, permanently, from his quondam ally Iran. But the important point about the P.A. mission to Damascus is that it’s so unimportant. Nobody in the Arab world really cares what Mahmoud Abbas does: whether or not he sends a message to Assad, or goes to visit him, or reestablishes diplomatic relations with Syria, hardly matters. The Palestinian Authority no longer counts for much, except in Ramallah itself and among the Bidenites in Washington who continue to believe that “Palestine” still looms large in the Arab consciousness. “Palestine” is there, but very far from being, as once it was, at the center of Arab concerns. The future of “Palestine” now dimly registers on the periphery of the collective Arab consciousness, like Egypt’s conflict with Ethiopia over the Great Renaissance Dam, or the U.A.E.’s conflict with Iran over claims to the Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands, or Morocco’s conflict with Algeria over the Western Sahara.
I can imagine Mahmoud Abbas, dressed in drag, leaning against a lamppost, singing, every bit as plaintively as Joan Blondell in Gold-Diggers of 1933, “Remember the Forgotten Man.” Abbas is now 86. He has his $400 million nest egg. Give It a rest, Mahmoud. You’re not able to make either peace or war with Israel. You don’t dare to run for office because your people despise you. None of your fellow Arabs cares very much about you anymore. It’s time, Mahmoud, to call it a day.
Wellington says
No honor among thieves and all that.
And reading this article by Hugh Fitzgerald reminded me of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August of 1939, an “alliance” between two polities that absolutely despised one another. Poland of course was the intended victim with this shameful pact but Israel is infinitely better prepared than Poland in 1939 was (though geography for different reasons provided no favor to Poland just as it does not to Israel now) and everyone knows this. Fluid times no doubt.
gravenimage says
Yep.
Keith O says
Seems like Abbas is trying to go the back door in trying to gain credibility.
He is trying the legitimacy through association path. Now that Assad is being welcomed back into the fold Abbas is simply hanging off his coat tails to slip through the door to the party.
Personally, I believe that both of these dictators should be dragged before the courts in the Hague and tried for crimes against humanity.
But we all know that will never happen.
Infidel says
Aside from Iran, there is also the recognition of Turkey’s threat, and their Ottoman ambitions. A Syria that is Arab even if Alawite is preferable to a Syria that is Turkish even if sunni. That whole business of the Arabs supporting the sunni rebels in Syria 10 years ago was ridiculous given that every country did what it could to cling on to power after the fall of regimes in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia
gravenimage says
Abbas Expresses Support For Assad; No One Notices
………………..
Not surprised. Who really cares to be supported by the loser “Palestinians”?