In danger of imploding as a result of its leadership's folly and hostile forces abroad, it is what Syria has always stood for that should be uppermost in our minds, writes Ghada Karmi* For months the Syrian conflict has been at the centre of the world stage. International attention seems entirely focussed on the Al-Assad regime and its opponents. External players are busily engaged in pursuit of their own interests: the US uses the conflict as a surrogate for its real battle with Iran and against its traditional enemies, China and Russia; other meddling states, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are playing their own regional games; and yet others in Europe use the Syrian crisis to enhance their international status for domestic purposes. None of these players, intent on their own goals, has given the slightest thought to what Syria, the country, signifies for countless Arabs far beyond Al-Assad and the opposition to him, or what its destruction might mean. As was the case previously with Iraq, where Saddam Hussein became the focus of obsessive concern to the lasting detriment of the unique country he ruled, Syria has been reduced to no more than a battleground for the Al-Assad regime and its opposition. Yet, Syria's long and illustrious history far supersedes this or that of its rulers and their enemies. In Ottoman times, Syria was the dominant country in the bilad al-sham, a region stretching from western Iraq to the Mediterranean. It was a fascinating religious and ethnic mosaic, where Damascus was the focus, and people would travel there from all over the region to study at its schools and famous academies. No borders impeded this flow until the Great War of 1914- 1918, when European powers re-drew the map of the Arab world to their design and destroyed this tradition forever. Syria's special role in the Palestinian struggle with Israel has set it apart from other Arab states. In 1920, Syria's king Faisal, opposed to the British plan to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine, sought to protect the country by retaining it in Greater Syria. In 1936, when Palestinians rebelled against Britain for facilitating Jewish immigration into Palestine, Syrian volunteers joined them. In 1948, Syrian troops and hundreds of volunteers joined the war against the new state of Israel. Many Syrians died fighting for Palestine. That terrible year saw a mass Palestinian exodus, with 70,000 people fleeing to Syria. Among these was my family, which fled to Damascus where we took refuge. Thousands of dazed, exhausted refugees joined us, these having walked all the way from Safad, Haifa, Acre and Tiberias in northern Palestine to Syria's borders. The Syrian people took them in without hesitation, housed them in mosques, schools and their own homes, fed them and prayed for their repatriation. Syria was itself barely independent of French rule and struggling to rebuild itself. In wars with Israel in 1967 and 1982 and then in the 1991 Gulf War, thousands more Palestinians fled to Syria. Following Kuwait's expulsion of Palestinians in 1991, several thousand more joined them. Palestinian refugees are well treated in Syria, with equal rights to education and employment. 70 per cent of them now live outside the refugee camps. Politically, Syria has consistently supported the Palestinian right of return and has always seen Palestine as the heart of the Arab nationalist cause. This has been largely rhetorical, but it has also been based on principle. Like many Palestinians, Syria never accepted the 1993 Oslo Agreement because it split Arab ranks confronting Israel and fragmented the Palestinian territories into enclaves that could never form a state. It played host to Palestinian resistance groups that were rejected elsewhere, including Hamas, and it supported Hizbullah, the only effective Arab opponent of Israel to date. It is unapologetically close to Iran, Israel's current target, in an alliance which rejects Israeli and Western hegemony in the region. Yet, Palestinians have also suffered at Syria's hands, victims of its lethal meddling in Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s, and like other Arab states it has sought to control them. No one can forget the 3,000 Palestinians who died in the Tel Al-Zaatar refugee camp in Lebanon in 1976, when Syria backed the camp's Christian attackers. But in today's tragic turbulence, as Syria implodes through the brutal folly of its leadership and hostile external forces gather to accelerate its destruction, it is what Syria stands for that should be uppermost in our minds. Although Syria has never won a military victory over Israel, its unremitting hostility to the state that dispossessed the Palestinians and occupied Arab land has come to symbolise for Arab patriots everywhere an honourable refusal to cave in to US-Israeli power. In an Arab world whose timid, Western-backed rulers have traditionally feared to offend the West and its Israeli ally, Syria's lone stand has been admirable. The abortive talks in the 1990s between Syria's late president, Hafez Al-Assad, and Israel over the return of the Golan Heights to Syria exemplified this. In an unprecedented move, Al-Assad offered Israel peace in exchange for its complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights. When in typical fashion Israel tried to bargain, wanting full normalisation first, Al-Assad immediately withdrew the offer, and it was not repeated. If Syria is brought down, it will mean the end of an era in which the Arabs could dream of standing up to Israel and its backers. The Arab Spring has yet to show its results, and no one can predict what new leaders will arise. Egypt, whose revolution inspired the world, is still in turmoil, and nothing is assured. Given the West's long history of intervention in the Arab world and currently in Syria, an outcome that reverses the pattern of previous Western dependence is unlikely. The West has made clear its support for the "Friends of Syria" group, an alliance of unrepresentative opposition forces aiming to topple the Al-Assad regime. Military intervention, though not currently on the cards, has not been ruled out, and if it happened it would try to install a more Western-friendly regime. The Syrian National Council, of dubious standing but not yet defunct, has already distanced itself from Iran and Hizbullah. It is not the passing of the Al-Assad regime, but of Syria itself that many Arabs fear. If the country that so many of us knew and admired falls, the Palestinian cause, which is at the heart of the Arab cause, will have lost its most stalwart champion. * The writer is research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK.
