3 - Syria

Summary

In many ways, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is still being fought in the Middle East today. This is especially true for Syria, where one cannot engage in any sort of political discussion without soon venturing into the subject of the Golan Heights, the swath of territory Syria lost to Israel in the 1967 conflagration. The essence of Syrian foreign policy today, as it has been for more than four decades, is the return of the Golan Heights to the 4 June 1967 line, the Syrian-Israeli border before the war commenced. It is an emotional issue in Syria; one that has been drummed into the minds of Syrians for two generations. No Syrian leader can enter into a peace agreement with Israel without demanding the return of the Golan.

The role Syria played before the war was critical to its outbreak. Without the Syrian prelude, the war would probably not have occurred or played out in the manner it did. Syria has often been criticized for building up the tension at the inter-Arab and the Arab-Israeli levels, to the point where the two became inextricably intertwined. This brought about the conditions in which Gamal Abdel Nasser felt compelled to follow the fateful path towards the brink of war. For the most part, this criticism is legitimate, although this does not absolve other critical players, primarily Egypt, Israel, and the Soviet Union from their roles in the drama, as they also heightened tensions with opportunism and miscalculation. But it is even more complicated. Why did Syria play the role of agent provocateur in the Arab-Israeli arena? What were the aims of the leadership in Damascus? Did Syria want a confrontation with Israel? This was a time fraught with divisiveness within the politico-military regime. The regional foreign policy that Damascus employed prior to the war contributed to Syria's loss of the Golan Heights during the war, and it has shaped the nature of Syrian foreign, if not domestic, policy ever since.