Quieting a very noisy neighborhood

Columns

September 21, 2009

By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts Picayune Item Mon Sep 21, 2009, 11:22 AM CDT

AMMAN, Jordan — “We live in a quiet house in a noisy neighborhood.” Our tour guide’s assessment aptly sums up the difference between his native Jordan and other countries in the Middle East, a difference created almost 15 years ago when Jordan signed the historic peace treaty with Israel. If Jordan’s neighbor to the north, Syria, ever hopes to benefit from a reduced-noise level, it will have to make peace as well, and the Obama administration needs to play a key role in that effort.

Bustling Amman, with its sprinkling of McDonald’s, Pizza Huts and Popeyes, has the air — for better or worse — of a modern Western city. The investment by those foreign companies is just a small sign of the fruits of Jordan’s decision to recognize Israel and open the borders between the countries. Another one: Tourists flocking into the country, including Israeli tourists visiting Dead Sea spas, brought in more than $3 billion last year. At the ancient and spectacular carved city of Petra, three hours south of here, visitors chattered away in a dozen languages.

The treaty itself also provided some critical building blocks for prosperity — granting Jordan crucial water rights in this increasingly dry region, and creating free-trade zones that have produced thousands of jobs in a country where the per-capita income still hovers below $3,000 a year, with the promise of more jobs to come.

Though we can now measure the progress made possible by the treaty, it took guts to make it happen. Jordan was blessed with a leader willing to ignore the condemnation of his noisy neighbors and to court unrest in Jordan’s Palestinian-refugee population — estimated at 2 million. King Hussein was ready to risk his life (he survived at least a dozen assassination attempts) and reputation for the long-term good of his country. Pictures of the beloved late king dot the countryside, along with those of his son, King Abdullah II, who is following in his father’s footsteps in his relations with Israel and the West.

Similar father and son portraits decorate the highways and city streets in neighboring Syria. And there, too, the son, Bashar al-Assad, is following in the footsteps of his notorious father, Hafez al-Assad. Unfortunately. Over the last three years, Syria has reportedly spent more than $3 billion on weapons, presumably aimed at Israel, and the use of Damascus as a safe haven for some of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, plus continued Syrian meddling in Lebanon, caused President Obama to extend sanctions imposed by the Bush administration.

Syria’s pariah status is apparent at the country’s great historic sites where Western tourists are few and Americans nonexistent. In late-night strolls around Aleppo’s shopping district where families crowded the shops after the Ramadan fast-breaking meal, women wearing long coats and headscarves smiled welcomingly as we wandered among them. These were not people hostile to Americans, a point our tour guide was eager to stress.

Obviously, a guide has a self-interest in welcoming foreigners, and ours talked with great pride about the fact that his country is secular and safe. But he looks at Jordan, where tourism is far healthier and incomes are about a thousand dollars higher per person, and concludes sadly that Syria cannot compete unless it makes peace with Israel.

For a while last year, it looked as if the two adversaries might actually come to the table. Indirect talks with Turkey as mediator were under way when renewed hostilities in Gaza sent Syria scurrying away. But al-Assad knows he needs to return to talks in order to win back the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. Its water supplies are vital to Syria’s future.

As President Obama took office, he received a good deal of published advice to pursue a Syrian-Israeli agreement before pushing for a more elusive Palestinian peace plan. Bringing Syria in out of the cold, the argument goes, could quiet a very noisy house. And several U.S. representatives, including Middle East special envoy George Mitchell, have traveled to Damascus to try to restart discussions.

It hasn’t helped that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has authorized the building of hundreds of new houses in the West Bank. But in this part of the world, there will always be a reason not to talk — al-Assad, with the help of the United States, must find the courage to ignore those reasons as King Hussein did. He should follow in his neighbor’s footsteps, not his father’s.

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