Arab Openness to Syria.. A Senior Syrian official to Al-Mayadeen: Damascus will not Normalize with "Israel"

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It was the most peaceful autumn that Damascus witnessed in 10 years, had it not been for the bombing of a military overnight bus at the President's Bridge. However, the bombing did not disrupt the daily flow of Syrians heading to their work.

They transcended the manifestations of war to other no less important concerns. Most of them say so. Their conversations revolve around the daily living concerns, in the means of transportation, restaurants, cafes, homes, and public parks. But the state of anxiousness began to change with some optimism regarding the improvement in the economic situation.

War taught the Syrians how to correlate between crises and to anticipate the features of their solutions. Among the most prominent of these features, which many have been waiting for, is the gradual disengagement of the isolation and siege from Syria.

Contact with Jordan started a year ago, gradually, and are not new

When the Jordanian Royal Court first announced contact between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Jordanian King Abdullah II, it was evident that it was the first contact between the two after ten years of the Syrian war, but it was not. "Jordanian-Syrian contacts, at a leadership level, began a year ago. Before and during the same time, more than one royal envoy visited the presidential palace. It was not the right time for Jordan to announce communication with Syria, but now the time is right."

A senior Syrian official unveiled the details of communication between Damascus and Amman until the moment they were revealed, mentioning the positive signs that came with them.

Syrians are spreading a joke inspired by the reality of migration, which is a result of the repercussions of war. The joke goes: When a Syrian wakes up one day, he will not be surprised if he knows that at least two of his acquaintances are in the United Arab Emirates. The latter has its peculiarity for the Syrians, especially since relations were not severed during the war, and were subsequently strengthened at various levels, which were not all announced, as is the case with Syria’s southern neighbor, Jordan.

The return of communication on the Damascus-Amman line without any American obstruction reflected the existence of an Arab structural review in the matter of talks with Syria. Realistically speaking, the situation is crucial for Syria and the rest of Arabs, but this did not prevent questions from being asked in a self-evident manner. Some questions were concerning the story behind the 'Arab return' [to Syria] amid a wave of normalization that took over part of the regional scene.

Regardless of the Arab countries' intentions, any Arab openness to Syria will not affect its position on normalization

Are the Syrian-Jordanian talks part of a phased plan to pull Syria, given its stifling economic situation, towards normalization, or at least towards neutrality and away from confrontation with the Israeli occupation entity, precisely because the two countries that announced this openness come from the normalizing Arab part of the region?

“Regardless of the Arab countries' intentions, any Arab openness to Syria will not affect its position on normalization,” the senior Syrian source answered. He anticipated that talks of seemingly realistic concerns about openness might make Damascus hostage to political terms under the pretext of easing the effects of economic sanctions.

Some of the recent Arab normalization steps confirm this, such as the Sudanese case, where impoverishment was a reason for Khartoum to head towards that step. The senior official reiterates his rejection of this approach from the Syrian angle, saying: “Syria has not and will not change its position on normalization, and it considers it a mistake. Normalization harmed its interests and the interests of the Palestinian people and reinforced the Israeli position at the expense of Arab interests. Any change in the Syrian position towards "Israel" will mean a waiver of rights, which is not on the table and is not possible for Syria.

Arab countries wish to improve their relationship with Iran because of their loss of confidence in US policy and its fluctuations

What about Iran? The senior official stresses that "it was not mentioned at all in any dialogue with any Arab country recently, and this is different from what was the situation years ago, as the Arabs had a problem in the relationship with Iran itself or in the discussion of the relationship with Syria." So, have the priorities changed? This is what the senior Syrian official confirms to Al-Mayadeen, saying, "their priorities have changed due to the failure of the US project in Syria on the one hand, and the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan on the other." The Syrian source seems satisfied with the Arab desire to improve relations with Iran for the aforementioned reasons, and what this means is that "the Arab countries have lost confidence in the ability of the US to achieve its goals or stabilize its policies towards the region."
 
This reassurance also applies to the civic reality, despite admitting the existence of a popular mood or a lenient view of normalization among certain groups, given that they perceive it as the solution to the suffocating crises. The Syrian residents lived a contradictory feeling this past summer; they experienced some joy in the dozens of planes that brought back to the runways of Damascus International Airport; a noise that had been lost by the war and transported tens of thousands of Syrian immigrants who returned to spend their summer holidays in Syria, as well as a kind of astonishment that turned into anger at times, due to the huge difference in the standard of living between most residents and most immigrants. 
 
The balance that existed prior to the war is lost now, and it is unrealistic to talk about having it returned, or perhaps creating it in different forms, such as in the return of some immigrants to invest and live in their country again. This is still unlikely in the foreseeable future, although some of the immigrants did not hide their desire for the summer vacation to be an opportunity to explore prospects for economic investment, in preparation for their permanent return to the country. Most of the conclusions have linked the stability of the Syrian economy to this return.

Changing the Syrian position will mean waiving rights, and this is not on the table and is not possible for Syria

Syrians are more aware than others that their country, before and after the war, received offers of normalization in exchange for improving economic conditions. Thus, if the official rejection is still the same, then some impressions, motivated by poverty, began to appear about normalization being acceptable if it is a condition for lifting the suffocating siege! 

In this context, the senior Syrian official comments that "this is normal, but it is present in a small percentage in the Syrian society, and the models of normalization in the Arab world did not provide the Arab populations with opulence and prosperity, but rather moved them from bad to worse, with the exception of the mainly rich Gulf countries. The case of Egypt confirms that popular normalization is not possible after 40 years of the Camp David Accords.”  The Syrian official then finds nothing embarrassing with elaborating further, "Syria will not deviate from the front conflict with "Israel" and will not be drawn into alliances that do not match its interests and solid believes. The country still considers that the full responsibility for normalization lies with the Palestinian side, which normalized through the Oslo Accords, and gave others the justification for normalization, given that the Palestinian, which is the pertinent party, did this, so why don't the others do it, too?" However, others, including Syria, think otherwise: investing in what is possible and what is required from the returning Arab relations, without meddling with the county's solid believes about the conflict and its pro-resistance position. This is very possible, as proven by the previous years of war.