The sensational report that one country in the region, Turkey perhaps, approached a neighboring country, Syria perhaps, and proposed that it sign a peace agreement with Israel "for show," while in practice exploiting the sham peace to build up military strength that could later be turned against Israel, generated considerable interest and even alarm in Israel.
But in truth, this is a classic "dog bites man" story. Even if this were a serious report entirely unrelated to Israel's approaching elections, which is by no means certain, there is nothing in it that is either new or surprising. This is, after all, the Middle East, where everyone talks and acts behind everyone else's back, no one means what they say and, ultimately, everyone deceives everyone else: Arabs, Iranians, Turks and even Americans.
More broadly, the idea that it is permissible to sign a peace agreement when circumstances make it advantageous, and permissible, even desirable, to violate it once it is no longer needed, is a concept rooted in Islam going back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
In 628, the Prophet signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his enemies, the people of Mecca, agreeing to a 10-year truce. But a year later, when he felt strong enough to confront them, he broke the agreement, attacked them and conquered Mecca.
For that matter, this is not necessarily an exclusively Middle Eastern practice. It is an accepted and even common feature of international relations. There is no need to go all the way back to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the nonaggression treaty Adolf Hitler signed with Joseph Stalin in August 1939, only to violate it two years later, in June 1941. And, of course, one could mention Iran, which signed a nuclear agreement it never intended to honor.
But back to the matter at hand. The sensational report is an example of bad journalism, because there is simply nothing meaningful to learn from it. It is unclear who said what to whom and in what context. Was this an informal, nonbinding conversation between leaders over a cup of coffee, or was it said during an official meeting for which minutes were kept? More fundamentally, what was the context of the remarks that were supposedly made?
Was this a plan to eliminate the State of Israel, of the kind Iran once pursued, or merely an offhand, nonbinding remark, like the sort in which the Americans excel during the negotiations they conduct with Iran, but also over Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, sometimes even on Israel's behalf? The message in such remarks is that there is no need to take too seriously the commitments made by the Lebanese Armed Forces or Hamas. They simply need to look as though they are doing something, and the Americans will take care of calming Israel down.
It is also worth recalling remarks attributed to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. When Mubarak tried to persuade Syrian President Hafez Assad to sign a peace agreement with Israel, he reportedly told him there was no need to get worked up over Israel's demands for normalization. In Egypt's case, he said, nothing had come of them, and Israel knew it.
Yet Egypt has maintained quiet along our shared border for nearly 50 years. And whoever quickly clarified that Egypt was not the country referred to in the report was right to do so. Simple logic suggests that the countries in question are probably Turkey and Syria, and that the issue concerns a diplomatic arrangement the Americans are seeking to promote between Israel and Damascus.
But several points need to be made.
First, the reason Arab countries signed peace agreements with us was not because they suddenly developed a love of Zion, but because of Israel's strength. As long as that strength is maintained, we have no reason to fear for the future of those agreements.
Second, in the Middle East, and not only here, it is not enough to carry a big stick and occasionally use it. Above all, one must keep one's eyes open. Do that, and no one will catch us by surprise.
Finally, even a short-lived agreement can sometimes have value. As long as we have sacrificed nothing and have not endangered our security, but instead signed an agreement that brings us a benefit, even a temporary one, there is value in doing so. After all, in the Middle East, everything is temporary and everything passes.
