DAMASCUS - Syria has stepped up backstage diplomacy to press Hamas into sharing power to demonstrate that Damascus remains a key player in the Middle East, Palestinian officials and analysts say.
Open to a rapprochement with the West, Damascus has been gently pushing its ally Hamas into solving differences with President Mahmoud Abbas on a new Palestinian government that have played into the hands of Israel, they said.
The political failure of Hamas would reflect badly on Syria, which has expressed readiness to resume talks with Israel as part of a Middle East peace deal and is keen to show the United States it remains central to the region’s politics.
A new Palestinian administration could prompt the West to ease sanctions imposed after Hamas, whose charter commits it to the destruction of Israel, took power in March after elections.
The group, whose leader Khaled Meshaal lives in Syria, has abandoned its insistence on heading a new government, but no one doubts it will remain a force to be reckoned with in Palestinian politics.
Independent Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouthi, who is mediating between Hamas’s leaders and Abbas, told Reuters that Syria wants to change a perception that the exiled leadership of Hamas is extremist.
‘Syria does not want the Palestinian government to turn into a theatre of Arab disputes and is strongly backing Arab efforts to conclude a deal. We would not have reached so far without the exiled leadership,’ Barghouthi told Reuters in Damascus.
Recent concessions by Hamas have brought it closer to agreement with Abbas’s Fatah group on what the two sides have called a technocrat unity government, although differences remain on its political programme.
Syrian officials decline to disclose details of their advice to Hamas. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem has said Syria has an interest in seeing a stable Palestinian government.
A number of European envoys, including a senior adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, visited Damascus in the last few weeks seeking Syrian help to unlock the Palestinian dispute.
‘Positive role’
European nations have begun re-establishing high-level contacts with Syria since a summer war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, although France has maintained its distance.
But Syria’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas and allegations that it allows guerrillas and weapons to cross into Iraq for the insurgency against US forces there have led the United States to seek to ostracise Syria.
US officials have kept away from Damascus, although a staff member of the US Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations visited Syria this month. Several members of a US bipartisan panel favour engaging with Iran and Syria over Iraq.
‘The Syrians have assured us they are playing a positive role regarding Hamas. But they do not give detail,’ a Western official said.
A senior Palestinian politician said Syria had gone as far as suggesting to Hamas that it accept an Arab League peace initiative known as the Beirut Declaration.
Damascus initially expressed reservations about the 2002 document, but it has become a central component of Syrian foreign policy as the United States, Israel’s chief ally, has sought to isolate Syria further.
The declaration offers Israel normal ties if it agrees to withdraw from all land it has occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, and accepts a ‘just solution’ to the Palestinian refugee problem.
‘Hamas has said no to the Arab initiative, but it has been showing flexibility favoured by the Syrians,’ said a senior Palestinian politician who asked not to be identified.
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said this week the programme of the proposed government would not recognise Israel or accept a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict as demanded by Israel and the West.
But leading Palestinian political commentator Ali al-Badwan said Hamas’s public statements hid a possibility of compromise.
‘We are witnessing a pulling of strings. Syria is urging Hamas to show high flexibility and Hamas recognises the need to be pragmatic,’ Badwan said.