The President of Just and Comprehensive Peace

"We were very clear in dealing with peace issues, firm in our stands since the beginning of the peace process in Madrid in 1991; unlike the Israeli policy that fluctuated sometimes and put obstacles at other times. Until this very moment they did not give us any proof that invites confidence that they have a true and genuine desire to achieve peace. Rather they have been suggesting different versions in order to cover what they truly want to do so they ask us to be flexible and I think that they mean the territory should be flexible in order to press its borders and make it shrink in a way that suits their objectives or they send us missionaries who ask us to agree to a modified line of June 4 and ask us to call this modified line June 4, as if the difference is about naming the line. Or they suggest to give us 95% of our land and when we ask about the remaining 5% they say it is only a problem of few meters and this should not be an obstacle in the way of peace. If those few meters are not a problem and should not be an obstacle in the way of peace, then why they don't return to the June 4th lines and give us 5% of the territory west of the Lake? They have betted on many things; they have betted on the health of President al-Assad forgetting that national leaders who enter history enter it through the doors of their own countries and enter the world of eternity through the same door and never through concessions and giving up rights. They have betted on the military strength and were defeated in Lebanon. They have betted on our national unity and our people defeated this bet and now what are they going to bet on? The only betting that may succeed is to bet on the will of the people to return their rights through the return of their complete territories to the line of June 4, 1967. Only then we can proceed towards a just and comprehensive peace. We call upon the United States to play its full role as an honest broker and a cosponsor of the peace process. Pressure has to be exerted in order to implement the resolutions of international legitimacy with all the legitimate rights they dictate for the Lebanese, the Syrian and Palestinian people. "

"We would like to stress here that we have the urge to reach a state of peace but we are not ready to give up an inch of our territory nor do we accept our sovereignty to be impinged upon."

"The principle of land-for-peace…. This principle is not clear or unacceptable to them. Their positions on eastern part of Tiberias Lake are still as they were. We refuse to negotiate any object unless there is an agreement on the basic principle," he said. On how Syria will deal with the Israeli Prime Minister-elect, the president said: " We will say to all those that are our conditions for peace… Whoever can implement them, we are ready to continue negotiating... We deal with realities not speculations."

The basics are '' the full withdrawal from the occupied territories of 1967, the Palestinian State with east Jerusalem as its capital, the right of return" asserting that the initiative asserts " Arabs' desire for peace'' and exposes the '' Israelis who don't desire peace''. "The principle of the peace process is the land for peace. The land is an integrated one factor, either to be restored in full or to remain till it is to be fully restored. The second factor for Peace also consists of its components including, for example, the issue of water, relations, security arrangements including the disarmament of Mass destruction weapons and nuclear weapons which Israel possesses,"

" I am going to go back to the word conditions. Israel, in its statements with senior officials, always says we reject Syrian conditions. In fact, Syria has never set any conditions, and we always say that Syria does not have certain conditions at all. When Syria speaks about the bases for peace it refers to the necessity of implementing Security Council resolutions and Madrid terms of reference. These terms of reference were not invented by Syria, rather they were American ideas and they became international resolutions once they were approved by the international community. And due to the Arabs desire to reach a genuine peace, they adhered to these terms of reference. Hence, our conditions are the conditions of the international community and they stipulate the full return of the Syrian rights. The international community is the one who met in Madrid and decided what are the terms of reference for peace. Thus, the terms of reference are agreed upon by the international community and we are part of this international community and we do not live outside it. The entire world, with the exception of Israel, has supported these terms of reference. Israel is the only country that refuses to talk about Security Council resolutions and the United Nations, and it refuses to adhere to the international will. As an example for this, I shall mention that upon his return from Madrid conference, Yitzhak Shamir said to the journalists that he will make the peace process drag for ten years and this is actually what had taken place. Now, when we say we want negotiations, negotiations for us are the means and not the end in themselves. When we started negotiations in 1991, we started because we were convinced that peace is going to be achieved through an honest broker of the negotiations and through a true adherence to the terms of reference that were announced in Madrid. Ten years from that time we can say that the peace process has suffered an absolute failure. Is it possible to relaunch future negotiations without analyzing the reasons that had led to this failure and without avoiding these reasons? This means that we could go back ten years from now and say why did the peace process fail, and we would have wasted twenty years."

"We in Syria had never been for war neither had viewed in it, whether for us or others, any interest; we do speak of peace hence it is the desire."

"Some people say there are Syrian conditions, and my answer is no; we don't have Syrian conditions. What Syria says is this: negotiations should be resumed from the point at which they had stopped simply because we have achieved a great deal in these negotiations. If we don't say this, it means we want to go back to point zero in the peace process. This would also mean wasting a lot more time, and every day we waste more people are being killed and more violence erupts in the region"

"Once Israel was to be able to offer genuine peace, a just and balanced peace deal was to be signed, there would be a recognition of Israel."

"The problem of the peace process now is that they (the Israelis) were escaping from the implementation of the Security Council resolutions to partial mysterious and unclear agreements that need explanation." ‏ For example, the Oslo accord. What is taking place in Palestine now is a result of Oslo. They had signed an unclear accord, without implementation. It did not include clear items. It was words only. ‏ Then came Wye River, then Tenet and Mitchell’s plans and now the Roadmap. ‏ The peace process needs one agreement not ten. ‏ Now after the Roadmap, they talked about the Geneva initiative. If you have the Madrid terms of reference why do you need all this? This is what we have repeatedly confirmed in Syria. They have put forward the Roadmap and many initiatives. We said no, there is Madrid conference, i.e., the implementation of the Security Council resolutions. The basic thing is to return to the Security Council resolutions firstly and to work out mechanism secondly. The natural mechanism is negotiations in order to start these negotiations and to have a proper mechanism, that is the role of the sponsor? How can we deal with a party which hampers the peace process? Israel hampered it and nobody in the world has done anything. When you feel that you can obstruct the peace process why do you walk towards peace? The world must make Israel or any other party implement the Security Council resolutions. It must implement these resolutions, otherwise, it will become isolated. This is our vision of the peace process. "

"Peace negotiations stopped in 1995 because of the assassination of Rabin. ‏ Following Rabin, Shimon Peres came to power and launched a war on Lebanon and perpetrated massacres, namely the Qana massacres, where more than 100 civilians were killed in a shelter. Peres lost the elections and then came Netanyahu who torpedoed the peace process because the principle of peace is land for peace, to restore land and take peace." ‏ Netanyahu said : "peace for peace". This means no land. Therefore, why do we establish peace if the land is not returned? ‏" " Netanyahu went and Barak came. He talked about peace and we responded. Two rounds of negotiations were held in Sheapardstown in the US. He wanted to negotiate everything except land. As you know, the core of the peace process is land. He also ran away from the subject of peace for internal reasons. There was a pressure on him by the parties. In fact, he did not realize peace and did not succeed in elections. Sharon came after. He entered the holy Aqsa Mosque and killed the Palestinians. When he became Prime Minister, he began to kill and is still killing the Palestinians up to this day. The Israelis reject any proposal towards the peace process. As I said, the peace process returns when Israel admits that these lands must be returned completely according to the Security Council resolutions, i.e. to June 4th 1967 lines. This is the only solution. ‏"

"There is an established right , there are the Security Council resolutions and there is a clear mechanism . We always say , we are ready for negotiations when the circumstances are proper in Israel."

"Perdonate se sorrido. Detto ciò, per la Siria l'accordo con Israele è una scelta strategica. Sharon dice di non credere alla sincerità delle mie offerte, ma allora perché non verificare? I parametri della pace li conosciamo già. Basta sedersi e negoziare."

"Since we have not talked today about resolutions 338 and 242 because they have become self evident for us, and because we know that we waste our time when we talk about the non-implementation of international legitimacy resolutions and the double standards and all that"

"Well, let me start from the memoir of President Clinton, who mentioned that round in Shepherdstown [West Virginia, at a January 2000 summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa]. And he said Syria was ready to make peace and it was forthcoming toward peace, but Barak couldn't deliver. So we were ready in 2000, and we were ready in 1991, when the peace process launched in Madrid."

"This issue- Peace Process- has a number of facets, firstly the Israelis either on the government level or the people's level do not have any interest, nor there is any serious popular tendency toward the peace process, and this might be attributed to the circumstances in the past years, but of course such circumstances are not an excuse for them to break away from peace. Secondly there is Syria or other Arab parties which are involved in the peace process such as the Palestinians or the Lebanese, but this desire (for peace) has not changed at least for Syria. The issue of peace is still standing on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions."

"Israel has blocked all the roads to the Middle East peace process, not only because of the rejection by Israeli successive governments to respond to the peace requirement and continued denial of the Arab basic rights but also because the current international situation and influential power are not ready to push the peace process forward, as well as for the backing down of the international community to meet their obligation towards the peace process and stability in the region."

"The peace process between Syria and Israel that started in 1991. It is paralyzed now. We have daily blood shed in our region: in Iraq, in Palestine and in the occupied territories in Syria and Lebanon. They tried to make an embargo against Syria while they wanted us to help them in the security issues. They tried to prevent any kind of support from European countries to Syria. They work against the association between Syria and the E.U. They prevented even private companies from coming to Syria and helping in the development in our country."

"We are convinced that the natural way to achieve peace is through negotiations. But when this option fails, or when it is not available in the first place, resistance, in its different forms, is the alternative for restoring rights. Resistance is not necessarily or exclusively armed, it could be cultural or political or might take different forms of rejection. So, supporting resistance aims at achieving peace not war through deterring against aggression. If this does not work, it might be through war in order to liberate the land. Resistance is not contradictory to peace or an alternative for it. In our circumstances at least, it is necessary for the achievement of peace. Otherwise, the result will be that we will lose the battle of war and the battle for peace, particularly that Israel and those who stand behind it have shifted completely to adopting the military option based on preemptive war, while we the Arabs have remained in our place discoursing and negotiating with ourselves convinced of a promised peace with an illusory party which prepares itself on a daily basis for its next aggression on the Arabs ."

" It is a conditional peace with clear bases, but it is the speech of last opportunities…when I talked about generations, this mean that these doors which are opened now are narrowing, and by time we will not see these doors and the other rejecting part for peace which is' Israel ' has to exploit the subject."

"Of course Israel has been proposing that we should go back to the negotiations without any preconditions. Many of the delegations that visited Syria asked about the Syrian conditions. When we say we don’t have any conditions they are usually surprised. They say that Israel claims you have preconditions. Israel’s objective is to give the impression that it is prepared for peace but the problem is the conditions put by Syria. In actual fact Israel puts the condition of going back to square one. We talked about resuming negotiations from the point they had stopped. They want to go back to square one. We tell our international visitors: you want to achieve peace and at the same time you ask as to disagree about what we have already agreed on! This means lack of seriousness and lack of credibility, because every Israeli government comes and says that they are not responsible for what the previous Israeli government approved. We stress that we are prepared for negotiations without any preconditions in accordance with the Madrid terms of reference. In other words, we resume from the point we stopped at in the early 1990s."

"peace should be based on a number of factors and all parties should be ready to commit themselves to the terms of this peace since it was launched in Madrid 1991." "The achievement of peace also requires a fair sponsor who has interest to end tension in the region and has actual Will to tackle this issue… and this sponsor is not existed now,"

"We repeatedly denied any secret meetings because we reject this principle. The Syrian people support their government in the peace process and in negotiations… so there is no need to hide this matter behind," "We didn't charge anyone to negotiate on behalf of us… but we encourage any party to play a role, particularly countries which have respect and want to play a serious role and have credibility,"

"We told them you should come with all needed requirements of peace process… and when they proposed that Syria was ready for negotiations without preconditions, they started to say and write that Syria abandoned everything… we say no.. Resolutions 242 and 338 are not Syrian conditions, they are international resolutions which were not put by us... they are international conditions put in 1967,"

"It is illogic to say that peace process means to cancel all what we agreed upon and go backwards… the land is a base and we will not abandon it… it will be resorted completely," " there should be a fair sponsor that should work in light of UN Security Council resolutions… these are the requirements of peace, they are not conditions." "We don't want to foil the peace process, we are talking about requirements, not conditions… there are no Syrian conditions, but there are requirements and Syria will not relinquish those requirements," "peace to Syria is a strategy and her call to peace expresses willingness and efforts to restore the occupied lands and achieve security and stability to her people."

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