Syrian opposition: tools in Sarkozy’s electoral policies!!

A conference was held in Paris for the Syrian opposition, "SOS Syrie," on the fourth of July. The call for the conference, issued through “La Règle du Jeu”(Bernard Henry Levy Journal), was joined by “France-Syrie Démocratie” and "Change in Syria for Democracy," the latter being a group that had emerged from the Syrian opposition conference held in Antalya,Turkey on 2 June 2011.

This is what was announced. However, what was really discovered that Bernard-Henri Lévy, a Zionist intellectual well known for his devotion to Israel, is backing Arab revolutions, and had organized that conference for the  “… duty to help democrats fulfill their democratic aims by encouraging them to take clear pledges” - of which “respecting the Israel-Palestinian peace treaty” is one, As he declared in Le Monde.

Levy is eager to replicate his Libyan success in Syria, as he wrote on his personal website. Given the Russian and Chinese opposition to any military intervention in Syria, his goal at this stage is to manufacture the Western public's support for a UN Security Council referral of the Syrian leadership to the International Criminal Court, and for yet more economic sanctions against the country to weaken its infrastructure and economic security, to benefit from this weakness in any “forthcoming negotiations” with Israel.

Besides Levy, “SOS Syrie” conference featured participants such as Bernard Kouchner, Frédéric Encel,"who cut his teeth in the Betar youth organization of Likud", and most importantly,the former Knesset member Alex Goldfarb. According to La Règle du Jeu, Goldfarb, of all people, acted as "spokesman, in Paris, of “Change in Syria for Democracy."

Perhaps the most intriguing Arab participant in “SOS Syrie” was Mulham al-Droubi, who is in charge of international relations of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood as well as a member of the "Change in Syria" Executive Council. As the Muslim Brotherhood came out in favor of "normalization" with Israel without an end to the Israeli occupation(Nytimes, April 29, 2011), they are now best friends for Israel and USA and welcomed in France by the Zionist conference organizers.

Hence, Israel’s interests were obvious in that conference, but the Syrians’ interests were not obvious at all. What was the advantage for Syrian “revolution” figures, backed by the west, to become a symbol of “Zionism” and a tool of “conspiracy” on Syria?

It becomes clear from the two conferences of Antalya- Turkey and “SOS syrie- Paris”, that the Syrian opposition figures are used as puppets and tools in hegemonic and domestic- electoral policies of the foreign states. That was the case with Ardogan of turkey, and this seems the case of Sarkozy –France.

For the French president “Nicolas Sarkozy” the Arab world is a mere appendage to his domestic-electoral policy, his very political weakness (an opinion-poll gives him an all-time-low support of 20%) makes him desperate to use every tool to win the presidential election in 2012.

Sarkozy wants to change the perceptions of French - Arab citizens to gain their votes. When he was elected president in 2007, he had spent five years as interior minister building the image of a hardliner opponent of crime and immigration (both areas linked, and both identified with people of Muslim- Arab origin).

President Sarkozy’s interventionist policy is aimed at enhancing his own international profile, at a time of decreased domestic popularity. The trade-off for France is a relatively easy one; through supporting Syrian opposition that would make a “peace deal” with Israel, Sarkozy would redress himself as a friend of Arab people, keeping his friendship to Israel at the same time.

But what the “control-freak” president and his foreign affairs team missed, that there are some historical realities cannot be forgotten:

For a revolution to succeed, a number of factors have to come together. The government must appear so irremediably unjust or inept that it is widely viewed as a threat to the country's future; elites (especially in the military) must be alienated from the state and no longer willing to defend it; a broad-based section of the population- spanning ethnic and religious groups and socioeconomic classes- must mobilize; and international powers must either refuse to step in to defend the government or constrain it from using maximum force to defend itself…All these seemed to be missed in Syrian “revolution”.

The situation in Syria is more complicated than a struggle between “freedom fighters” and “dictatorship”.

A revolution of “great expectations” could lead to a revolution of “failed expectations”, and a major harm to the people supposed to serve them. A reality, also, missed by Syrian opposition and Sarkozy.

No doubt, France will miss many international and historical realities as Sarkozy has chosen foreign ministers “more for their limits than on merit” as Dominique Moïsi, of the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, has said.