Is Syria returning to the Arab fold? - opinion

• Published date: 25 September 2021
• Author: ELIE PODEH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Just as interesting is the fact that in sponsoring this solution, the United States is violating its own policy of economic sanctions imposed on Syria by the Obama administration in 2011 and intensified during the Trump administration by the 2019 Caesar Act. What is more, if the gas project goes through, it could accelerate Syria's return to the Arab fold, a trend emerging gradually over the past two years.

In November 2011, most member states of the Arab League voted to suspend Syria's membership and sever diplomatic relations with Damascus. The decision followed President Bashar Assad's brutal crackdown on the rebels seeking to overthrow his regime during the period known as the "Arab Spring." What is more, some Arab countries even played an active role in the civil war, whether within the US-led military coalition, or by providing financial and logistical support for various rebel groups (with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan most active in this regard).

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

A decade on, after a half million Syrians losing their lives and several million Syrians turned into refugees, Arab leaders are realizing that the war has been decided in favor of the Assad regime and that their interest lies in recognizing this outcome and cooperating with the Syrian leader to confront regional challenges and threats.

Credit for this breakthrough goes to the United Arab Emirates, just as it does for the 2020 Abraham Accords. In April 2018, following a combined American, British and French missile attack on a Syrian army base in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons against the rebels, the UAE came to Syria's defense. Then-Emirati foreign minister Anwar Gargash declared that the civil war in Syria was being waged between Assad and "radical Islamist" forces, and called for Syria's reinstatement into the Arab League. In doing so, the UAE adopted the Syrian narrative about the nature of the civil war, and along with Bahrain it reopened its embassy in Damascus.

Jordan, too, which claimed that it never severed relations with Syria, appointed a senior diplomat to Damascus and even opened the border crossing between the two countries for the passage of goods.

Subsequently, King Abdullah assumed the role of Syria's guarantor in Washington, taking the opportunity of his July 2021 meeting with Biden to call for dialogue with Assad. In 2020, Oman returned...