Egyptian Chronicles: Ibrahim soliman , the Peace man of his own convictions

Is this man for real?? I am really surprised but this is politics, we don't know what is going on in the back stage

I am only surprised because this sort of initial visit from negotiators like this gentle man Mr. Ibrahim Soliman whom I didn't know anything about except today ; to be secret ones you know like the Tohamy’s visits to Morocco to meet the Israeli officials like Moses Dyan in 1970s.

I am very surprised with the Media attention to Mr. Soliman despite he is not an official negotiator or representative of president El-Assad, nothing is officially announced, this considered a private visit made an American – Syrian business man to Israel, already the press secretary of the Syrian Embassy in Washington said that Soliman is acting of his own convictions, and from just few hours an Israeli parliamentary panel said that both Israel and Syria ignored his extraordinary efforts to reach for a peace accord.

It is a private visit that can be a political private visit with some sort of Syrian proposal “which I suspect” or a private scout political visit to see what is in the minds of the Israelis.

All what I could know about this mysterious personality and its relation to El-Assad dynasty that he is a member of the Allawite sect like them and that he met Hafiz El-Assad for the first time in 1957, Hafez was an Air Force lieutenant at the time, serving under the command of Soliman's older brother in the city of Hama, they used to met in some casino along the river in Hama where they used to drink coffee and play backgammon. Hafez seemed to Soliman as very smart and very ambitious young man but sad for what happened in the Middle East from the creation of Israel and the partition of Lebanon from Syria “This supposedly happened in 1950s, the partition of Lebanon happened since the WWI!!”

Soliman left Syria to Study in America in the following year yet he kept a contact with Hafiz who became the president after a coup in 1970.

In an interview to the American News week Soliman said that in the last years of El-Assad ,he began to accept the reality of the Israel existence focusing only on retrieving the Golan heights “an objective that he bequeathed to his son “ – of course along with the country and the rule !!

For the historical record Mr. Soliman may be the first Syrian national who goes to Israel and speak in the Knesset with the Israeli officials. He met with the Foreign affairs and defense committee members whom invited him to speak in order to see how serious he was and what he had to say.

According to the Israeli press records Soliman had over 8 rounds of secret talks with a former director of the Israeli foreign minister y, Alon Liel since last January reaching to some tentative peace agreement that Israel would give back the Golan heights, if Syria stopped its support to Hezbollah and similar Palestinian militias like the Jihad and the Democratic front, Soliman claims that his government didn’t respond on this proposal same thing in the Israeli size.

Already Soliman seems to me to dislike Hezbollah, Iran and doesn’t care much about the Palestinian issue, the same constants the Syrians hold to.

And what really amazed me is that Soliman is so optimistic, I mean the man ~~thinks~~ sorry believes that a Peace agreement could be reached with in six months!! Six months wow I mean the Egyptian Israeli accords took more than six months!!

I think there is something wrong here either Mr. Soliman is acting on his convections like what the Syrian official said above or either the Syrians are playing a big game with the Israelis because from few weeks the Syrians declared that they agree and insist on the Saudi or Arabic Peace initiative which I see fair enough, the Syrian President Basher said on public that he was going to stick with it and he even made that clear to Nancy Pelosi when she visited Damascus last week.

Already I don’t know why I didn’t like one thing in his visit where the Israeli media began to spot light his tears in the Yad Vashem, the memorial of the holocaust victims; of course I don’t underestimate or overestimate what the Jewish people suffered from the Nazis, but the Syrian gentleman said while his tears were coming down that:

“This cannot happen again. It's hard to think of so many people being murdered in such a short time,"

With my all respect there were so many people who were murdered in such short time in his own country by the orders of his own pal in Hama in 1971, in Damascus and in Palmyra, the terrible massacres El-Assad had committed against its own people in Syria happened after the holocaust and no one is speaking or is crying for those people, there were as humans as the Jews who were discriminated on the basis of religion by the Nazis

Anyhow I should expect this coming from the old friend of Hafez El-Assad, the man already forgot to say that Hafez’s only ambition in 1957 was hope to reach for presidency

Sources

Yahoo! News Syria ,Israel rebuff unofficial envoy

Ynet:"Syria won't attack Israel

Newsweek : Syria :Businessman's backdoor peacemaking

Link to Suleiman: Peace accord could happen in 6 months - Haaretz - Israel News

Elaph : The Representative of El-Assad Ibrahim Soliman in Israel