Stopping the Fighting and Arbitration in Syria

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command is proposing a truce between the warring factions in Syria, and this is a fine thing, should the various parties respond, sparing the great Syrian people much pain and grief.

Here I would add the necessity of broadening the call to include stopping the fighting and arbitration in Syria. Every party in Syria believed it could decisively win the fighting in its own favor, inflicting defeat on the other side. This was a foolish belief, looking at matters from only one angle. No party listened to the voice of reason, which told them from the very start that matters could not be decided militarily, and that the Syrian people would pay a steep price. Every party was told, from the start, that bringing external parties into the conflict would complicate matters, shifting the crisis from its internal framework into internationalization — under which crises, catastrophes, destruction, and ruin only drag on longer. No one wanted to listen, and every party took refuge with its own devils, wallowing in the mud of their advice. Now we find ourselves before enormous burdens closing in on the Syrian people.

I return to repeat what I proposed in April 2011: that all parties must stop the fighting and turn to an Arab arbitration body made up of Arab intellectuals and thinkers. Everyone ought to stop chasing after the Arab regimes, the Arab League, the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and so on, and become convinced that if a solution is not forged within Syria itself, there will be no solution at all.

At the time, I proposed a committee made up of Arab intellectuals such as Mr. Fahmy Howeidy of Egypt, Dr. Nabil al-Bashnaq of Palestine, Dr. Mohammed al-Misfer of the UAE, Dr. Munther Suleiman of Palestine, Dr. Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan, and the prime minister of Algeria, to resolve the impasse, with their activities funded at the Syrian government’s own expense.

An Arab committee of Arab intellectuals carrying out its duties with integrity and sincerity is better than any of the states that ultimately side with their own interests. Arab thinkers and intellectuals search for this nation’s honor, the dignity of its sons, the achievement of their freedom, and confronting their enemies, and if they have interests of their own, they are limited, momentary interests that do not affect the course of things.

So do the Syrian parties now have the will to search for a solution through the arbitration of Arab intellectuals and thinkers, particularly after the whole Syrian body has been so gravely wounded? If reason does not come to a person’s aid at first, it ought to become active once the axe has already struck the head — and the truly wise is the one who searches for solutions before calamities strike his own head. And now, as calamities rain down on the heads of the Syrian people, will those still fighting remain in their error and delusion?

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “وقف القتال والتحكيم في سوريا” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.