Najwa Abi Haider
central- Several messages were sent by the American administration to the Arabs, expressing their discontent with the return of Syria – Assad to the Arab embrace, before it fulfills the conditions required of it. In the aftermath of the Arab League’s decision to restore Damascus to its seat, and after Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz directed last Wednesday an invitation to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to participate in the meeting of the Arab League Council at the summit level, which will be held in Jeddah on the 19th of this month, a group of members of the US Congress from both parties presented Republicans and Democrats yesterday drafted a bill aimed at preventing the US government from recognizing Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria and strengthening Washington’s ability to impose sanctions in a warning to other countries against normalizing relations with his regime. The project prevents the US federal government from recognizing or normalizing relations with any government in Syria led by Assad, who is subject to US sanctions. It also expands the Caesar Act, which imposed a strict set of sanctions on Syria in 2020.
In parallel, the US Department of Justice announced yesterday that the US authorities confiscated 13 Internet domains used by partners, companies and charities affiliated with Hezbollah, which include multiple websites of Al-Manar channel, in addition to the websites of its senior officials, including Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem and the two senior officials. Ibrahim Al-Sayed and Ali Damoush. It also included domains for affiliated charities such as the Martyrs Foundation and the Islamic Charitable Imdad Committee, as access to websites is no longer available, and only a picture appears from the US authorities announcing that they have confiscated the domain.
The American decisions and projects are not a coincidence, nor far from the Beijing agreement and its extensions, which formed the millstone in the context of Syria’s return to its Arab identity. The stick of the Arab countries normalizing with the regime, which compelled the latter, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, due to its invitation to Assad to the summit, to search for a way out to avoid the American “anger”, and the decision was, according to what Arab diplomatic sources say to Al-Markaziya, that Assad completes the visit To Riyadh before the date of the summit, during which he makes promises to meet the demands of the Kingdom and the Arabs and defines the strategy of dealing for the next stage, provided that he later forms a high-level diplomatic delegation to participate in the summit, which provides a suitable way out for the Arabs, suggesting that normalization is not with Bashar al-Assad and his regime, but rather with Syria, the dispersed people. In the corners of the earth, and it is necessary to find a solution to his cause before the crisis of the displaced explodes in the countries that are being pressured by the Syrian presence in a great way, especially Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
This path, according to the sources, will provide the Arabs with a way out, by saying at the summit that Syria has regained its seat, not Bashar al-Assad. It will also show Arab interest in the issue of the displaced, which is presenting itself strongly in terms of searching for ways to address it and ways to return the displaced to their homes, an issue that preoccupies the countries of the world, especially Europe. Which fears the influx of these people to it, if their crisis exploded in any of the countries that host them.
Normalization, then, at the Jeddah summit, is with the people of Syria, not its political system, to return them to their land, help them in reconstruction and put an end to suffering that has entered its twelfth year, so the Arabs evade American sanctions, if imposed on the normalizers, and seek a solution to the issue of displacement, which has severe repercussions for neighboring countries.
