Peace summits: More harm than good

France's renewed threats to convene an international peace summit, aimed at advancing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has diverted attention from another peace summit the French sought to advance -- along with other Western countries, chief among them the United States. We are talking, of course, about the peace conference to resolve the war in Syria, which blew up in the faces the French and the other participants. And even worse -- it blew up in the faces of the millions of Syrians trying, as these very words are being typed, to flee Syria and escape the onslaught of Russian airstrikes and Syrian President Bashar Assad's soldiers, backed by Iranian forces.

The Syrian peace summit teaches us what to expect when various countries try concocting a solution to the Palestinian issue; but mostly we can learn that the naivet , not to mention the cynicism, displayed by the international community are liable to hurt the very people that such a summit purports to be trying to help.

From the beginning, Assad was never serious about reaching any sort of agreement with his opponents. After all, how can an agreement be reached when the opposition wants Assad's head and Assad wants to continue ruling solo over whatever is left of the Syrian nation? In recent months, however, Assad, with indispensable help from Russia and Iran, has managed to change the tide of the war and restore his rule over most of Syria, including the Golan Heights.

Under these circumstances, Assad certainly has no interest in reaching any agreement or compromise with his rivals. From his perspective, and from the perspective of his Iranian and Russian partners, the only solution can come from blood and fire, subduing his adversaries and cleansing Syria not only of the rebels fighting against him but also of the population that supports them. Essentially this has meant exiling eight million Syrians, and now, with the Syrian army's recent success on the battlefield, another two or three million refugees. Thus, Assad will ultimately retain power over a country in which over half the population has fled.

Anyone willing to confront the reality of the situation could have seen this coming. But Western states were always intent on believing their own illusions. Military intervention with the goal of saving the Syrian people is out of the question, as we all know. The option was never truly on the agenda, not even in the earlier stages of the fighting when such an undertaking would have been simpler and would have had greater, even if not great, chances of success. The Americans aren't even interested in confronting Russian aggression. On the other hand Washington needs to appease some of its Arab allies, but mostly it needs to give the world the impression that something is being done about the unfolding tragedy in Syria.

Meanwhile, Europe today is in despair over the refugee crisis, which will only get worse in the coming years. Indeed, the millions of Syrian refugees will be joined by millions of Sunnis from Iraq, whom the Iraqi government will sweep out under the guise of fighting the Islamic State group. Europe's despair, therefore, has given rise to the futile idea that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis will magically cure the region of its ills, eradicate ISIS and reverse the flow of refugees back to the Middle East.

All these factors formed the pretext for convening a Syrian peace summit, which was based on a detailed road map that was adopted by the U.N. Security Council as a binding resolution. But what can you do when road maps and the realities on the ground are two very different things. And what can you do when the Russian foreign minister is drawing up road maps with other diplomats while Russian warplanes are carrying out hundreds of airstrikes a day, chasing millions of Syrian from their homes to clear the path for Assad's advancing army.

Looking back, the ongoing blathering about peace in recent months has not only failed to end the war in Syria, it has made it worse. It has granted Assad and his allies both legitimacy and time to complete their war of extermination, and also, we must admit, score results on the ground.

And now that the main effort to secure a peace in Syria has failed, and in light of a proven track record of millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands killed, the West is now turning to its next project -- an Israeli-Palestinian peace summit.

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