Revive the peace process. Revive the peace process. Well, there can be no peace in the Middle East, said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos (according to yesterday's Haaretz), without Syria. "There will be no final peace in the Middle East if there is no solution of the Syrian-Israeli relationship. If we need a comprehensive peace, all actors have to be involved in a peaceful agenda," Moratinos asserted. Moratinos said that he had won a pledge from Bashir Assad to work for peace in the region. "That's what I got from President Assad and (foreign minister) Moallem ... They conveyed to me a genuine wish and will to work in a constructive and positive manner." This is mush, frightful mush. So just how genuine was Assad's pledge? Sr. Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister, is either a fool or a faker. First of all, the only factor that keeps Assad in power--aside from the sheer brutality of his regime--is the steadfastness of his hostility to Israel. If not for that, the Hamas-like Muslim Brotherhood would have every reason to try to overthrow his regime. The enmity to Israel is all that there is in the country to keep it together. If the Syrian Baath made a single serious concession to Israel, the heads of its leaders might fall. By the way, do you remember when Bashir succeeded his father? The big media--from The New York Times on down--rhapsodized about Bashir's reasonableness, his scientific approach to problems, his eagerness to make a change in his country. This nonsense is all forgotten now. Do the journalists who wrote it recall how they misled their readers? It was really the same with the election of Hamas. Now that the Muslim jihadists had power in Palestine, they also would be reasonable. After all, they'd be responsible for the water supply and the schools and garbage collection and the hospitals and on and on. So cocksure were the analysts and the reporters. Have any of them written, "oops, I was wrong"? I know you may have read this in my space before. Syria and Lebanon have no bi-lateral relations. There is not now--nor has there ever been--a Syrian ambassador in Beirut or a Lebanese ambassador in Damascus. No, never. Not now, not yesterday, not sixty years ago. There is no peace between Syria and Lebanon, and the Lebanese president is a Syrian satrap. Nearly a third of the Lebanese parliament are toadies of Damascus. But, hey, all of the Lebanese and Syrians are Arabs. Shouldn't it be easy to make peace between their two countries? Why doesn't Moratinos suggest a peace agreement between Damascus and Beirut? Once that happens, maybe there'll be a small chance of one between Jerusalem and the neighbor to the north, but just maybe.