You can now read the December issue of Forward online on:

http://anax8a.pressmart.com/forwardsyria/index.aspx

 As the year comes to an end, two new names are floating in the air—leaked to us by our sources in Damascus and Washington, on who the new US ambassador to Syria will be. This comes after the State Department reportedly sent its recommendation to the White House for approval. One is Jacob Walles, the former US consul general in Jerusalem, and Nabil Khury, a veteran of the Foreign Service, of Lebanese origins, who rose to fame in the Arab world for serving as liaison officer between the US and Arab media during the Iraq war in 2003.

Faisal and Musa are drinking tea, laughing, and reminiscing about old times in Musa’s antique shop in Old Damascus.  Musa has just returned from America, where he now lives, and one of the first things he did after catching up with his relatives was to invite Faisal to his family’s house for dinner.  That was last night, and the two of them are still giggling about their memories. Faisal is Palestinian, and Musa Jewish.

During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Syria’s new ruler, Emir Faisal told US President Woodrow Wilson that the Syrians refused any kind of foreign mandate, be it French or British, on Syrian land recently liberated from the Ottoman Empire. He presented him with a petition from the Grand Mufti of Damascus and the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and the Chief Rabi of the Syrian capital, calling for the full and unconditional independence of Syria.

Even though most of Syria’s Jews have never seen their home country, they haven’t lost touch with their roots.

“You can never forget,” says Joey Allaham, a Syrian Jew who left Damascus with his parents at the age of 18 in 1992, the year a nearly 45-year travel ban was lifted on Jews. “The Syrian customs never left – even for people who left Syria a hundred years ago. We still eat the same things; we’re still Syrian. There’s nothing missing.”

Six months into the Obama administration, it is clear that one of the ideas floating in Washington circles is: Normalization between Arab states and Israel, in exchange for an end to Israeli settlement in Palestinian territories. During his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in 2009, Obama stressed that settlements must come to a halt in Palestine. Netanyahu did not respond positively to US pressure, and actually tried playing around it, through Jewish pressure groups in the US, as well as by sending his Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Washington DC, to talk Obama into changing course. This is when the idea came up; normalization in exchange for a settlement halt.

Last month, President Bashar al-Assad invited his US counterpart Barack Obama to visit Syria, extended via Sky News where the Syrian leader said, “I would like to welcome him to Syria.” When asked on when the meeting would take place, President Assad said, “It is up to him!''

Talk of a Syrian-US summit has been in the air for several months. Last February, many speculated that the two men would meet in Istanbul, along with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Speaking to Forward Magazine this issue, veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh noted: “If Obama met with Assad, it is very likely that they would like and respect each other. Both are young, self-confident, and widely admired by their people.” Earlier, Hersh had written an article for The New Yorker, also advocating a Syrian-US Summit, saying: “Obama said that he would be willing to sit down with Assad in the first year of his presidency, without preconditions.” If President Obama were to live up to his promise, he still has five more months, for either a visit to Damascus, or a Syrian-US summit.

“We spotted that most of those who work in interior design in Syria are intruders on the field,” May al-Assar, CEO of Stad. “They hadn’t really got a proper education which is specialized in interior design, they are mostly non specialists who depend mainly on their work experience.” That is when the decision was made to create the Stad Center (al-Monfared) for learning and development, a Syrian pioneer in the field of interior design, with plans to get into the field of garden design.

Indicating Syria's economy may not be as immune to the global downturn as initially thought, the IMF lowered its assessment for the country’s growth, while exogenous factors are affecting output in the vital agriculture sector, putting an extra strain on the budget.