Site aliases: Use a different PHP path on remote
From example.aliases.drushrc.php: 


  Although most aliases will contain only a few options, a number
  of settings that are commonly used appear below:


...


  'php': path to custom php interpreter. Windows support limited to Cygwin.


So try somtehing like:

$aliases['example'] = array(
  'uri' =&gt; 'example.com',
  'root' =&gt; '/var/www/example.com',
  'remote-host' =&gt; 'www.example.com',
  'remote-user' =&gt; 'user',
  'php' =&gt; '/path/to/php/on/the/server'
);


You could try that. If this doesn't work I would suggest to update your drush version (locally and on the server) and try again, before doing any strange symlinking on the server.