Issue Isn’t Whether Syria Is Trustworthy : The issue is whether Israel will obstruct possible progress

Secretary of State James A. Baker III has left Damascus apparently convinced that he has Syria’s full endorsement of the compromise American peace plan for the Middle East. That would include acceptance of the proposal that a U.N. representative at any negotiations be a more or less mute observer rather than an active participant, and acceptance of the need for unanimous Arab and Israeli consent to reconvene the U.S.- and Soviet-sponsored conference if a negotiating deadlock develops. This would give Israel a veto over continuing the process if it felt it was going nowhere. The Syrian position, said Baker, “gives us something to work with” when he goes to Israel on Sunday.

Something to work with, but not necessarily something the Israeli government will find convincing or even credible. In advance of the Baker mission, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and most of his Cabinet have voiced their undiminished suspicions about Syria’s intentions and good faith and their continuing distrust of virtually any role that the United Nations might take. These suspicions are not unfounded.

SYRIA’S PAST: Syria has always been a leader--it would proudly claim the distinction of being the leader--of Arab rejectionists, committed to the refusal ever to recognize Israel or to negotiate or make peace with it. As part and parcel of its radical anti-Israel and, by extension, anti-Western stance, it has sponsored and succored international terrorism. It remains today on the State Department’s list of terrorism-supporting nations. Now, basking in the afterglow of Western approval for its largely token participation in the Gulf War and, more important, having been told by Moscow that the Soviet gravy train will no longer stop in Damascus, Syria seems suddenly to have discovered the virtues of conciliation. It professes to have discovered them, moreover, under the same leadership--President Hafez Assad and his narrowly based Baath Party--that heretofore had mobilized all of Syria’s political energies and much of its shaky economy behind a policy of undiluted enmity against Israel.

Israeli concerns about a U.N. role in any peace talks similarly have a firm historical foundation. The General Assembly especially has a long record of political one-sidedness in the Arab-Israel dispute, culminating in a vicious and sordid resolution in 1974 that equates Zionism with racism. That resolution still has not been repealed. Israel fears that any substantive U.N. involvement in peace talks could quickly become a pretext for further U.N. political intervention on the Arab side. That’s why the United States proposes limiting U.N. involvement to observer status.

REGION’S FUTURE: Israel, then, has legitimate concerns. But it also has weighty responsibilities, not just to the present moment but to the future. Foremost among those responsibilities is to seize the opportunity that now seems to be presenting itself to determine if in fact Syria is ready to talk about a political settlement and about making peace with the country that it first went to war against 43 years ago.

What Syria now is reported to have told the United States, in a lengthy letter that Jerusalem must be allowed to examine in its entirety, is that it is ready to sit down face to face with Israel to conduct unconditional negotiations. That departure from decades of precedent is what President Bush was referring to when he termed the Syrian response a breakthrough. Direct and unconditional negotiations with its Arab adversaries are also something Israel has always insisted upon. Now it is being given a chance to find out if that insistence is indeed being met.

Israel is skeptical and suspicious; it has a right to be. But it also has an obligation to examine open-mindedly and responsibly the potentially watershed proposals that Baker is carrying to Jerusalem.