Israel-Syria Peace Talks Stall Over Golan Issue

Less than 24 hours after Israel and Syria reached agreement on some of the general principles that could shape a peace treaty, negotiations between the Middle East adversaries stalled on Thursday when the talks turned to the disputed Golan Heights.

In a blistering statement, Mouaffak Allaf, Syria’s delegation chief, said the hopes generated the day before had proved to be “mere illusions” and that the talks “are facing an impasse.”

The Israeli delegation chairman, Itamar Rabinovich, dismissed Allaf’s complaints as “an attempt to stage a mini-crisis.” But he conceded: “In the course of negotiations, there are ups and downs. We are at a down moment.

“Two countries that come out of 40-some years of conflict and have been negotiating without success for some 10 months and have been negotiating with some success for less than a month cannot resolve all differences right away,” Rabinovich said.

Rabinovich and Allaf each accused the other of intransigence over the Golan, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War. Syria says it will settle for nothing less than the return of all of the territory, while Israel says it will consider nothing more than a partial withdrawal.

But both men agreed that they will resume talks as scheduled on Monday after the usual long weekend to accommodate Muslim, Jewish and Christian days of worship.

Allaf called on the American government to try to break the impasse, but Rabinovich said there was no need for that.

The agreements reached on Wednesday, the most significant Israeli-Syrian accords in almost 20 years, generated optimism that the professed flexibility of the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would ultimately produce a peace treaty. Allaf seemed to endorse that view Wednesday when he said the framework agreement could be completed by the end of next week.

But the Syrian negotiator turned sharply negative on Thursday. He said the only difference between the Rabin government’s negotiators and those that represented former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is that Rabinovich “is nicer” personally.

Asked what had happened overnight to change the mood from optimism to despair, Allaf said, “Not overnight, but in clear day, this morning” when the negotiators took up the territorial dispute.