Briefing Paper : Mideast Spotlight Shifting to Golan : The Background

For all the barriers surmounted in achieving the first Israeli-Palestinian peace pact last week, the next round of Middle East peace talks--budding negotiations between mortal enemies Israel and Syria--looms as a more difficult and perhaps more important step in the search for peace in the region.

The American role is also likely to be far more demanding than in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, which proceeded largely without the good offices of the United States. The new shuttle diplomacy of Secretary of State Warren Christopher between Jerusalem and Damascus also represents the Clinton Administration’s most ambitious full-fledged venture into the world’s most volatile region.

The rewards for all three parties are, thus, potentially far greater. But so are the risks, Israeli and American analysts say.

“Geopolitically, there’s much more to be gained with an Israeli-Syrian peace, which will set in motion a series of regional changes,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council staff member in the Ronald Reagan Administration. “Because of Syrian involvement elsewhere and its alliances, problems like Lebanon or Iranian terrorism on Israel’s borders will effectively be resolved, while U.S. strategy in the region will be immeasurably helped.”

Peace between Syria and Israel would effectively end the Arab-Israeli conflict, since there is little chance of a serious war without Syria’s involvement, several analysts said. And a formal pact could reap benefits as far as North Africa and the Persian Gulf, perhaps fostering new regional economic arrangements and isolating extremist regimes in places such as Baghdad, Tripoli and Tehran.

Yet as the new round of diplomacy begins, a senior Administration source is forecasting rough times. “There will be breakdowns,” he said. “It’s predictable and people will say we failed. We’ll have to be prepared to take the heat.”

On several levels, the next phase of Middle East peace efforts will be different.

The Parties

Syria, a state almost 10 times the size of Israel, has much more leverage than the Palestine Liberation Organization. Syria and Israel share a strategic border, while the PLO has not even had a reliable front-line position since it was forced to abandon southern Lebanon in 1982.

Also, Syrian President Hafez Assad has an authoritarian hold on power and decision-making, while PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s leadership has been dissipating by challenges from moderate, leftist and Islamic forces.

“The PLO had no bargaining chips and its internal weakness forced it to give in to Israeli demands,” said Talcott Seelye, former U.S. ambassador to Syria. “But Assad, as much as he may now want peace, is in a stronger position to hold out for his terms.”

Unlike the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Assad is also unwilling to take the kind of steps necessary to persuade the Israeli people that he is committed to peace. In 1977, Sadat flew to Israel and addressed the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, a gesture that opened the way for the Camp David peace talks and the return of the Sinai Peninsula.

The Issues

The agenda is theoretically simpler. The centerpiece is a land-for-peace deal that would return the Golan Heights, occupied since 1967, to Syria in exchange for peace and security for Israel. But the swap is far from straightforward.

The Golan is of great strategic value to both Israel and Syria. “It’s not like the Sinai,” the Administration official said. “It’s much harder to use it or develop it as a buffer zone in the way the Sinai was between Egypt and Israel.”

A long history of distrust must also be overcome before Israel returns any territory. For almost 20 years, Syrian gunners perched on the Golan shelled the kibbutzim around the Sea of Galilee below.

The region’s most bitter enemies also fought bloody battles in 1967 and 1973 on the craggy heights. And the Golan is now home to about 15,000 Jewish settlers.

“I don’t think our government can accept the Assad approach and give back all of the Golan Heights,” said former military commander Ori Orr, now chairman of the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and a confidante of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Reflecting a widespread Israeli view, Orr added: “Israel is not ready for such a withdrawal. There is just no trust of Assad here, and it will take a considerable amount of time to develop it.”

The second basis of distrust has been Assad’s use of Lebanon and political surrogates, from Palestinian rejectionists to the Islamic Hezbollah militia, to pressure Israel.

Any deal on the Golan, thus, also must include fairly explicit guarantees about Syria’s long-term regional intentions, notably in Lebanon, where Syria has tens of thousands of troops.

“All the terrorist operations in Lebanon depend on Syria, on Assad personally. . . . Assad may talk peace, but we will look to see what he does in Lebanon to assess whether he can be believed,” Orr said.

The Process

Although Israel is suggesting a three-stage withdrawal over five to eight years, the real scope of the talks is all or nothing--not incremental like the Israel-PLO accord.

“We’re not talking about an interim agreement,” a senior Administration official involved in the process said. “The parties have focused on end results of the negotiations rather than putting it off until later. Syria is insisting on full agreement on the Golan Heights, while Israel is looking for a full peace.”

Whatever the change in Syrian and Israeli leaders’ attitudes toward peace, the process will require a massive shift in public opinion in both countries.

The Mediators

Israel and the PLO managed their own negotiations, first in secret in Oslo, then in public in several venues. The Israelis were quite pleased to have done it themselves. When Christopher was invited to witness the Cairo signing last week, a leading Israeli commentator remarked that “it was a celebratory photo-op adding some rouge to his pale foreign policy.”

Key Israelis would also prefer direct talks with Damascus. For months, Israel sought a secret link, first in contacts between the Israeli and Syrian ambassadors to Washington, then by Israeli and Syrian military strategists meeting in Europe.

But Assad wants Washington drawn in, first to mediate a framework for talks and eventually to guarantee the final terms. American involvement also ultimately would pay off on one of the biggest incentives for Syrian participation: a better relationship with the world’s most powerful country.

Some Israelis also want an American presence. “Without the United States, and Warren Christopher personally, I don’t expect we will make much, if any, progress with Syria,” Yossi Beilin, deputy Israeli foreign minister and the guiding hand of the Oslo link, said this week.

American officials also would prefer direct talks. “It would be better if they would talk between themselves,” the senior Administration official said. “That’s one way to make it enduring. But for better or worse, we are now in the middle of the Syrian-Israeli deal.”

Although the United States would gain politically, economically and militarily from a peace agreement, failure also could be a disaster for the Clinton Administration. This is the first major initiative it is guiding from the start, and it will be unable to blame previous Presidents, if it falls apart.