Rabin Offers Plan for Partial Golan Pullback

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, seeking to break the prolonged stalemate in peace negotiations with Syria, put forward a plan Thursday for an immediate but limited Israeli pullback in the Golan Heights in a test of Syria’s willingness to live in peace with the Jewish state.

Rabin said Israel would then want, as part of that test, a three-year period to develop diplomatic relations and other ties before proceeding with a more substantial but phased withdrawal from the region.

Although Syria has rejected with disdain all Israeli offers of a phased or partial withdrawal during nearly three years of talks, officials here stressed that the new proposal was an opening position and would improve significantly in the give and take of negotiations.

Immigration Minister Yair Tsaban of the leftist Meretz Party described Rabin’s offer as the most far-reaching Israel has made. Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general and Rabin confidant, added, “This is indeed the opening Israeli position.”

“We are on the very verge of actual negotiations,” Ben-Eliezer said following a special Cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv. “We are just waiting for (U.S. Secretary of State Warren) Christopher to come to the region, and determining the positions of both sides so that actual negotiations will begin.”

Discussions with Syria are scheduled to resume in a week, when Christopher arrives for what Israelis hope will be an intensive shuttle between Jerusalem and the Syrian capital of Damascus. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he hopes agreement will be reached during the shuttle on Cabinet-level negotiations brokered by the United States.

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A treaty with Syria is considered the final and essential element of Israel’s search for peace with its Arab neighbors. Despite progress with the Palestinians and Jordan over the past year, Israel will have succeeded in securing its position in the Middle East and in building a strategic buffer against the advance of militant Islam only when it has settled with Syria.

Farouk Shareh, Syria’s foreign minister, said in a Dutch television interview rebroadcast in Israel on Thursday evening that his country still wants a full withdrawal, in return for which it is ready for “a full and warm peace . . . even this year.”

But he criticized the Rabin proposal. “He (Rabin) spoke about the withdrawal within three years. . . . But we think from a realistic point of view, from a logistical point of view and because of the small size of the Golan Heights, there is no need for a long period to conclude the withdrawal,” Shareh said.

Rabin, however, stopped well short of meeting this demand. Outlining the proposal after days of press speculation and his own hints, he emphasized the shallowness of the initial pullback in the Golan, perhaps without the removal of any of the Israeli settlements there, the “testing period of three years” and then a phased withdrawal to borders still to be negotiated.

But Israeli officials, commenting on the flexibility of the new proposal, suggested that all elements--the extent of withdrawal, the timetable, the security guarantees, the criteria for “full normalization” of relations--were negotiable.

Rabin, one senior official noted, “had not said no to total withdrawal and, in fact, had implied that our settlements on the Golan would have to be removed in later stages.” Another said, “The vast majority of the Golan will go back--that is now clear to all.”

“In any case, it’s a sign that the Israeli government is sending messages and I think a very pragmatic approach to the Syrian side,” Tsaban commented after the Cabinet meeting, “and we are now (awaiting) what will be the response of the Syrian side.”

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Rabin was quickly engulfed in protests--from Israeli settlers in the Golan, from the right-wing opposition and, most ominously, from hawks within his own Labor Party who said they would fight to retain the region even if it brought down the present government.

“We are against decisions that in my opinion endanger the survival of the state of Israel,” said Avigdor Kahalani, a Labor member of the Knesset, or Parliament, and a retired general who fought in the Golan, warning against any retreat from the territory.

Seven Labor members of the Knesset said they would support legislation requiring 70 of the 120 members of Parliament and then 65% of voters in a national referendum to endorse any significant withdrawal from the Golan, which Israel effectively annexed in 1981.

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Hagai Merom, a leader of the Labor caucus in the Knesset, said this opposition would seriously undermine Rabin’s ability to negotiate.

“The Syrians will come and say to the prime minister, ‘Look, you are shackled--you don’t even have a majority in the Knesset. Even in your own party, there are members who do not accept the possibility that you can pass such a proposal,’ ” Merom said.

Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of the Likud Party, convened a meeting of opposition parties and forced the Knesset’s recall from its summer recess to debate the issue next week.

“We want peace with Syria, but peace with the Golan Heights, not peace without it,” Netanyahu said. “What has kept the peace between us and Syria in the Golan Heights over past years is that we are holding Damascus with an iron clamp: The cannon and tanks of Israeli forces are within spitting distance of Damascus. This is what keeps the peace, and the citizens of Israel do not want to abandon it.”

Israeli settlers in the region accused Rabin of secretly agreeing to withdraw over the three years from all of the strategic plateau. They asserted that Israel is planning to dismantle 25 settlements in the first stage of the withdrawal and the remaining eight in the three years that follow. About 13,500 Israelis live in the region.

“The negotiations between Syria and Israel are in the most advanced stages . . . and a breakthrough is expected in the very near future,” the Golan Settlers Committee said. The settlers are planning an emergency meeting Saturday night to rally opposition to any withdrawal that brings dismantling of their communities.

Rabin replied that he was not committed to any final borders. “We have no agreement with the Syrians on the line we will reach at the end of negotiations,” he declared in a statement.

Ministers said Rabin was deliberately vague on whether the eventual withdrawal might be determined from the beginning--as in the 1979 treaty in which Israel gave up the Sinai for peace with Egypt--or would be subject to negotiations after peaceful relations were established.

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But Environment Minister Yossi Sarid expressed doubt that Syria would conclude an agreement without knowing the final borders.

“Without determining from the beginning the final line of withdrawal the whole process will be impossible,” he said, but added that an agreement involving a “painful withdrawal” could be reached with Syria before the end of the year.