The Clock Is Ticking on Syrian-Israeli Peace : Middle East: External factors, including U.S. interests, suggest a spring deadline.

The meeting of the Israeli and Syrian military chiefs of staff in Washington last week gives hope that these long-stalled negotiations may accelerate, although each side remains deeply suspicious of the other. Syria, like Israel, wants assurances that a peace agreement will protect its interests better than the status quo of “no peace/no war.”

An agreement between these two neighbors would have positive repercussions first of all in Lebanon, which is awaiting its own negotiations with Israel. The presence of Israeli troops in southern Lebanon has led Syria to condone the military actions there by Iran’s protege, the Hezbollah militia. Success in the Syrian-Israeli talks, followed by an agreement with Lebanon involving withdrawal of Israeli troops, could affect Iran’s overall position in the region, including its poisonous stance toward Israel.

The first chiefs of staff meeting last December ended with the Syrian side unhappy at having been challenged to accept too many specific commitments, including disarmament and a cutback in military personnel. The Syrians had arrived with their offer of “full peace,” apparently expecting the discussion to focus on the issue of Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. The Syrians reiterated their position that this withdrawal must be total. Israel gave no commitment to withdraw, pressing for a more precise Syrian definition of the “full peace” offer, which is understandable given the history of Syrian attacks on the Egyptian, PLO and Jordanian agreements with Israel.

The political calendar, in Israel and to a lesser extent in our own country, places an outer limit of next spring before these bilateral talks either succeed or are suspended. President Clinton may remain just as involved as he has been to date, but the perceptions in Israel and Syria are that he will have less time to spare during our election year. That perception could inhibit their own initiatives in the negotiations. The present government of Israel, facing its own elections next year, will probably suspend the talks if no clear-cut agreement has been reached by March or April.

Some in Israel argue that their chief of staff is being put into an impossibly politicized position in these meetings, since the Israeli political leadership has not articulated a clear policy on withdrawal. That said, while both Israel and Syria would benefit from a peace agreement, neither feels acute pressure to reach it.

Obviously, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would like to present himself and his party to the electorate next year as having made peace with the only holdout among the front-line Arab states. But Rabin knows that his negotiators may not get enough specifics from Syria on the nature of peace to persuade the Israeli public that withdrawal is worth the price of peace. Some Israelis see keeping settlements on the Golan as more important than peace with Syria. Overall, the turbulent political scene will present Rabin with a complicated calculation on whether to press on with the talks.

Similarly, Syria faces no major pressure to cut a deal in the coming months. The leadership acts as though unimpressed by the argument that it will be possible to reach an agreement with Rabin’s government but not with the Likud coalition should it come to power next year. Nor does Syria feel pressed by economic incentives. Recent years of good harvests, steady domestic oil production and some assistance from Arabian Peninsula oil-producing states have made continuation of the status quo more acceptable to the Syrian citizen than outsiders tend to assume.

Some observers question whether Syria really wants peace, doubting that the present regime could survive it. It is legitimate to ask whether an authoritarian regime whose authority has long been legitimized by an external enemy can survive the sea change of peace. But President Hafez Assad’s hold on power is not an issue. That he sent his military chief of staff to the dialogue in Washington itself justifies pressing ahead.

Twenty-two years have passed since the last Arab-Israeli war, and there is no new war on the horizon. U.S. diplomacy and technology have a key role to play in the coming weeks and months. These talks hold out the prospect that the military commanders of both countries will find in the available surveillance technologies of satellites and sensors alternative nonviolent ways to ensure their countries’ respective security needs. If so, the prospects for peace may transcend politics.