Reaching for Last Link in a Chain of Peace : Israel-Syria talks in U.S. could lead to a breakthrough

Once again the United States has sent its emissaries to seek peace in the Middle East, pressuring, coaxing, bargaining as a great power should for such an achievement. Once again, American diplomats have succeeded in setting the stage for key international talks.

The goal is an accord between Israel and Syria, which are neighbors and stubborn enemies. On Wednesday, representatives of the two nations will meet at a Maryland resort to hear U.S. ideas for a peace. None has existed since the day Israel declared its independence in 1948.

The formula for the talks will be familiar: American diplomats moving between the two parties, trying to forge an agreement. For Bosnia it worked, but the circumstances will be different here. Israel and Syria are military powerhouses, not Balkan backwaters. At the Bosnian talks in Ohio, the heads of state were present. In the first phase of the Israeli-Syrian talks, the delegates will be below the level of foreign minister.

There can be no peace without the approval of Syrian President Hafez Assad, and he is a rock, known in the Middle East as “the man who waits.” His domestic strength lies in the military, largely run by members of his repressive Alawite Muslim sect. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who arranged the talks through shuttle diplomacy earlier this month, is the latest in a long line of American diplomats who have gone to Damascus, made their pitches to Assad and come away with hopes for peace. Others have failed. This could be the time.

The negotiating plan is to think in wide terms, of a peace that would integrate Syria and Israel in a regional agreement to develop trade and mete out water resources, a critical issue in the Middle East. Israel has now made peace with Egypt and Jordan, plus the Palestinians, and in the last two years has developed contacts with a number of other Arab states. Syria and Lebanon are the holdouts, and the latter will do what the former dictates.

The impetus from Israel at this time is, of course, colored by the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an extremist opposed to the peace movement. Rabin’s death leaves the mission in the hands of his old political rival and fellow Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres. The change may prove important to Assad.

For the Syrians, even more than the Israelis, the price of a peace is the Golan Heights, that lofty rise that separates the two countries and that provided the Syrians with a deadly artillery platform until it was seized by the Israelis in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Rabin was prepared to return the Golan to Syria despite the opposition of 16,000 Jewish settlers on the heights, but the old general wanted a tripwire in return: early-warning ground stations that would expose any Syrian attack. No deal, Assad’s regime said. Peace had to mean return of the Golan Heights as sovereign Syrian territory.

In recent comments, Peres appears ready to drop that condition. He told an Israeli newspaper that Israel would have to fully leave the heights to achieve peace. And he pointed to the late Menachem Begin, his old political enemy, who gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in return for peace in 1979. “Look what Begin paid,” Peres said. “And he was supposed to be the toughest.”

This week’s talks could lead eventually to a Syrian deal, one long sought by the peacemakers.