Hard Realities Temper Hopes for Israel-Syria Pact

Shortly before the surprise announcement that Israel and Syria have agreed to resume high-stakes peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reminisced about his days as a soldier joining in the battle to seize the Golan Heights from Syria. All his life, he said, he has defended the safety of Israel.

“I would never sign an agreement that would not, to the best of my judgment, strengthen the security of Israel,” Barak declared.

Now Barak must make that case to an Israeli public becoming painfully aware that peace with Syria would mean losing the Golan Heights, a fertile and picturesque volcanic plateau captured in 1967 that many Israelis hold dear.

Speaking to a meeting of his Labor Party on Thursday, Barak said there is a “realistic possibility” of reaching agreement with both Syrian President Hafez Assad and Syria’s client state, Lebanon, “within a matter of months.”

“We are truly at an historic moment,” Barak said of the top-level negotiations that will start next week in Washington after a stalemate of more than 3 1/2 years.

But the euphoria that accompanied Wednesday’s announcement on the upcoming talks was tempered Thursday by hard realities: Right-wing politicians and Golan settlers mobilized against “surrender” to Syria, Israeli warplanes bombed targets in southern Lebanon, and several members of Barak’s government sounded notes of caution.

“We are only at the beginning of these negotiations,” Haim Ramon, a senior minister in Barak’s Cabinet who is a frequent participant in peace talks, told Israeli radio. “We are far from the end and very far from a happy end. . . . It is not going to be an easy ride. There will be ups and downs and maybe more downs than ups.”

Still, the breakthrough holds remarkable promise for the most comprehensive regional peace between Israel and the Arab world in the half a century since Israel was created.

Syria has stood out in the Arab world as Israel’s most implacable enemy. Syria and Lebanon are the only neighbors to remain in a formal state of war with the Jewish state. Twenty years ago, Egypt recognized Israel; Jordan, under the late King Hussein, followed suit in 1994. Even the Palestinians, in direct competition with Israel for a disputed homeland, signed an interim agreement in 1993.

But Syria has held out, given refuge to terrorist groups bent on destroying Israel and refused to acknowledge anything more than a “Zionist entity” to the southwest. Assad was the region’s only no-show at the funeral of Morocco’s King Hassan II this year, reportedly because he didn’t want to risk having to shake Barak’s hand.

“Syria is the key to comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, a veteran of peace talks, said Thursday. “If we have peace with Syria, . . . then the immediate strategic threat to Israel will no longer be there. We can open the next chapter in our history, the chapter of normalcy.”

The likely broad guidelines of any agreement between Israel and Syria have been widely reported here. Based on the assessments of government officials and past participants in negotiations with Syria, they shape up like this:

* Israel is willing to withdraw from most of the Golan Heights; Syria wants the entire region. Disagreement remains especially over an area along the eastern edge of the Sea of Galilee, centering on the border at the time Israel invaded in 1967 and an old international one. Israel wants to retain full control of the Sea of Galilee as a water source. “They [the Syrians] won’t be able to see the lake,” insisted one Israeli government official close to the talks.

* In exchange for its withdrawal, Israel is demanding a series of security guarantees, including warning stations on Mt. Hermon, the tallest peak in the Golan, and a pullback of Syrian troops and tanks. An international peacekeeping force is likely. The Syrians have reportedly agreed to some of these elements in past talks, notably in secret, back-channel discussions during the previous government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* The two countries will “normalize” relations, including the establishment of a diplomatic mission at an as-yet-to-be determined level.

Barak faces enormous hurdles both in negotiating a deal with Assad and in selling the package at home. He seemed to have both audiences in mind when he spoke, despite a bad case of the flu, to Thursday’s Labor meeting.

Assad, he said, was a bitter adversary on the battlefield and will be a harsh opponent at the negotiating table, in spirit, at least. “But he is the historic leader of the Syrian people,” Barak said, “and only he can make a peace of the brave with us . . . and only he can put an end to the tragedy in Lebanon.”

Barak’s vow to withdraw Israeli troops next summer from southern Lebanon, where they have waged a war of attrition for nearly two decades against Syrian-backed guerrillas, may have moved Assad closer to talks with Israel. A unilateral withdrawal by Israel could weaken Assad’s influence in Lebanon.

To Jewish settlers who live in the Golan and who stand to lose their homes and businesses, Barak said Israel will always be indebted to their “moral strength and virtue,” and he praised their pioneering spirit of enterprise and struggle. They, in turn, vowed to resist. “We will not budge,” proclaimed one.

Israel captured the Golan in 1967, driving out thousands of Syrians and Druze, and then annexed the land in 1981. Today it is home to Israel’s best wineries, cattle ranches, orchards and dairy farms, most of which presumably would be forfeited or moved.

Barak is obliged to hold a referendum among Israeli voters for final approval of any agreement he reaches with Syria. Golan settlers voted by a large margin for Barak in elections last May, knowing full well that he favored “territorial compromise” in exchange for peace with Syria.

But many Israelis, including some who support transferring West Bank land to the Palestinians, are loath to lose the Golan. A poll released Thursday, and taken before this week’s developments, indicated that while about 25% oppose existing peace treaties with the Palestinians, a whopping three-quarters of those polled oppose a full peace with Syria if it means withdrawing from the Golan.

Barak told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper Thursday that he is confident of a “sweeping and decisive” victory in the referendum because his imprimatur on the deal, given his own credentials as a military man, will convince a dubious public that Israel’s safety won’t be jeopardized.

A senior Israeli army commander recently named Syria as the greatest immediate threat to Israel--more immediate than even Iran--because of its possession of hundreds of Scud missiles. Defense against such missiles, army intelligence experts say, depends less on retaining the strategic heights of the Golan, which loom over northern Israel, and more on surveillance and early-warning technology.

“No hill,” noted Justice Minister Beilin, “is going to secure Israel.”