Peace Talks Split Israeli Parliament

Upbeat after two days of ice-breaking meetings with Syrian leaders in Washington, Prime Minister Ehud Barak returned home Friday to face a possible rebellion within his own government.

The Israeli leader is scheduled to brief the Cabinet on Sunday about his preliminary round of talks in Washington with the Syrians, which ended Thursday.

Two of Barak’s Cabinet ministers, the heads of small but key factions within the government, are expressing discomfort with the negotiations and warn that they might pull their parties out of the coalition if an accord with Syria includes the return of the strategic Golan Heights. Both ministers, Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party and Natan Sharansky of Israel With Immigration, say they would fight to torpedo such an agreement.

The two leaders met this week to try to coordinate their opposition to a withdrawal from the Golan, a fertile, picturesque plateau that looms over the Sea of Galilee. Israel captured the heights in 1967, and 17,000 Israelis have since settled there. Syria insists on the return of all of the territory.

If the two parties resign from the coalition, the loss of their nine seats would leave Barak’s government with 59 votes, two short of a majority, although it could rely on support from Arab and left-leaning parties outside the coalition.

More significant, though, defections could make it tougher for Barak to win the national referendum he has promised to carry out on any peace deal with Syria.

His peace initiative met with surprisingly tepid support from the parliament on the eve of his departure for Washington. A divided or shrinking Cabinet could make it even more difficult.

Polls indicate that Israelis are about evenly split over whether to trade the Golan Heights for peace.

Levy’s party, which has strong support among Jewish settlers in the West Bank, says it will bolt the coalition if a peace accord leads to the return of the Golan to Syria and the removal of settlers from the area, seemingly an inevitable ingredient of any workable agreement.

“We have agreed that if the agreement will mean tearing down Jewish, legal villages on the Golan--a transfer of those villages [to] some other place . . . we will no longer be a part of this government,” said Yitzhak Rath, an aide to Levy, who is Barak’s housing minister.

Sharansky’s objections are rooted in his view that Syria, a hard-line Arab state with a closed society, is not a stable or trustworthy peace partner.

He argued in an interview Thursday that any Israeli concessions must be proportionate to “the transparency and openness of Syrian society,” and not linked to early warning stations or other security arrangements on the Golan.

A former dissident in the old Soviet Union, Sharansky said he doubts that the talks between Syrian and Israeli negotiators, which are due to resume near Washington in early January, will produce an accord that his party can support. Israel With Immigration’s membership is made up mainly of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and is often hawkish on territorial and security issues.

“I hope very much that the government comes with an agreement that means a real normalization of relations with Syria, over a number of years, and with each Israeli concession linked to Syrian steps toward democracy,” said Sharansky, who is Barak’s interior minister. “But . . . if this agreement means we simply exchange the Golan Heights for an early warning station, I am definitely against it. . . . It will mean leaving the government.”

Sharansky said the party’s views regarding an accord with Syria had formed part of its coalition agreement when Barak put his government together last summer. “Some people say we’re talking about a fantasy,’ Sharansky said. “But I prefer to make serious concessions to a democracy that hates me than to a dictator who loves me.”

A third coalition member, the powerful religious party Shas, appears to be on the fence concerning the Syria issue. The party abstained from a parliament vote Monday on Barak’s initiative with Syria.

President Ezer Weizman, a strong supporter of the peace process, has tried to help Barak win support for his talks with Syria, holding discussions this week with Sharansky, Levy and Shas leader Eli Yishai.

In response, the opposition Likud party sharply criticized Weizman for interfering in political matters. But the outspoken president, who has often used his largely ceremonial post as a platform to promote the peace process, was unrepentant. Issues of peace and war are too critical for the nation’s future to be confused with mere politics, Weizman said.