Hope Revived for Israel-Syria Talks

As Prime Minister Ehud Barak prepared to head to Washington for a hastily arranged summit with President Clinton, speculation was rife in Israel on Sunday about flickerings of life in the moribund Israeli-Syrian peace process.

Last month, the negotiations appeared all but dead after a summit in Switzerland between Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad that not only failed to produce progress but demonstrated, perhaps more clearly than ever, the gulf still separating the Israeli and Syrian positions.

But a flurry of recent diplomatic activity, along with what appeared to be an unusual trial balloon floated by Syria--in the form of a “personal initiative” by Assad’s official biographer--suggested that the process is still stirring, if only barely.

Israeli and U.S. officials have said that Tuesday’s summit, which was announced only Saturday, will focus on ways to accelerate peace moves with the Palestinians. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to a May target date to produce a blueprint for a comprehensive peace accord, followed by a September deadline for the final treaty.

Negotiators for the two sides are holding another round of talks this week near Washington but by all accounts have been making little headway. The White House has said that Clinton, in an effort to push the peace process forward, will meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat nine days after meeting with Barak.

Briefing his Cabinet on Sunday on the eve of his departure, the Israeli leader said that he and Clinton will also discuss Israel’s plan to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon by July and the prospects for peace with Syria. Israeli-Syrian peace talks stalled in January over Syria’s demand that Israel commit itself in advance to a withdrawal from the entire Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War, and Barak’s refusal to do so.

Barak downplayed the chance for a breakthrough, telling reporters he was “not optimistic.”

But he said he expects to hear a detailed report from Clinton on his March 26 summit in Geneva with Assad, which ended without progress after the Syrian leader reiterated his long-held positions on the Golan and said he was not in a hurry to make a deal. Syrian officials have said Assad has now given Clinton answers to several questions the U.S. president asked him to provide during the Geneva talks.

Barak did not mention the proposal floated over the weekend by British journalist Patrick Seale, Assad’s biographer and longtime confidant. Other Israeli officials, however, quickly dismissed the initiative, published Saturday in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, as a nonstarter.

In interviews Sunday with Israeli reporters, Seale denied any official Syrian backing but discussed a plan by which Israel would retain control of the Sea of Galilee but cede to Syria control of the freshwater lake’s northeastern shore, along with the rest of the Golan Heights. The strip along the shore would not have border crossings, and Israelis would be allowed to enter it freely, said Seale, who had made parts of the proposal public previously. Security would be provided by international monitors or officers under United Nations or European auspices, he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy flatly rejected the idea, saying that Israel’s demand for control of the northeastern shore of the lake remains unchanged. Moreover, he said, an initiative put forward by a journalist, even one reported to be close to the enigmatic Assad, is not “the way to make peace.”

“You make peace when you sit and negotiate face to face,” he told Israel Radio. “Telepathy or a fax won’t do, and today I also say, a reporter--even if his name is Seale--won’t do either.”

But other officials and analysts here reacted more positively to the idea, even as they largely dismissed its substance. Significantly, several said, it demonstrates that Assad has not given up on the prospect of peace and is willing to make concessions, including allowing Israel to retain control of the entire Sea of Galilee and renouncing the idea of Syrian police checkpoints around its northeastern shore.

“In the middle of the eulogy . . . the corpse began to move,” columnist Hemi Shalev wrote in Sunday’s Maariv newspaper, in reference to the stalled peace talks and hopes for a renewal.

“Assuming that Seale accurately reflects Assad’s views, it shows that the Syrians are actively thinking about creative solutions, even though it seems that the time for such solutions may have passed,” said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

But Steinberg said the unofficial proposal could also reflect concerns by Assad that Syria might be blamed, by the United States and many others, for fumbling what is widely considered the best chance in years for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

The Syrian leader, who was implicitly criticized by Clinton after the Geneva summit for bringing nothing new to the bargaining table, “may need to show that he is making an effort,” Steinberg said.