Back to 1967, and Put It in Writing

The indefinite postponement of the third round of talks between Syria and Israel, due to have begun on Wednesday, may prove simply a temporary obstacle on the road to a historic agreement, the first crisis in talks formally renewed in December after a freeze in public diplomacy lasting almost four years.

Yet whether Syrians and Israelis return to the table or not, the action has exposed a fault line in the talks that many had assumed to have been resolved by the effective diplomacy of President Clinton in the months since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s installation last summer. That fault line is whether Israel is prepared, in the context of a peace agreement with Syria, to say it will withdraw to the June 4, 1967, border.

According to a source with intimate access to Syrian political and security echelons, Syria has viewed the diplomacy of the last months as a three-stage process. During back-channel talks conducted by Clinton, Syrian President Hafez Assad received, through Clinton, Barak’s reaffirmation of the “deposit”: an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the June 1967 border if all Israeli security and normalization concerns were satisfied. This conditional promise had been conveyed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the summer of 1994.

According to these same sources, Barak completed Stage 2 when he made a verbal reaffirmation, in Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh’s presence in Washington in December, of the Rabin “deposit.”

The Syrian delegation returned to the U.S. in January expecting Barak’s performance on Stage 3, a written commitment to withdraw to June 1967 boundaries if Israeli conditions on other aspects of the talks were met. And this is where things began to break down.

Syria, according to a well-informed source, “wanted to get at Shepherdstown a written commitment from Barak. . . . Barak insinuated that he would do it, but he didn’t. The Syrians believe that Barak slowed down discussions on the border issue while trying to push fast” on normalization and security.

“In the back of their minds,” noted this source, who is close to Syrian security elements, “the Syrians are afraid that Barak will change his mind and not” withdraw, even if the other conditions are met.

During the entire week at Shepherdstown, Barak and Shareh met only twice, for less than 90 minutes altogether, and always in the presence of an American. According to the Syrians, Barak was prepared to make a written commitment to withdraw to the international border, an offer Syria rejected.

The international border was fixed in 1923 by the British and French, who then ruled Palestine and Syria respectively. Important water sources, including the Sea of Galilee, were placed under exclusive British, and then, after 1948, Israeli sovereignty. On June 4, 1967, the de facto border between the two antagonists was--except for a 12-kilometer stretch--west of the 1923 line, including a presence on the Galilee shore itself, and thus more favorable to Syria.

Barak’s failure to make a written acknowledgment of Israel’s readiness to withdraw to the June 1967 line kept the delegations, which had split into four committees--borders, security, normalization and water--from making any substantive progress beyond what years of diplomacy had already accomplished.

Syrian concerns about Barak’s wariness are both substantive and symbolic. Just as Americans and North Vietnamese argued for weeks about the shape of the table around which they would sit at the Paris peace talks, so too Israelis and Syrians, whatever understandings they have already reached through the Americans, continue to battle for the right to control the negotiating agenda.

Syria believes that it already has shown its cards--most notably on its commitment to normalization--and, first at Shepherdstown and now by its “reassessment,” Damascus has telegraphed a refusal to engage in further substantive talks until the border situation is settled unambiguously.

Since the Shepherdstown round broke up, the release in Israel of elements of the American draft treaty have not only heightened Syrian suspicions about Barak’s commitment to June 1967 borders but also, according to a Syrian source, raised questions in Assad’s ruling clique about Assad’s claims to have won, via the U.S., an Israeli promise of complete withdrawal, the basic working assumption that led to the renewal of the talks in December.

“The Syrian security services are tightening the screws on Assad,” the source explained. “There is a lot of mistrust now. Assad has to answer to somebody too.”

Despite the current sense of crisis and immobility, Syria continues to be sanguine about the prospects for success. Assad, according to a knowledgeable source, believes that he is in less need of an agreement than his American and Israeli counterparts.

“Syria feels that it has the upper hand, that Barak and Clinton are desperate for an agreement by summer,” continued the source. Because of Barak’s self-declared intention to leave Lebanon, with Syrian agreement, by July, a date he has recently hinted may even be advanced, “Syria feels that it can squeeze him more.”

Clinton is viewed as even more anxious for an agreement by summer, an intention Assad believes he can exploit for his own benefit.

Eventually, Syria believes, Clinton will “put the screws to the Israeli leader.”

Assad, who has demonstrated that he will not make an agreement until he is forced, is said to be in no hurry to see Clinton perform his magic on Barak.

Nevertheless, Assad has mounting domestic concerns of his own. Summer is a critical threshold for both Barak and Clinton--one that Syrian proponents and opponents of the talks alike believe will produce an Israeli-Syrian treaty.

“At the beginning of June,” promised a source close to the Assad regime, “there will be a signed deal, no matter what you see today.”