Peace between Syria and Israel is a prerequisite for peace in the Mideast

The sudden surge in talks about resuming Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations is suspect because there is little to indicate that Israel is willing to meet the minimum requirement for peace: withdrawal from Syria’s Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears to be finding a deviation from his political troubles at home with the renewed focus on Syria.The US is talking in favour of Syrian-Israeli negotiations, but that should be seen as Washington’s need to show progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks by somehow diluting Syrian reservations.
There is a conviction among many that the US is posturing without really meaning to encourage Syrian-Israeli talks.
Then there is the Lebanese angle. The crisis in Lebanon will never be solved as long as Syria and Israel do not make peace.
Even at that, there is no assurance that the Lebanese parties would be willing to make peace if Syria shifts its position after making peace with Israel.At the same time, there is a strong camp within the Israeli body politic in favour of peace with Syria.
That camp includes President Shimon Peres who has said that if Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious about reaching peace with Israel, he should either visit occupied Jerusalem or invite the Israeli prime minister to Damascus for talks.
Peres is citing the example of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat who visited occupied Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset.
Had Sadat not done so, there would not have been Israeli-Egyptian peace, Peres argues.
Notwithstanding all these, reports in the Europe-based Arabic press say that peace negotiations between Israel and Syria could resume as early as next week.
The reports quoted Syrian officials as saying that the goal of the negotiations was to find an encounter point for the two sides.
“When we say that the negotiations are serious, we mean that the other side is committing to a full withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders,” said an unidentified Syrian official.That is precisely the sticking point, since Israel is not willing to relinquish the Golan Heights it occupied in the 1967 war.
The border that Syria is talking about includes a small strip of land on the shores of Lake Tiberias that Israel occupied in 1948 in violation of the UN resolution that specified the borders of the Jewish state.
The Syrians say that in 1995, the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin committed himself, to the American administration, to an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967.
Israel has never agreed to this interpretation.Olmert has also denied that he had committed to withdrawing from the occupied Golan Heights as a precondition set by Syria for renewing peace negotiations.
The source of scepticism over prospects for genuine Israeli-Syrian negotiations is the reality that no Israeli government would be ready to give up the Golan Heights, which accounts for the bulk of Israel’s water sources. With the deep divide between the Syrian demand for June 4, 1967, borders and Israel’s refusal to give up the Golan, the scepticism is all the more powerful.
However, recent reports indicate that the two sides have made progress.According to the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, a recent round of talks between the two sides, under Turkish mediation, was aimed, among other things, at setting a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, borders.Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem told the newspaper: “There will not be a situation in which Syria advances even one step (in the peace process) without a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
This is not a prerequisite; it is our right.
”According to a report in the Arabic daily Al Sharq Al Awsat, Syria has not yet been asked to break its alliance with Iran and Tehran had expressed understanding with the negotiations and that Iran itself was “holding talks with other sources”.
The paper also reported “significant progress” in the Syria-Israel diplomatic negotiations and that the two sides were on the verge of transition to direct talks, but that such discussions were dependent on regional and political conditions.
The report says that there had already been agreements concerning the main principles of security arrangements, water, borders and normalisation.
He said that Israel agreed that the security arrangements between the two sides would be implemented temporarily until trust is built between the two sides.Burying scepticism, one hopes that there is substance in these assertions. Peace between Syria and Israel is a prerequisite for peace in the Middle East.