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MIDEAST: Empty Talk Begins Over New Talks

Analysis by Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jun 25 2007 (IPS) - Israel and Syria are again feeling each other out about the possibility of renewing peace talks, as they did last year. But, again, it’s not clear both sides really want to get to the negotiating table. The United States, it seems, would prefer they didn’t.

It all started earlier this month with reports, later confirmed by officials, that Israel had sent messages to Damascus via a third party regarding the possibility of renewing peace negotiations. The daily Yediot Ahronoth reported that Israel had signalled a willingness to cede the Golan Heights as part of a peace deal in which Damascus would agree to distance itself from Iran and end its support for Hezbollah and for Hamas.

Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defence minister and army chief, said the government should try to gauge, via secret channels, whether Syrian President Bashar Assad was inclined to renewing peace talks. And Yediot Ahronoth reported further that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had told U.S. President George W. Bush, back in April, that he had decided to check the possibility of renewing talks with Damascus after it became clear to him that the chances of progress on the Palestinian track were remote.

The response from Damascus has been mixed. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said his government was “more than ready” to renew talks with Israel. “If the Israelis decide to renew the negotiations, they will find a willing partner,” he said.

Vice President Farouk a-Shara, however, was distinctly downbeat, saying the renewal of talks lacked U.S. backing. “We are not optimistic,” he said. “The American president does not want peace between Israel and Syria.”

A-Shara attended talks in the U.S. with then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in 2000, but the negotiations broke down and have never resumed. It is commonly accepted in Israel that the price of an agreement with Syria is returning the Golan Heights, a strategic range captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Israel, for its part, would certainly demand stringent security arrangements, including a deep demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the border.

A year ago, it was Syria making the overtures and Israel playing hard-to-get. Back then, Olmert insisted that Syrian peace noises were disingenuous and were an attempt to escape international isolation.

But back then Olmert had just won election and was still unstained by the Lebanese debacle. Hardline Israeli lawmakers, who oppose ceding the Golan to Syria on the grounds that it would compromise the country’s security, accused Olmert, who is under pressure to resign for his handling of the war in Lebanon last summer, of trying to save his political hide. By raising the possibility of talks with Damascus, they said, he is striving to offset the impact of an interim report on the war that found he had failed in his management of the military campaign in Lebanon.

Shlomo Brom doesn’t dismiss this assertion. “Olmert has survived politically so far, but he understands very well that unless he can produce a meaningful success, he is going to disappear come the next election,” says the former chief of strategic planning in the Israeli military and now a senior research associate at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

“The situation on the Palestinian front is grim,” Brom told IPS. “So the only option left for him is Syria. This explains Olmert’s sudden U-turn on the Syrian front. A year ago Assad’s calls to renew peace talks were met with a cold shoulder by the Prime Minister. I think he is more serious this time round.”

What has not changed is the U.S. position. In their meeting last week, President Bush told Olmert he was not interested in mediating talks between Israel and Syria, which Bush has included in his “axis of evil” along with Iran and North Korea.

Quizzed recently about a possible renewal of Israel-Syria talks, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said it was “up to Israel to determine how it’s going to conduct its diplomatic relations with Syria or with any other country.”

But Casey’s next sentence left little room for doubt as to what the U.S. expected of Israel: “We would certainly note that with respect to Syria, Syria has not to date taken any of the kind of positive steps that we would like to see happen with respect to Lebanon, with respect to its support for Palestinian rejectionist groups, with regard to the need to police its borders with Iraq to prevent foreign fighters from moving across. And certainly, we think that would be something that Israel would like to consider.”

Brom says the U.S. position has left him “pessimistic” about the prospects of any progress on the Syrian track. “Assad doesn’t want peace with Israel for the sake of peace with Israel,” he says. “The real prize for him is relations with the U.S. So he won’t really negotiate unless Israel can deliver the U.S. After Olmert’s visit to Washington last week, it’s clear to Assad that Olmert can’t deliver. Olmert is more willing than he was in the past, but the U.S. is not.”

 
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