Israel and Syria have agreed to resume direct peace talks next week, raising the prospect of a reconciliation between two foes who have fought several wars and remained isolated from each other for decades despite their shared border.
President Clinton announced the agreement at a news conference Wednesday, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa will travel to Washington to begin the long-awaited negotiations.
Syria is the last major Arab country bordering the Jewish state that has not been at least moving toward peace with Israel. Israel and the Palestinians have been negotiating, while Egypt and Jordan came to terms with Israel years ago.
Clinton appeared delighted with the breakthrough, which holds the potential for ending one of the century’s most bitter conflicts, the Arab-Israeli struggle.
“We have a truly historic opportunity now,” Clinton said. “With a comprehensive peace, Israel will live in a safe, secure and recognized border for the first time in its history.”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is in the Middle East, apparently sealed the deal in a meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad on Tuesday. Clinton spoke to Barak and Assad on Wednesday.
Clinton has made an enormous personal investment in Mideast peace throughout his presidency and he vowed to continue doing so in coming weeks and months.
“I will spare neither time nor effort in pursuit of that goal,” Clinton said. “Peace has long been within our sight. Today it is within our grasp, and we must seize it.”
Syria, a relatively closed society and a former client of the Soviet Union, has long been one of Israel’s strongest foes. Even while Egypt and Jordan were toning down their rhetoric and making informal contacts with Israel at various points, Syria and Israel have remained openly hostile.
The physical focus of the Israel-Syria conflict is the Golan Heights, a majestic, 450-square-mile plateau with enormous strategic significance because it overlooks large parts of both countries. Israel captured the Golan from Syria in 1967, and it is now dotted with 32 Jewish settlements.
Israel and Syria began talks in 1993 under former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the negotiations broke off in 1996 when Syria refused to condemn a series of suicide bus bombings in Israel.
When Barak was elected last summer, he made clear his desire to reopen negotiations immediately with the Palestinians and Syria. The Palestinian talks began right away, and the two sides are hoping to reach a preliminary peace deal by February.
But Barak and Assad disagreed on a starting point for their negotiations, specifically whether Israel had already agreed to withdraw from the Golan. It was not clear Wednesday how that sticking point was resolved, but the unexpected resumption was no less dramatic.
“The significance is enormous,” said Tom Smerling, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, a peace-oriented think tank. “There are only a tiny handful of people from these two nations who have ever spoken to someone from the other nation. They have been in almost total isolation from each other.
“That makes negotiations quite difficult, and also quite fascinating.”
Next week’s meeting between Barak and Sharaa will be the highest-level meeting ever between the two countries. In the earlier talks, face-to-face sessions were limited to ambassadors and technical teams.
In Israel, many assumed the announcement means a final deal is imminent and Israel is about to withdraw from the Golan. Assad would not have agreed to talks without an Israeli commitment to pull back, these observers speculated.
“This is a very good and important sign,” said Eyal Zisser, an expert on Syria at Tel Aviv University. “It wasn’t that Syria was resisting a face-to-face meeting, simply that they wanted something in return, and they probably got it. What they wanted was for Israel to commit to a withdrawal.”
Yet tough issues could still blow up the talks.
The precise borders of any withdrawal still must be determined, as well as what sort of early-warning security outposts Israel will be permitted. Israel also wants guarantees on its water supply, because tributaries from the Golan flow into the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main reservoir.
Barak was asked at a news conference in Israel on Wednesday, before the agreement was announced, whether security outposts could guarantee Israel’s security.
Barak noted that as a soldier he participated in Israel’s capture of the Golan, so he would not give it away lightly.
“I will not sign any agreement that will not to the best of my judgment strengthen Israel rather than weaken it,” Barak said. “I am realistic enough to know that painful compromises will be needed in order to achieve peace.”
Even if Barak and Assad initial a treaty, that would not be the end of the story. Barak promised during his election campaign to place any final peace treaty before voters in a referendum, and its passage is far from assured.
Meanwhile, some of the Golan Heights’ 18,000 Israeli residents have organized an opposition campaign and say they will fight all the way to Washington, where they believe Congress will have to foot a huge bill to pay for the withdrawal.
“I have no doubt it will lead to nothing,” said Avi Zeira, a board member of the Golan Residents Committee. “Even within parliament and his own coalition, Barak doesn’t have the support for this move. Bringing Syria back to the Sea of Galilee will not be accepted by the Israeli people. It’s a matter of national pride.”
Other Golan settlers, though, have signaled a greater willingness to depart if that is the price of peace. And if a deal is reached, the payoff for Israel could be dramatic.
An immediate treaty between Israel and Lebanon would almost certainly follow because Lebanon is under Syrian control. That would shut down the last active battlefront in the Mideast, in which Hezbollah guerrillas fight it out with Israeli soldiers and their proxies, the South Lebanese Army.
Other countries are also likely to follow Syria’s lead.
“There is every reason to believe that if Syria signs a peace agreement with Israel, up to 10 North African and (Persian) Gulf states would follow suit in short order,” Smerling said. “This would be a transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict as we have known it. It would effectively end the Arab-Israeli war.”
Many Mideast experts believe the next few months present a narrow window in which the chances of peace are unusually good. Barak’s mandate to make compromises for peace could sour quickly, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is under pressure from his people to show results.
As for Assad, he is 69 years old, and many believe he wants to make peace with Israel before leaving the stage. He was defense minister when Syria lost the Golan, and regaining it would be a personal triumph. And, of course, a peace treaty could mean an infusion of money and better ties with the United States, now that his old patron the Soviet Union is gone.
U.S. officials said Wednesday that they were sure they had a breakthrough after Albright’s meeting with Assad on Tuesday. Albright said she was “pleasantly surprised” and went directly to the U.S. ambassador’s home and made a secure call to Clinton.
Wednesday’s announcement continued an up-and-down period for Clinton in foreign affairs.
A landmark government has been created in Northern Ireland–site of another long-running conflict–for which all sides credit Clinton envoy George Mitchell. But Clinton also suffered a stinging setback when protesters disrupted trade talks in Seattle and a hoped-for agreement eluded the attending countries.
At Clinton’s news conference Wednesday, he discussed a series of other foreign policy crises. As his domestic power wanes during his final year in office, Clinton is likely to pay increasing attention to foreign matters.
The news conference hinted at that. Clinton again urged Russia to halt its onslaught in Chechnya, which is causing numerous civilian deaths but which the United States seems powerless to stop.
“I have never said they weren’t right to want to do something to the Chechen rebels,” Clinton said. “But I don’t think the strategy will work, and therefore it will be expensive, costly and politically damaging internally to them.”
And Clinton gave a long answer to a question about the Seattle trade talks, insisting the chaotic demonstrations over labor and environmental issues were not the reason for the talks’ failure.
He said, “It’s very important that you understand that there were real differences that we thought we could bridge–unrelated to labor and the environment–which we couldn’t and which I think would have been clearer but for the backdrop of the demonstrations in Seattle over these other issues.”
