The secret talks between Israel and Syria

What happened?

In a surprise announcement, Israel and Syria revealed last week that they have been holding secret peace negotiations to return the Golan Heights to the Arab nation. Although the parties gave no details of the negotiations, which are being conducted through Turkish intermediaries, each side’s demands are well established. Syria wants Israel to return the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel captured in 1967, and Israel wants Syria to end support for Hamas and Hezbollah and to distance itself from Iran. Israel must be “willing to make the most painful concessions,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a closed session of Parliament. “I know it’s hard to hear.” Polls show that two-thirds of Israelis oppose giving up the Golan, which is home to 18,000 Israelis and a thriving tourist industry.

News of the negotiations came as an Israeli court heard withering evidence in its investigation of bribery allegations against Olmert. An American businessman testified that he gave Olmert $150,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes when Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem. “Olmert, who is up to his neck in investigations, has no moral or public mandate to conduct fateful negotiations on Israel’s future,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister. Netanyahu said that if his Likud Party won office again, it would not be bound by any agreement signed by Olmert.

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What the editorials said

Israel’s willingness to negotiate with a hostile regime demonstrates the folly of President Bush’s Middle East policy, said The New York Times. Just two weeks ago, Bush compared negotiating with supporters of terrorism to appeasing the Nazis. Israel knows better than any nation that Syria is a bad actor, yet the Israelis also know that it’s in their self-interest to test Syria’s willingness to forge a mutually beneficial deal. It’s a pity Bush never understood this.

Israel’s risk could have an enormous payoff, said The Dallas Morning News. Without Syria’s military and financial support, Hezbollah simply can’t pose a threat to Israel from its base in Lebanon. In the longer term, peace between Syria and Israel would mean a realignment of the Middle East that would leave Iran without any allies in the region. To increase Syria’s willingness to make such a deal, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Egypt should promise Syria full financial and strategic support. “It’s time to give the stick a rest and try sending Damascus a carrot or two.”

What the columnists said

Even if these negotiations ultimately fail, said Barbara Slavin in the Los Angeles Times, they mark a major step forward for the Middle East. “Instead of complaining about a lack of U.S. leadership (or evenhandedness), the region is trying to solve problems on its own.” Ultimately, the U.S. will still have to get involved. But the fact that Syria and Israel decided not to sit around and wait for us, and that Turkey stepped in to act as a mediator, is an unexpected benefit of Bush’s “policy of neglect.”

Bush hasn’t been neglecting the Middle East, said Louis René Beres and Zalman Shoval in The Christian Science Monitor. He’s been pursuing the only strategy that has a chance of success: isolating Syria until it cracks. Giving up the Golan Heights now won’t achieve that goal. If Syria controlled the Golan, Israel’s enemies would use it to mass tanks, missiles, and aircraft that could penetrate Israel’s defenses with impunity. Genuine peace is a worthy goal. “But the path to such peace can never be based on one-sided territorial surrender.”

Even if Olmert is sincere about the peace talks, said Sami Moubayed in Washingtonpost.com, he does not have the political authority to accomplish his goal. Nor can Turkey fill the shoes of the United States as the only credible arbiter of any agreement. “At this stage, and in what remains of the Bush administration, the Americans are simply uninterested in a Syrian-Israeli peace.” Negotiations are necessary, but to work, they’ll have to wait for new leadership in Israel and America.

What next?

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak this week became the highest-ranking official to demand Olmert’s resignation, saying he would attempt to force Olmert out if necessary. “Olmert is living on borrowed time,” said Gil Hoffman in The Jerusalem Post. The talks he began with Syria will have to be concluded, or abandoned, by his successor.