Could Israel-Syria Be Next on Peace Agenda?

JERUSALEM — With Israel’s pullback from the West Bank city of Hebron at long last complete, U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East are likely to turn toward Damascus and an attempt to persuade Israel and Syria to resume their aborted peace talks.

But while a peace treaty between Israel and Syria would have a profound effect on the stability of the region--and the chances for a comprehensive Middle East peace--the recalcitrant words emanating from the two capitals last week gave little reason for hope.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted Saturday in the French newspaper Le Figaro as saying he would never consider giving up the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau that is at the heart of any discussion between the two sides. Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War.

“We must keep the Golan for strategic, historical and economic reasons,” Netanyahu said.

Syria made similarly stubborn statements. On Friday, the day that Israel carried out its long-overdue redeployment from Hebron, ceding most of the city to Palestinian rule, the official Syrian newspaper said there was nothing new to coax Syria back to the bargaining table.

Israel and Syria have held sporadic peace talks since 1991, but the negotiations broke off last spring and have yet to resume.

“In light of the current practices of the Netanyahu government, which is rejecting the principle of withdrawal from the Golan, there is nothing that Syria would negotiate for and . . . nothing that encourages [it] . . . to return to the negotiating table,” the official Al Thawra newspaper said.

“Land remains an element that could never be an issue for flexibility,” the newspaper said.

With each side reiterating its hard-line positions, progress on the Israeli-Syrian peace track “is still a nonstarter,” said Moshe Maoz, a professor of Middle East studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Adding to the difficulties is Netanyahu’s refusal to honor informal agreements that his Labor Party predecessors reached with Damascus. The accords called for Israel to withdraw from all or most of the Golan in exchange for Syria’s agreement to detailed security measures.

Netanyahu, who won election in May, has said he feels no obligation to honor unsigned agreements, and he has given no sign of willingness to compromise on the Golan.

U.S. officials have said Syria has demanded that negotiations be resumed at the point where they broke off, or at least that it receive some assurances that the years of talks have not been negated with Netanyahu’s election.

The U.S. “would have to find a formula that would satisfy both sides and allow them to resume negotiations, perhaps an American commitment to Syria that Israel would withdraw from the Golan,” Maoz said. “But it is very difficult to find a formula that would bridge the gap.”

Syrian President Hafez Assad, in a news conference in Cairo last September, said his conditions for resuming peace talks included mutual acceptance of the concept of trading land for peace and U.N. resolutions that call on Israel to give up occupied territory.

The Syrian leader also said he “was not in a rush” to reach a peace accord with Israel.

Still, with the U.S. savoring the deal just brokered between Israel and the Palestinians over Hebron, there is likely to be renewed pressure on both sides to bend.

Last week, outgoing Secretary of State Warren Christopher was quoted as urging Netanyahu to “test the willingness” of Syria to make peace, a statement interpreted by analysts here as a not-so-subtle suggestion that Netanyahu should be the one to make an overture.

In an interview in Jerusalem, U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk said he hopes the Hebron accord will encourage both the Syrians and the Lebanese to resume their negotiations with the Israelis.

“We believe that it is time for the Arab world to suspend its disbelief” over Israeli willingness to make peace, Indyk said.

But the diplomat also said the United States must reexamine its own strategy regarding the Syrians and try to learn why, despite a remarkable 26 visits to Damascus by Christopher in the last four years, there has been no real progress. “It’s very much in our interests to achieve a Syrian-Israeli peace, but we have to make a judgment about whether it’s achievable,” he said.

Still in question is how much energy the Clinton administration, especially Secretary of State-designate Madeleine Albright, is willing to devote to the issue.

Perhaps the most likely scenario, at least for the short term, is that the negotiations will resume but little will result. The two sides may have more interest in showing the U.S. and the world that they are talking again than in making any actual progress, an Israeli official said.