Can Syria and Israel make peace?

Spurred on by Bill Clinton, Syria and Israel came very close to a peace agreement in 2000. But Ehud Barak, Israel's prime minister at the time, threw away the chance.

He didn't think the Israeli public would swallow the prospect of Syrians swimming and fishing in the north-eastern corner of Lake Tiberias. Instead, he wanted to push back the Syrian border several hundred metres from the lake.

The late Syrian president, Hafez Al Assad, was outraged. He had expected Barak to honour a pledge given by two previous prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, that as part of the peace package Israel would withdraw fully from the Golan Heights to the water's edge.

But Barak got cold feet and the chance of peace was lost. Can it now be revived?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due in Damascus on April 24, no doubt to make his own assessment of the possibility for renewed talks. Ban is only the latest of a string of high-level visitors to the Syrian capital, which have included US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a clutch of prominent US Congressmen, envoys from several European capitals, and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, among many others.

Preliminary work

Invariably, they all return from Damascus with the same message from its President: Syria is ready, even eager, for peace talks with Israel, without pre-conditions. President Bashar Al Assad has even hinted that, since much of the preliminary work has already been done in past years, the talks could be completed within six months.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rebuffed the Syrian offer, setting instead stiff preconditions of his own. Before agreeing to talks, he wants Syria to cut its ties with Iran as well as to Hezbollah and Hamas; to keep its nose out of Lebanese affairs; and stop militant jihadists from crossing the Syrian border to attack American forces in Iraq.

There is no chance whatsoever that Syria could agree to these terms ahead of peace negotiations. They are as improbable as asking Israel to sever its ties with the United States! Syria's alliances with Iran and Hezbollah are its lifeline, strategic cards to be played during, not before, a negotiation.

The Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis is seen by its members as their main instrument to contain US-Israeli aggression - as was proven during Israel's war in Lebanon last summer.

If, however, a global peace were to take hold, involving the Palestinians as well as Syria and Lebanon, Damascus would have less need of these allies.

Syria's isolation is clearly at an end. Even its enemies seem agreed that engagement with Damascus is a pre-condition for a regional settlement. A number of prominent Israelis, including Defence Minister Amir Peretz, have called on Olmert to respond positively to Syria's olive branch.

Something of a stir was caused recently by the news that Ebrahim ('Abe') Soleiman, a US-based Syrian, and Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel's foreign ministry, held periodic meetings between 2004 and 2006 in a private attempt to break the log-jam between their countries.

Dreaming hawks

All this would seem promising except that neither the enfeebled Israeli premier, Ehud Olmert, nor his chief patron, US President George Bush, is at all ready for a dialogue with Syria. In Israel, military and security hawks dream of a 'second round' in Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah and put an end, once and for all, to Syrian influence.

In turn, the Bush administration continues to view Syria with undisguised hostility. It has entirely espoused the Israeli position that Hezbollah and Hamas are 'terrorist' organisations not legitimate resistance movements; that Iran is the world's leading 'state sponsor of terrorism'; and that Syria should humbly comply with US demands before any dialogue can take place.

The impasse therefore continues. Still refusing to recognise that their hegemony is contested throughout the region, US and Israel have not yet drawn lessons of the strategic disaster in Iraq or of Israel's defeat in Lebanon.

In the meantime, the influential Brussels-based International Crisis Group has published a major report on 'Restarting Israeli-Syrian negotiations'. It declares that its ideas have been discussed with officials in both countries and can, in its view, be accepted by both sides.

The key points of the Crisis Group's proposals are as follows:

The boundary between Israel and Syria would be the line of June 4, 1967 - as Syria has always insisted;

Syria would have sovereignty over the Golan up to Lake Tiberias and the Jordan River and have access to the adjoining water; while Israel would have sovereignty over the Lake and the River and have access to the adjoining land;

The armies of both countries would be separated by demilitarised zones as well as by areas of limited forces and armaments;

The US would take over the operation of the Mount Hermon early warning station, now in Israeli hands, which allows Israel to look down on the Damascus plain and eavesdrop on Syrian communications;

Once the peace treaty came into force, Syria and Israel would rapidly establish diplomatic relations and become good neighbours.

Spelled out in this manner, a peace agreement between Syria and Israel certainly seems within reach, if only the will were there. Suspicion on both sides, however, is deeply ingrained, with each seeing the other as a sort of devil.

The greatest hurdle of all, however, remains the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without real movement on that front, Syria would be unable to conclude what would be seen as a separate peace.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.