Will Netanyahu Make Peace with Syria?

As seen at TheMediaLine.org:

A diplomatic back and forth between Israel and Syria has analysts playing a guessing game as to each side’s intentions.

The rhetoric began Monday.

Speaking at the forum of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Syrian President Bashar Assad warned Israel that if the Golan Heights are not returned through peaceful negotiations Syria will take the disputed territory militarily.

That was followed Wednesday by hints from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he was open to peace talks with Syria over the Golan, a plateau Israel captured in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. A senior Netanyahu aid said that the Israeli leader had told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that “He is willing to meet with the Syrian president at any time and anywhere to move the peace negotiations along on the basis of no pre-conditions.”

The Syrian president then responded on Wednesday saying that Syria was not setting conditions on making peace with Israel, but that “we do have rights that we will not renounce.”

Al-Arabiya then reported that Netanyahu had asked Sarkozy to pass a message to Syrian President Assad that Israel was ready to resume peace negotiations. Netanyahu’s office has denied the report. Assad is set to meet Sarkozy on Friday for talks in Paris.

Dr Ronen Hoffman, a member of Israel’s negotiating team during previous talks with Syria and a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said both sides were trying to improve their international image.

“It is important to distinguish between creating momentum and gaining political points, versus making concessions and actually negotiating,” Dr Hoffman told The Media Line. “These are two very different diplomatic processes. Right now I think that both sides are not ready to make serious concessions but both sides feel that negotiations will help their image in the international area, so we are just seeing gestures and public diplomacy.”

“For now, both sides can be positive and gain points with the international community simply through the perception that they are willing to talk to each other,” he said. “If they actually start to talk, they will have to show their reservations and emphasize any gaps between them. Then they will look different.”

Dr Hoffman said Netanyahu had a particular interest in seeming open to negotiations.

“While there is no progress on the Israeli Palestinian track, for Netanyahu to say that he is willing to negotiate with the Syrians without preconditions gets him some points while he knows that, in fact, there is no chance the Syrians will start to negotiate without preconditions,” he said. “In other words he can get credit from the international community without actually getting himself into a situation in which he has to make concessions.”

Dr Samir Al-Taqi, director of the Orient Center for International Studies, Syria’s leading think tank, said Syrians were highly suspicious of the Israeli leader’s intentions.

“Netanyahu’s declaration is a kind of refusal,” he told The Media Line. “In principal what Syria is advancing is an issue of rights, including the international community’s demand that Israel return land. So if Israel is not ready to go forward with land for peace, then the Syrians will not go ahead with any negotiations.”

“The Israelis have been dragging their feet for 19 years since the Madrid conference,” Al-Taqi said. “do they want to drag their feet for another 40 years?”

“I think Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure from the Americans and Europeans so he needs to deflate the pressure, but practically he is intransigent and is not ready to compromise on anything so we will not help them to deflate the international pressure.”

During his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu supported what has been termed a ‘cold peace’ with Syria, in which the two countries would sign a partial peace agreement in exchange for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

“Netanyahu could surprise us and get serious on the Syrian track,” Dr Hoffman said. “It’s easier for him than the Palestinian track. There are only about 20,000 settlers in the Golan Heights where on the West Bank we are talking about hundreds of thousands of settlers. The core issues here are far less sensitive.”

“Netanyahu would like non-belligerency in a way that we can make sure there is no war or military actions and he can just partially withdraw,” Dr Hoffman said. “From my experience the Syrians will reject this, but there are other areas for negotiation.”

“One interesting idea would be to differentiate between sovereignty and the withdrawal from the land,” he said. “Maybe the Israelis will give the Syrians their lost pride by giving them sovereignty over the Golan Heights while insisting on leasing some of the land for warning stations and things like this.”

“If one wants to be creative it’s possible,” Dr Hoffman added. “It’s just a question of how serious you are in achieving an agreement.”

Uzi Dayan, former head of the National Security Council, former Deputy Chief of Staff in the Israeli army, and a parliament member in Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said returning the Golan Heights is not an option available to the Israeli leader even if it was his intention.

“If we talk about internal Israeli politics, there is a new generation of Israelis today and one million new immigrants from Russia,” Dayan told The Media Line. “They don’t see any reason to give the Golan Heights back to Syria. They see the Golan as a nice place, a strategic military asset and at the same time there is no demographic problem – we are not ruling other people.”

“For this reason, I don’t think that any government in Israel today could ever succeed in giving the Golan back to Syria,” he said. “Indeed more Israelis support keeping the Golan Heights, even in return for a peace agreement, than Israelis who support not dividing Jerusalem.”

Dayan, a nephew of the famous former eye-patched Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan, said that despite being a member of Netanyahu’s party, he disagreed with any negotiations with Syria.

“I find myself even more extreme than Netanyahu,” he said. “Starting negotiations with Syria would be immoral and not in the interest of Israel. About eight months ago we proved to everyone on this planet that Syria was trying to build a nuclear capacity that could be used against us.”

“So what do we want from Syria?” he asked. “We want them to stop supporting Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, and stop them being a station on the axis between Tehran and Beirut.”

“But I don’t think giving the Golan Heights back will stop Syria’s relationship with Iran,” he said. “So I think Israel should isolate and try to weaken Syria and if the Syrians want to talk, let’s first of all talk about the connection between Hezbollah and Syria.”

Dr Mordechai Kedar, of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the recent cross-border rhetoric between the two countries was reflective more of a broad transformation in the balance of power in the Middle East than it was of any realistic chance for peace negotiations.

“The balance of power in the middle east is changing rapidly,” he told The Media Line. “Iran has become much more influential and America much less, so when America is viewed as the losing horse in the middle east, America’s friends like Israel are looked upon as parties that can now be squeezed. So when you hear Assad threatening Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas style warfare, this is exactly what’s going on.”

“Assad knows that Israel cannot take this kind of war and now he thinks that nobody will touch him because he has a good friend named Iran,” Dr Kedar said. “Assad looks at the balance of power in the world and thinks to himself what is America good for these days? Nothing. He and the rest of the Arab world just see an American president who speaks nice words but has no clue how to deal with the Middle East.”

“Also, when American opinion makers say that Israel is more of a burden than it is an asset, this has a direct effect on the balance of power in terms of Arab and Islamic perceptions of Israel’s strength,” Dr Kedar added. “So Netanyahu sees the decreasing influence of the West in the Middle East and he is very concerned that the West may abandon Israel.”