Peace with Syria still in Israel's sights

It might be wishful thinking, but some in Israel believe the time is ripe to push for a deal with Damascus

Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was slapped down for suggesting Syria would never get back the Golan Heights. Photograph: Ferenc Isza/AFP/Getty Images

It is hardly news that Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's rightwing foreign minister, is a bruiser who does not mince his words. But he still managed to provoke anger and dismay at home when he warned Syria's President Bashar al-Assad this week that he would see his regime collapse if he dared to attack the Jewish state.
Lieberman was accused of "playing with fire" and "fanning the flames" after Assad – no slouch either when it comes to raising the regional temperature – claimed Israel was pushing the Middle East to a new war. "Assad should know that if he attacks, he will not only lose the war," the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer told businessmen. "Neither he nor his family will remain in power."
Verbal spats between Damascus and Jerusalem are part of the landscape of the Middle East. Syria and Israel are at odds over Lebanon and Iran but they have not fought a fully fledged conflict since 1973 when Assad's father, Hafez, joined Egypt's Anwar Sadat in launching that year's October war. The Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, is still a heavily fortified frontline. But it has been a quiet one for 36 years.
Lieberman's most damaging remark was not the suggestion of forced regime change but the idea that Syria had better forget about ever getting back the Golan – contradicting the official Israeli government position that it will trade territory for peace. Even Binyamin Netanyahu, the country's most rightwing prime minster ever, was moved to clarify that he remains willing to talk to Damascus "without preconditions". Motormouth Lieberman was slapped down and forced to agree.
It shouldn't really be so difficult to reach agreement: these bitter enemies negotiated on and off for nine years, starting at the Madrid conference in 1991 and ending in Shepherdstown, Virginia, in 2000, just before Hafez al-Assad died. Syria's canny foreign minister, Walid al-Muallim, has said that 85% of the problems, including crucial security arrangements, were solved in negotiations with four Israeli leaders from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Barak. Turkey mediated four more rounds of inconclusive talks in 2008.
This latest row has erupted at a time when there is speculation – no more than wishful thinking, say some – that in the absence of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians (US-run "proximity" talks, with state department diplomats shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah, would be a poor substitute) – the time has come for a serious effort to revive the Syrian "track".
This is a familiar pattern in the endless quest for an Arab-Israeli breakthrough: if peace with the Palestinians is stuck, or simply too difficult, then why not try to strike a deal with Damascus? Barak, now the Labour party leader and defence minister, thinks this is the right approach. So does Israel's defence and intelligence establishment, which believes peace with Syria could drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran – seen as a far more dangerous enemy – and would justify surrendering the Golan and its 20,000 Israeli settlers.
Another part of Israel's calculation/aspiration is that Assad would shed, or at least weaken, his support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who control Gaza and challenge Mahmoud Abbas's western-backed Palestinian Authority – Israel's putative partner for peace. "The mere fact of Israel-Syria negotiations would hurt Hamas, thereby strengthening Abbas," argues the Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher.
The snag with that theory is that it is hard to imagine Assad signing a peace treaty with Israel as long as is there is no overall settlement of the Palestinian question.
Another part of the problem is different expectations. Israel has always hoped that peace with Syria would mean full "normalisation" of their bilateral relations, as it did – on paper at least – with Egypt back in 1979. But Assad is not Sadat, desperate to find favour with the Americans at almost any price.
"You start with a peace treaty in order to achieve peace," the Syrian leader told the American journalist Seymour Hersh recently. "If they say you can have the entire Golan back, we will have a peace treaty. But they cannot expect me to give them the peace they expect … You start with the land; you do not start with peace."
Still, Israeli opinion-formers are urging a new attempt to woo Assad – and hope Barack Obama will try harder. The imminent arrival of a new US ambassador in Damascus after a five-year absence could certainly help.
"It may be that at the end of the day, the Syrians, too, will turn their backs on us, but every day that goes by without an effort to reach peace with Syria is a day marked by criminal negligence," commented the Ha'aretz writer Arie Shavit. "There is no certainty at all that peace is in the offing. But if it is, it is to be found not in Ramallah but in Damascus."