Israelis Welcome Assad’s Rhetoric, but Doubt Syrian Policy Has Changed

Israeli officials and Middle East experts here are giving a cool response to reports that Syrian President Hafez Assad is now willing to become involved in the Middle East peace process.

They feel there was little new in statements made by Assad during his visit to Egypt this week, his first since Damascus and Cairo broke diplomatic relations in 1977, following Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem.

At the same time, they view the Syrian leader’s change of rhetoric as a positive development that could help ease the atmosphere of confrontation that has pervaded the Middle East in recent months.

Speaking Sunday evening at a joint news conference in Alexandria, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his side, Assad said his country would join the peace process “depending on other circumstances.”

His statement was initially interpreted as Syrian readiness in principle to join the peace process and as a signal that Damascus would not block Egyptian efforts to convene Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

But Assad insisted that the Palestinian issue should be resolved as part of a comprehensive settlement reached in an international peace conference.

Expectations that Syria would enter the peace process were heightened Monday, when Radio Monte Carlo reported that Mubarak had presented Assad with an Israeli proposal to launch peace talks with Syria.

The Arab-owned station, which broadcasts from Monaco, said Assad had conditionally accepted the proposal, which Israel allegedly passed to Egypt on the eve of the Syrian leader’s visit.

ISRAEL REITERATES INVITATION

According to the station’s Cairo correspondent, Assad’s three conditions for entering peace talks with Israel were that Israel agree in advance to withdraw from the Golan Heights, that the two countries reach an agreement on Lebanon and that an international peace conference be convened.

The Prime Minister’s Office here denied that Israel had asked Mubarak to convey requests to Assad.

But sources in the office welcomed Assad’s “change of tone,” saying the Syrian president had “started talking in terms of a political settlement of the conflict.”

They reiterated Israel’s readiness to negotiate peace with Syria, with no preconditions. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir last month invited Assad to come to Israel in the same way that Sadat had in 1977.

Ehud Ya’ari, a respected Arab affairs correspondent for Israel Television, discredited the Radio Monte Carlo report as a hoax invented by an “unserious reporter.”

Ya’ari said the basic Syrian position has not changed and that Assad was not likely to shift from his view that a Palestinian-Israeli settlement must precede peace treaties with any of the Arab countries.

But the report was not lightly treated by Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed. Prior to the war, the Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed. Prior to the war, the Golan Heights had been used as a launching point for attacks against northern Israeli settlements.

The settlers rushed a cable Tuesday to Shamir, reminding him that Israel’s hold on the Golan Heights is a matter of national consensus and that the future of the area should not be part of any negotiations with Syria.