Neither Washington nor Jerusalem will attempt to woo Damascus back to the negotiating table to end the long-standing deadlock in Israeli Syrian peace talks, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said this week.
In remarks broadcast Monday on Israel Radio, Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich said the talks were currently on hold.
“There is for the moment a timeout or delay in the peace talks, at the Syrians’ choice,” Rabinovich said.
“If they had a hope that in the wake of these steps [to suspend the talks] there would be either an American or Israeli courtship, indeed that hope has been disappointed”, he said.
Rabinovich and his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem, along with Israeli and Syrian security experts, had been holding informal meetings in recent months.
According to earlier Israeli news accounts, Rabinovich had been scheduled to meet Muallem in the United States last week for talks on arranging a summit between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Syrian President Hafez Assad.
But the Syrian ambassador was still in Syria this week, indicating that Damascus was not interested in pursuing contacts with Israel at this time.
“The ball is in Syria’s court in two senses”, Education Minister Amnon Rubinstein said in Jerusalem on Monday.
“First, they haven’t sent their ambassador to Washington to continue negotiations. And secondly, they haven’t done anything to show the Israeli public they mean business”.
Talks between Israel and Syria have long been stalled over Syria’s demand that Israel make a commitment to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights before negotiations begin. Israel, in turn, has said it would make a limited pullback, but will not discuss details until Damascus clarifies the nature of the peace it envisions with Israel.
In the radio interview, Rabinovich also said Israel would not publicly criticize Syria for allowing the head of Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shukaki, to use Syria as his base of operations.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the Jan. 22 double suicide bombing at Beit Lid Junction that claimed the lives of 21 Israelis.
“We have to know how to defend our interests with full firmness”, the ambassador said, adding that Israel also has to “refrain from getting into corners it will be hard to get out of afterward”.
Shukaki told Britain’s Independent newspaper this week that he had no prior knowledge of the Beit Lid attack.
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