News Analysis: Israel Plan for Peace with Syria Calls for Full Pulloutfrom Golan

Israel is drafting a detailed blueprint for peace with Syria that would be based on a total Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for full normalization of relations between the two countries.

This revelation, disclosed Tuesday in the highly respected Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, dovetails into strong signals from Washington that the Clinton administration will soon push for progress on the Israeli-Syrian negotiating track.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has indicated that he would like to undertake a diplomatic swing between Jerusalem and Damascus immediately after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian accord on self-rule in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho.

The bilateral peace talks in Washington, suspended since the massacre of Palestinians in Hebron in late February, are slated to resume at the end of April.

The Israeli-Syrian blueprint, which is reportedly the work of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s political planing unit, was reportedly discussed, in a preliminary way, at a meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the ministry’s department heads last week.

The lengthy document, said to run to dozens of pages, is predicated, according to Ha’aretz, on the perceived need to negotiate a full peace treaty with Syria in one step.

Ministry officials say that the current experience with the Palestinians shows that working out a declaration of principles and later filling it with content makes for wasted effort and much duplication.

Unnamed officials cited by the newspaper claimed that a settlement with Syria would be relatively simple and quick to reach – given the basic premises of full withdrawal for full peace.

But other recent Israeli reports, purportedly reflecting earlier rounds of negotiations between Israel and Syria in Washington, indicate that even an Israeli commitment to full withdrawal from the Golan would not guarantee speedy negotiations.

That is because of disparities between the international border of Mandatory Palestine and the de facto border that followed the 1949 cease-fire lines.

The latter line favored Syria in several spots, because of incursions and land grabs by Syrian forces in the period immediately following the 1948 war.

Thus, for instance, the famous hot springs at Hamat Gader, on the southern tip of the Golan, overlooking the Yarmuk River, were within pre-1948 Palestine but were held by Syria until the Six-Day War of 1967.

According to some informed Israeli sources, Israel has made it clear already that it would be interested in ceding Hamat Gader and other such disputed spots in return for land on the slopes of the Golan Heights, rising up from the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Israel’s sovereignty even under the Mandatory line extended just 10 yards from the shoreline on the northeastern perimeter of the lake – meaning that the entire Golan in that area, right down to the water’s edge, was in Syria’s hands.

There have been no signs that Syria would countenance any such swap of territory.

The border disparities may also help toward an eventual accord being based on phased withdrawal over a period of years, after recognition of Syria’s sovereignty in principle is clearly and formally agreed.

According to one report, Syria is insisting that a phased withdrawal take no more than the three years allotted to the withdrawal from the Sinai, under the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt.

Israel, for its part, reportedly wants the withdrawal spread out over six years or more.

Inside the Jerusalem political community, opinion is divided over the likelihood of a major push toward peace with Syria this year.

On the one hand, there is increasingly acute awareness that the global window of opportunity may be closing, as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin himself pointedly noted in a speech at the White House last month.

This was an oblique reference to Russia’s new assertiveness in world affairs, including Middle Eastern affairs.

While Russia is still a long way from resuming the role of the old Soviet Union in backing the Arabs militarily and politically, its revived interest in the region could render President Hafez Assad’s Syria less eager to court the West and less resigned to the need for peace with Israel as a prerequisite in that courtship.

There is also a hard-headed political awareness that the Rabin government will stand or fall on its ability to bring peace.

After the withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, it seems unlikely that there will be further progress with the Palestinians in the short term. When the Palestinian track slows down, dovish Cabinet ministers in Israel can be expected to press for movement on Syria.

On the other hand, some political observers question whether the Rabin government, a year and three quarters into its term, is strong enough domestically to launch into another traumatic peace adventure.

Some of these observers note that the premier appears to have backed away from the idea of moving Jewish settlers in Hebron in the face of vociferous opposition from the Orthodox and nationalist camps, though Rabin’s aides deny this.

The “Golan lobby” would be no less vigorous in fighting a peace plan that would mean removing 12,000 Jewish settlers from the Heights, or leaving them there under Syrian rule.

Ultimately the domestic strength of the Rabin government in its peace efforts, on both the Syrian and Palestinian tracks, depends to an important degree on the way the other side plays its hand.

Thus, for instance, Yasser Arafat’s stolid refusal to condemn unequivocally last week’s gruesome car-bomb disaster in the northern Israeli town of Afula has rankled Israeli public opinion very deeply.

Similarly, Hafez Assad’s notorious insensitivity to Israeli sensibilities, his repeated refusal to address the Israeli public on television or through the written media provides constant and important succor to the forces in Israeli public life opposing a pullback from the Golan on any terms.

Secretary Christopher, when he travels here in late April or early May, will no doubt relay to Rabin as favorable an interpretation as possible of his interminably long conversations with the Syrian leader.

But for all his good intentions, what is needed is not Christopher’s assurances given behind closed doors, but straight forward talk from Assad himself, aimed at Israeli ears and Israeli hearts.