As the reality sinks in here that Israel may soon be negotiating peace with Syria, politicians are already speculating about what the outcome of the process will be.
On both ends of the political spectrum, and in much of the press, the assumption is that negotiations with Syria will ultimately end with Israel agreeing to give up all or at least part of the Golan Heights.
Yet officials in the Likud-led government speak publicly as if that scenario could not be more remote from their minds. “Land for peace,” they insist, is not an acceptable formula as far as Israel is concerned.
Israel, they say, has met its obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 by pulling out of all of Sinai, which represents some 90 percent of the territory taken in 1967. In talks with Syria, they say, Israel’s position will be, in the words of the Golan Settlers Committee, “peace for peace.”
The most they are prepared to concede — and only privately — is that Israel may be willing to negotiate a withdrawal from southern Lebanon, provided Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah fighters are rigorously curbed by the Lebanese army.
The Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army, they suggest, could be incorporated into the national force and continue its task of policing the stormy southern part of the country.
HARD CHOICES TO COME LATER
Syria’s sudden turnabout from rejectionism to willingness to negotiate has focused public attention on the Golan Heights, rather than on the more complex issue of the future status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians’ continued equivocations about whether they will attend the proposed October peace conference has left many Israelis skeptical about whether there will, in the end, be a dialogue with the Palestinians.
Even if there is, the plan at the moment is to have the first stage of talks focus on drawing up an arrangement for limited Palestinian self-rule in the administered territories. Any hard choices about the final status of the territories will be postponed until this autonomy scenario is given a chance to work.
But in the proposed bilateral talks with Syria, the issue of territorial compromise is likely to come up immediately.
In fact, the posturing has already begun. The Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported Tuesday that Syrian President Hafez Assad is already talking about demilitarized zones on both sides of the Golan Heights, which themselves would be returned to Syria.
On the Israeli side, the Israel Defense Force chief of staff was quoted the same day as declaring that the Golan Heights are “a vital part of Israel’s defenses.”
But Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak then added cryptically: “The present time is not appropriate for saying anything more than that.”
But on both the far right and the left, territorial compromise is already a foregone conclusion.
Right-wing hard-liners, such as Ariel Sharon of Likud and Geula Cohen of Tehiya, have charged openly that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is leading the country down a road that will inevitably result in giving up territory for peace.
SHAMIR KEEPING QUIET
On the left, Shamir has never been more popular — for precisely the same reason. Dovish Knesset members, such as Yossi Sarid of the Citizens Rights Movement and Yair Tsaban of Mapam, brush aside the premier’s pronouncements that “Eretz Yisrael extends from the Golan to Eilat,” and that all of it is inalienably Israel’s, not to be bartered away.
Instead they are congratulating Shamir for, in Sarid’s words, “showing that he can say the wonderful word ‘Yes,’ ” and that he can lead Israel into a settlement based on land for peace.
Shamir, ever the strong and silent type, is keeping his own counsel. He is not letting himself be provoked by his new fans on the left, nor is he softening his commitments to the right.
But he also is not complaining about the constant stream of speculation about the government’s true intentions vis-a-vis territorial compromise.
Shamir’s office has done nothing to prevent reserve generals from accepting Israel Radio invitations to air their views on various scenarios for compromise on the Golan Heights.
Citing growing public support for a compromise on the Golan Heights, as reflected in opinion polls, some observers believe that Shamir, in his own quiet and indirect way, is preparing the nation for that eventuality.
His inveterate critics say he believes he can trade the Golan to Syria in return for a further postponement in having to decide the future of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the way Begin did with Sinai at Camp David.
During that respite, this theory has it, Shamir believes Israeli settlement in the biblical territories will become so prevalent as to render Israeli rule there irrevocable.
Other observers say Shamir’s motives are much less complicated. The premier, they say, simply sees a historic opportunity for peace with Israel’s most threatening immediate neighbor.
He knows, they say, there will be a price to pay. And he is prepared, at the end of the day, to pay it.
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