News Analysis: Likud Warms to Peace Talk Prospects As Shamir Defuses Breakaway Threats

With Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir having successfully defused secessionist threats by his right-wing coalition partners over the weekend, the Likud government warmed visibly to prospects for peace talks with Syria.

Syrian President Hafez Assad, long an object of distrust here, is now seen as serious and sincere in his assent to direct talks with Israel.

The Cabinet was told at its weekly meeting Sunday that Israel has independently confirmed that assessment, offered by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker after his latest meeting with the Syrian leader.

Israeli spokesmen. Defense Minister Moshe Arens and Deputy Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu among them, went out of their way to underscore the significance of Syria’s readiness to discuss peace with Israel, without preconditions.

While Arens told the closing session of the 77th National Convention of Hadassah that Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, he and Netanyahu stressed to the Women’s Zionist Organization of America delegates, gathered at Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’uma convention center, that Assad is not demanding prior commitments from Israel.

The Syrian leader has long insisted publicly that there could be no peace unless Israel withdraws from all the territory it seized in 1967, including the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

Israel’s own position on this issue is equally “well known,” Netanyahu said. What is important is that neither side is insisting its position must be a precondition of negotiations, he stressed.

The Israelis also pointed with satisfaction to Assad’s latest interview, published in Newsweek and the Washington Post. In it he insisted that he has not gotten secret assurances from the United States that it would support demands for Israeli withdrawal, apart from its continued support of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which it has endorsed for 25 years.

The resolution enshrines the concept of trading land for peace.

THREATS FROM THE RIGHT

Fear that the Likud government would somehow bargain away the Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1980, resulted in threats from the far right.

The Tehiya, Tsomet and Moledet leadership all threatened to bolt Shamir’s coalition government, taking a bloc of seven Knesset votes with them.

Tehiya’s three-member Knesset faction recommended to the party’s secretariat last week that it quit.

But Tehiya’s leader, Minister of Science and Energy Yuval Ne’eman, voiced confidence last week in Shamir’s determination not to give away territory for peace.

Nevertheless, the party’s secretariat has to act this week on the recommendation of its Knesset caucus.

The Moledet Party leader, Minister Without Portfolio Rehavam Ze’evi, also gave Shamir a vote of confidence over the weekend, as did Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan, leader of the Tsomet party.

The three right-wing parties said they detected no signs that Shamir will relent on territorial compromise. But they warned that any concessions on the Golan would result in their immediate departure from the government.

Tehiya and Moledet extended the threat to include any attempt to give Palestinians autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a plan floated by Shamir in 1989.

It came to naught then because Israel refused to talk to Palestinians who lived outside the territories, especially in East Jerusalem.

That same issue is delaying Israel’s formal agreement now to attend the regional peace conference Baker has been trying to organize since the end of the Persian Gulf War.

The government says it is waiting for “clarification” of the issue of Palestinian representation.

Meanwhile, Israeli sources held out the prospect of negotiations with Syria alone if the Palestinians refuse to agree to an American compromise.

The compromise proposed by Baker would have them accept the Israeli restrictions in the first stages of peace talks.