News Analysis: Wrestling with Himself and His Nation, Rabin May Hold the Key to a New Peace

Among the longest-standing axioms of Middle East politics is the belief that without Syria, there can be no durable peace in the region.

This is accompanied by a second axiom: that peace between Jerusalem and Damascus depends on one man — Syrian President Hafez Assad.

Without detracting from the truth and validity of the two axioms, perceptive observers here are suggesting that the one man on whom peace between Israel and Syria now depends is not Assad, but rather Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

According to these observers’ readings of the current state of play in Middle East politics, Assad has, in effect, crossed his Rubicon.

But the Israeli leader, they believe, is wrestling with himself, with his divided nation and with his place in history.

Rabin’s internal struggles take on added significance as momentum continues to build on the Israeli-Syrian diplomatic front.

Israeli newspapers have revealed that secret Israeli-Syrian negotiations are taking place in Washington between Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Itamar Rabinovich, and his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem.

This “back channel” of negotiations is said to be run directly and exclusively by Rabin. Only one or two top Israel Defense Force generals share the information with the prime minister — and even they are not privy to all of it.

On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres confirmed for the first time that these contacts in Washington were indeed taking place.

On the publicly visible “front channel” of negotiations, meanwhile, President Clinton this week dispatched Dennis Ross, the U.S. coordinator of Middle East peace talks, to Damascus and Jerusalem in an effort to build upon the progress made by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who has made several regional peace missions in past months.

ASSAD HAS TAKEN FATEFUL STEP

Joining Ross for this latest round of shuttle diplomacy was Martin Indyk, a member of the National Security Council who is expected to be appointed the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.

After meeting previously with Christopher, observers here say, Assad has already taken a fateful step.

Granted, the step is not irrevocable, and is conditioned on his repeated demand that Israel return every inch of the Golan in exchange for peace with Syria.

But just the same, Assad has finally gulped hard and breathed out the fateful words: peace, normalization, diplomatic relations, open borders.

While Assad has not yet shouted these words from the rooftops or minarets of Damascus, he has mouthed them, barely audibly, to international mediators and statesmen.

While there is still much bargaining and bluffing to be done, Assad has already set himself on a course that could lead to peace with Israel.

It is now for Rabin to take the hard and painful decisions that his side of the land-for-peace equation requires.

In making these wrenching decisions, Rabin must take into account the opinions of the people who put him in office — the Israeli electorate.

Visiting Israel’s northern border this week, President Ezer Weizman noted that it would be “very hard to make peace without Israeli public opinion.”

He complained that Assad, as yet, had done “virtually nothing to woo or win Israeli public opinion.”

Weizman urged Assad to take dramatic steps designed to persuade Israelis — “a vulnerable and sorrow-tried nation,” as Weizman described them — that the Syrian leader has genuinely resolved to forsake the military option and to embark on a new era of peace and normalization with the Jewish state he for so long vowed to destroy.

Along with the Israeli electorate, Rabin has to contend with his own principles.

Rabin is the man who so constructed the self-rule agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization that no Jewish settlement — no matter how isolated or illogical its location — need be abandoned in the autonomous Gaza Strip.

The same Rabin, a true and loyal son of the Ahdut Ha’avodah socialist settlement movement, now wrestles with the prospect of dismantling settlements on the Golan Heights.

OPPONENTS IN KNESSET COULD TIE RABIN’S HANDS

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s adage that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics, has always been well-accepted here. But if proof were needed, the political situation in Israel at this time surrounding the Golan negotiations provides that proof.

Knesset members on the right flank of Rabin’s ruling Labor Party have threatened to team up with the opposition Likud bloc to pass legislation that would effectively tie the government’s hands in its negotiations with Syria.

Rabin, who has solemnly pledged to submit any planned withdrawal from the Golan to the entire nation in a plebiscite, may find himself stymied by a Knesset majority that opposes returning the strategic Golan Heights, even for a peace-with-normalization package.

The opinion polls are not easy to read. But the prime minister’s aides say he is confident that if and when he decided to put a yes-or-no question to the country — and throw all his prestige and credibility behind it — he will get the “yes” answer to a Golan withdrawal that he wants.

But these aides do not conceal their concern that clever parliamentary tactics by opponents of the pullback within the Labor Party could prevent the premier from posing the question altogether.

After all, the Knesset would need to pass enabling legislation for a referendum to be held.

But before that obstacle is confronted, there remains the deep and apparently anguished debate going on within Rabin’s own head.

The conventional wisdom is that Rabin is holding his cards close to his chest. Well-placed observers suggest the prime minister is running the Syrian track alone, without the usual backup task force of aides or ministers.

This is not — or not only — a matter of operational discretion, but also perhaps because Rabin himself has not yet made up his mind.