Israel and Syria disclosed Wednesday that they have been holding indirect talks through Turkish mediators since February 2007 and pledged in a joint statement to pursue negotiations “with good faith and an open mind.”
The announcement marked another setback for the Bush administration’s campaign to isolate Syria, Iran and their allies in the Middle East, coming the same day as a Lebanon peace agreement that acknowledged the political rise of Hezbollah, a Shiite militia supported by Syria and Iran.
Many in Israel and Syria greeted the first formal announcement of peace talks with skepticism, given the lack of strong support from the United States and the political difficulties facing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at home. Olmert is being questioned by police on bribery allegations while his administration pursues long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.
Wednesday’s announcement came as Olmert’s chief of staff and a senior political adviser were in Istanbul for the latest round of negotiations.
‘Better to talk’
Israel and Syria “decided to pursue the dialogue between them in a serious and continuous way,” the two governments said in their statement.
“It is always better to talk than to shoot,” Olmert said, “and I’m happy the two sides have decided to talk.”
The talks center on Syria’s demand that Israel return the Golan Heights, which Israeli forces have occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the two countries opened contacts in February 2007 after Olmert visited Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During a nearly 3-hour, closed-door meeting, Olmert and Erdogan agreed to have top Turkish officials serve as go-betweens, the official said.
Olmert disclosed in a newspaper interview last month that the two countries had exchanged messages through Turkish officials about peace talks.
Syrian President Bashar Assad then confirmed this in a separate interview but said he believed direct talks were possible only under U.S. sponsorship and only after President George W. Bush had left office.
The U.S. response to Wednesday’s announcement was polite. “I think Turkey played a good and useful role in this regard,” said Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch. “Israel and Turkey have apprised us in the past of these discussions.”
Israel seized the Golan Heights, a militarily strategic heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee, in the 1967 Middle East War and effectively annexed the area 14 years later by extending Israeli civil law to its residents, most of them Arab Druze.
Terms for Syria
Olmert has said he is willing to discuss handing back the Golan Heights in return for Syria severing ties with Iran and guerrilla movements hostile to Israel, notably Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip but is not involved in Olmert’s peace negotiations.
“I reached the conclusion that the chance overrides the risk and with this hope I am going for a new path,” Olmert said Wednesday.
In September, Israel bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria, but drew no apparent retaliation from Damascus.
Marwan Kabalan, a political science professor at Damascus University, suggested that Olmert was entering into talks largely for political reasons.
“Syrians are suspicious … that the Israelis may actually be trying to play the Syrian card versus the Palestinian card,” he said. Israel could use successful talks with Syria to increase pressure on the Palestinians to reach a peace deal, Kabalan said.
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Yaron Ezrahi, a political analyst at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said that “Olmert might be a lame duck as a prime minister, but since he does not have to think about his political future, he can act freely to fulfill a historical necessity.”
Ultimately, Ezrahi said, Syria’s return to good relations with Israel might further the larger U.S. and Israeli aims of isolating Iran.
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Glancing out on the Golan Heights
The territorial dispute between Israel and Syria centers on the Golan Heights. Here are facts about the territory:
Location: Plateau on the southwestern corner of Syria overlooking Sea of Galilee and northern Israel.
Size: At 485 square miles, the Golan Heights is roughly one-third the size of Rhode Island.
History: Syrian soldiers shelled northern Israel from the Golan Heights between 1948 and 1967. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel annexed it in 1981, but no country recognized that.
Population: Most of the 100,000 Syrian residents of the Golan Heights fled during the 1967 war and were not allowed to return. About 17,000 remain, most of them members of the Druze sect, an offshoot of Islam. A few have accepted Israeli citizenship, but most retain Syrian nationality. About 18,000 Israelis live in 32 settlements built since 1967.
Dispute: In 2000, Israel-Syria peace talks broke down. Israel offered to withdraw from all the Golan Heights down to the international border in exchange for full peace. Syria insisted on recovering land across the border that it captured in 1948, including the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Israel demanded full control of the Sea of Galilee, a major source of fresh water, and was not satisfied with Syria’s peace proposals.