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October 15, 1999/5 Cheshvan 5760, Vol. 52, No. 7
Israel on brink of peace with Syria
MARTY LATZ
Special to Jewish News
The recent agreement to implement the Mideast's Wye peace accord is "basically not even worth the paper it is printed on," said Israeli political scientist, journalist and Israeli Defense Forces analyst Dr. Reuven Y. Hazan recently to the Young Leadership Division of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.
Why the pessimism? First, said Hazan, the Palestinians are still an entity in the making, with many factions and competing interests. An agreement with one is often violently disputed by another.
Second, Hazan contends, many Israelis believe Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat will "always be a terrorist" and is a "man we don't really trust." The result is protracted negotiations, with many steps backward and small steps forward.
On the Syrian peace track, however, Hazan said it's a "cut and done deal," and just needs the U.S. to get the process rolling. The Golan Heights will be exchanged for peace and full relations between Israel and Syria, he predicted. This will happen when the Palestinian track stalls again and "all eyes turn to Syria."
On the Palestinian front, Hazan was not persuasive.
He was right in suggesting trust is critical and that, without it, negotiations take longer and often suffer setbacks. However, the recent turnover of some West Bank land to the Palestinians and the final agreement on a Gaza-West Bank Palestinian travel corridor suggest Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat have begun to develop some limited trust.
If they can slowly build on this and include realistic, enforceable penalties if either side violates agreements, the Palestinian peace talks should proceed on schedule. Plus, from a negotiation standpoint, the imposition of a deadline on the final status talks should expedite compromise.
By comparison, Hazan's analysis of the Syrian peace process was quite convincing. Particularly compelling was his explanation of how many Israelis have recently changed their view of the Golan's strategic importance.
Traditionally, he said, Israelis remembered Syria lobbing missiles down on northern Israel from the geographically higher Golan Heights. So most Israelis believed the Golan Heights occupied strategically critical space they could not give up.
This apparently changed with the Gulf War, when Scud missiles traveled from Iraq to threaten Israelis sitting in their living rooms throughout the country. At that point, many Israelis began to see the decreasing strategic importance of buffers such as the Golan Heights on Israel's immediate borders.
Finally, Hazan noted that Barak negotiated with Syrian President Hafez Assad's chief of staff in the last round of Syrian-Israeli talks. At the time, Barak was the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's chief of staff.
Hazan predicted we're 10 to 20 years from having theater-based nuclear weapons in the Middle East. He also noted that "as the price of war becomes much more expensive, the price of peace becomes that much more affordable."
In 10 years, the price of war will be unthinkable. The price for peace should therefore be quite minimal. But Israel can't afford to wait. It must ensure its agreements now are worth more than the paper on which they're printed. Its long-term alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate.
Marty Latz is a Valley attorney and negotiations consultant. Send comments to mlatz@negot.com.
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