http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/26.Sep.1999/Opinion/Article-3.html
Golan or peace
By DANIEL BLOCH, The Jerusalem Post Sunday, September 26, 1999
(September 26) - There were three occasions in the past
when a window of opportunity opened for seriously
negotiating a peace agreement with Syria's Hafez Assad.
No one can be sure that these negotiations, if conducted
seriously and intensively, would have produced a peace
agreement, but we never managed to reach that point on
any of those occasions.
The first opportunity occurred between 1981 and 1982,
when American diplomat, Philip Habib, was shuttling
between Israel, Syria and Lebanon. It seemed possible
then to negotiate a comprehensive agreement between
Israel and Syria based on a territorial compromise in
the Golan, in exchange for allowing Syria to have a free
hand in Lebanon. But the Begin-Sharon government
preferred to uphold the unfortunate alliance with the
Christians in Beirut and started the ill-fated,
ill-conceived and badly planned and executed Lebanese
War.
That fatal misconception, in addition to all the other
mistakes, broke the myth of the Israeli invincibility,
particularly in Lebanon. Before 1982, the macho saying
was that all you need to win a war against Lebanon is
the IDF's orchestra. Seventeen years later it sounds
like a black, bitter and gruesome joke.
So Israel has lost the possibility of a barter between
its hold on South Lebanon and a certain compromise in
the Golan. Today Syria is demanding total withdrawal
from all the Golan in exchange for peace.
The next real opportunity occurred during the second
Rabin government.
Assad was ready to negotiate with Rabin. Rabin himself
was ready to give priority to negotiations with Syria
over the talks with the Palestinians, because he did not
believe that Arafat was truly ready for peace.
When negotiations in Oslo proved that an agreement with
Arafat was possible, Rabin, as a pragmatic statesman,
agreed to move forward on that track, but continued
parallel talks with the Syrians. At the time of his
assassination, he was very close to a positive
conclusion.
Unfortunately, Shimon Peres felt too weak to continue
the talks and conclude an agreement before the
elections. Had he continued, he could have changed the
elections to a referendum on peace with Syria and won.
Netanyahu, to his credit, did not close the window of
contact with Syria, using the good offices of his friend
Ronald Lauder. But, Netanyahu, like Peres, was afraid to
take the bold step forward. He feared the settlers and
the right-wing extremists, and lost the chance to
advance peace and stay in power.
Barak is doing his utmost to reopen negotiations with
Assad. He was bold and sincere in announcing his
readiness to give up most of the Golan before the
elections and he did it in the lion's den: in appearance
before Jewish residents of the Golan Heights.
Nevertheless, he received substantial support at the
polls from those very settlers. And all opinion polls
prove that he will have a comfortable majority
supporting the exchange of the Golan territory for a
comprehensive peace with Syria.
But, Barak and his government must speak with one voice
and send a clear message, both internally and
externally, of its readiness to exchange territory,
including the dismantling of settlements, for full peace
with Syria.
It was pathetic to watch Yitzhak Levy, Barak's housing
minister, inaugurating some new quarter in one of the
Golan's settlements, joining with some other members of
the futile movement against withdrawal from the Golan.
Ariel Sharon, the man responsible for losing our Lebanon
bargaining chips, is now trying to use the Golan as a
political tool to advance his quest for leadership.
But the precedent had already been set by Begin: The
Israeli government, with Sharon's acquiescence, accepted
the principle of withdrawal to recognized international
boundaries, wherever they existed, with our neighboring
countries.
It is crystal clear that we cannot eat the cake and keep
it: We must give back almost all of the Golan, including
the settlements, to achieve peace with Syria, both on
the Golan border and in South Lebanon.
There is no other way.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is daydreaming. He is
entitled to preach his convictions but he is not allowed
to act in any way that might jeopardize the chances for
peace. The choice is clear: peace or Golan.
The majority prefers peace.
(c) 1995-1999, The Jerusalem Post - All rights reserved
http://www.ArabicNews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/990923/1999092319.html
Le Monde: The Golan is a Syrian territory
Syria, Politics, 9/23/99
The French daily Le Monde said that the Syrian Golan is a Syrian
territory and that Israel has no right to oppose its restoration back
to Syria. In its Wednesday's editorial, on the occasion of the visit of
the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Paris, the French daily
said Israel cannot claim that it owns in the Golan any historical or
cultural roots."
The paper quoted Barak as saying in an interview that, "To
achieve peace, concessions should be made, even if these
concessions are painful for Israel."
Barak added in his statement to Le Monde that he won the
elections in Israel because he said the truth in this matter, adding
he will "continue this mission, even if it will be painful and he will
do what he says."
