Barak Signals Intent to Negotiate With Syria

JERUSALEM —  Ehud Barak, the newly elected prime minister of Israel, likes to point to his face-to-face meetings with Syria’s top military man in 1994 as evidence that he can negotiate peace with his nation’s most steadfast enemy.

Those talks in Washington between Barak and Syrian Gen. Hikmat Shihabi, each serving at the time as his army’s chief of staff, in fact went nowhere.

But it is an experience that Barak is expected to call upon as he pushes for a peace agreement with Syria and Lebanon--in addition to continuing efforts at a final settlement with the Palestinians.

Throughout the campaign, and again since his election Monday, Barak has pledged to withdraw Israeli army troops from southern Lebanon within a year. This ideally would be achieved as part of a security deal with Syria, the real power broker in Lebanon.

The question now is whether Israel under Barak will have a better chance of opening talks with Syria, which is still ruled by hard-line President Hafez Assad. There are a few encouraging signs in what undoubtedly will be one of the most complex and difficult diplomatic initiatives undertaken by the new government.

Barak, head of the center-left Labor Party, has a stronger mandate than recent governments by virtue of the margin of his victory--he won 56% of the vote to outgoing conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 44%. Because of Barak’s vaunted military career, he does not risk being called a wimp for dealing with the Arabs. At the same time, he is seen as being more flexible and pragmatic on peace deals than the right-wing Netanyahu.

On the Syrian side, Assad is aging and in poor health. Through Jordanian King Abdullah, the 69-year-old Assad this month indicated interest in renewing contacts with Israel; he wants to recover the Golan Heights, which Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, before he dies or retires. The Syrians may have come to see they missed an opportunity for agreement with Israel when months of U.S. shuttle diplomacy fell apart in early 1996, before Netanyahu won election that year.

“I am optimistic we can begin a serious engagement,” said Itamar Rabinovich, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States who headed the earlier negotiations with Syria. “And in the very long run, I am optimistic there can be a settlement.”

Syria is demanding that Israel return all of the Golan Heights. Today, thousands of Jewish settlers live on the strategic plateau, known for its excellent wineries, rich soil and water, a scarce resource in the region. To pressure Israel on the issue, Syria uses Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon to attack northern Israel. Since 1985, the Israeli army has occupied a strip of southern Lebanon with the stated aim of defending its northern communities against Hezbollah.

The southern Lebanon operation is Israel’s last active war front, where 250 Israeli soldiers have been killed since 1985. Bitter domestic opposition to the occupation has grown.

Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and an agreement with Syria over the Golan Heights are linked. Israel fears that the Syrians would send Hezbollah guerrillas to attack its communities if Israeli forces pulled out of Lebanon without first giving back the Golan. But Syria also could attack Israel from the Golan Heights, so Israel wants numerous security guarantees before it considers relinquishing the land.

Previous Labor Party governments--under the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his successor, Shimon Peres--agreed in principle to some withdrawal from the Golan before talks broke down. Assad has insisted that any negotiations resume where the earlier ones left off. Netanyahu refused and said he would not entertain the notion of giving any of the Golan back to Syria.

Barak, on the other hand, has said the Golan is negotiable. His pledge to remove troops from Lebanon within a year--a promise that routinely drew the loudest applause throughout the campaign--is tied to a Syrian negotiation.

“I do indeed intend to withdraw the [Israeli army] from Lebanon once talks are renewed with Syria,” Barak repeated in an interview this week with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “I won’t ask for a medal if I finish in 10 months, and I won’t jump off the roof if it takes 13 months,” he told another Israeli daily, Maariv.

Yediot Aharonot also published what it said was Barak’s five-step peace plan for Syria and Lebanon. A senior aide to Barak, while not confirming the authenticity of the report, said the published plan basically captured the incoming prime minister’s thoughts on how to reach an agreement.

In it, Israel accepts some of Damascus’ demands, Syria stops Hezbollah attacks, and an international peacekeeping force replaces an Israeli army that gradually pulls back.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, the European Union envoy for the Middle East, met this past week with senior Labor Party officials and then traveled to Damascus and met with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh. Moratinos said the Syrians seemed eager to renew peace talks.

“They feel they left off with a Labor government, they can renew with a Labor government,” Moratinos, a Spaniard, said in a telephone interview from Cyprus.

Whether Damascus is more willing to compromise now remains unclear. Assad has begun to transfer duties to his apparent heir--his more flexible, more modern son, Bashar--but remains in charge.

“A lot of outside factors haven’t changed,” said Gerald Steinberg, a military analyst at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. “It is a question of risk-taking. Will Barak be willing to take more risks? We have absolutely no basis yet for judging that.”

Barak’s aides say he will move slowly on the peace front. He must first put together a government. For that, he is trying to establish as broad a coalition as possible from among many of the 15 political parties, including his own, whose candidates won seats this week in the Israeli parliament.

In the interviews he gave Israeli newspapers this week, Barak said having a broad coalition was one thing that would arm him against domestic attack as he presses for peace and the painful concessions that will be made.

“That is one of the lessons learned from the narrow government during Rabin’s tenure,” he said. “When there is a broad government, the public can more easily accept the decisions.”

Rabin, Barak’s mentor, was assassinated in November 1995 by an ultranationalist Jew enraged at the prime minister’s decision to make peace with the Palestinians.

Barak repeated his belief that it is Israel’s strength, not the perception that the country is forever in jeopardy, that enables it to make peace. It is a philosophy that sends Barak confidently to the kind of negotiations that his predecessor, Netanyahu, dreaded and resisted.

“We are a strong country,” Barak said. “We have to stop being afraid. Not every shadow on the wall is a security threat.”