Are Israel and Syria Ready for Peace?

An Israeli-Syrian peace deal is strategically vital for both sides, and both sides know it. But US support will be essential, and that will depend on America’s readiness to move away from military solutions and rigid ideological imperatives and instead embrace the pragmatic culture of conflict resolution.

JERUSALEM – The resumption of peace talks between Israel and Syria after eight years of saber-rattling is not a diversion from the political troubles of Israel’s lame-duck prime minister. Nor are the talks a Syrian ploy to avoid facing an international tribunal on the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. An Israeli-Syrian peace deal is strategically vital for both sides, and both sides know it.

The two major formative experiences of Syria’s Ba’ath regime have been Hafez al-Assad’s loss of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war with Israel, and the loss of Lebanon by his son, Bashar, who was forced to withdraw his army under irresistible American-led international pressure. Recovering the Golan Heights and protecting Syria’s vital interests in Lebanon are not only major strategic concerns for Syria’s president; they are also crucial to the regime’s drive for national legitimacy, and to Bashar’s assertion of his own leadership. 

Peace with Israel is not Assad’s priority. Rather, it is the prerequisite without which superior goals – rapprochement with the United States, legitimization of Syria’s special status in Lebanon, and avoidance of a potentially devastating war with Israel if the Golan Heights are not recovered by peaceful means – cannot be attained. Indeed, the regime has hinted that it may be willing to compromise on the issue – the delineation of the 1967 border along a tiny piece of land on the Eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee – that wrecked the negotiations eight years ago.

https://prosyn.org/fNyTpFj