ISRAEL: Olmert's peace offensive

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is waging a peace offensive as he battles on the home front against allegations of corruption that threaten to cut short his term in office.

In an interview with The Times this week, he spoke of a "race against time" to reach an interim accord with the Palestinian Authority in U.S.-backed peace talks before President Bush leaves office in January. "If we miss the opportunity," he said, "then how long will it take before we can restart with a new American administration?"

Broadening his peace effort Wednesday, Olmert went public with the existence, since early last year, of talks between Israel and Syria through Turkish mediators, aimed at ending the two neighbors' long enmity. That represents a longer-term effort by Olmert to end Syria's backing for the Palestinian movement Hamas, a sworn enemy of Israel that is not part of the talks with the Palestinian Authority. The move weakens the Bush administration's policy of trying to isolate Syria.

An Israeli-Syrian accord could oblige Israel to return most or all of the militarily strategic Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. In return, Israel would expect Syria to break its alliance with Iran, which backs the Lebanese group Hezbollah as well as Hamas. Israel is alarmed by Hezbollah's recent muscle-flexing in Lebanon, and by Wednesday's internal political agreement there that appears to solidify the group's status as an armed force overshadowing the power of the state.

—Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Comments

[habib battah]

Nikos could be right. I spoke to members of hezbollah in Beirut today and they are not concerned in the slightest by the reported talks. They say Syria is not making peace but merely trying to reclaim it territory. Peace is unattractive they say, because average Egyptians and Jordanians have benefited little from the process.

[Nikos Retsos]

There is more to the Babylon & Beyond story. Israel
prime minister Ehud Olmert certainly need to replace the headlines of his corruption investigation with peace with Syria headlines. That is surely a ploy, but
I am sure also that Syria will not cut off relations with Iran and Hezbollah just to get a reduced Golan Heights return without the Sea of Galilee part included.

Without an alliance with Hezbollah and Iran,
Syria will be strategically a ragtag nation and subject
to internal strife from militant religious sects. The present Syrian president, Bashar Assad, doesn't command the authority of his late father , Hafez El Assad, who was known as "The Lion of Damascus."
Hafez Assad used to get billions from Arab kings and emirs to buy Soviet weaponry; Bashar Assad
gets nothing today, and Syria is too poor to buy the
top of the line Russian air defense systems Iran has procured. The recent bombing of a Syrian site
by Israeli warplanes, and the buzzing of Bashar Assad's vacation home, also by Israeli warplanes two years ago, has proved that Syria cannot control her air space. And its army has always turned and ran when the Israelis attacked.

Syria surely want the Golan Heights. But I doubt if it will accept a 3/4 return, or that it will scrap the alliances it depends upon for its survival as a state
for it. Hezbollah and Iran are highly respected military powers in Middle East now, and Syria without them will lose any leverage and influence in
the region. The Israeli and Syrian peace talks are just pasturing by both sides.
Nikos Retsos, retired academic.