Tanya Reinhart and Irit Katriel
Mit'an (Hebrew), July 2000
Between December 1999 and March 2000, a great
hope for
peace with Syria turned
into a big disappointment.
While
the Israeli and most foreign media worked hard to
portray Assad as the rejectionist, it didn't fully
conceal the fact that Barak never
agreed to withdraw
from the Golan
heights.
In December 1999, Clinton announced the renewal of
the peace
talks between Israel and Syria. The feeling in Israel
was of a great
historic moment. The dominant message which was
conveyed by
the Israeli media was optimistic: what was seen a great
hope was
peace with Syria and quiet in the north. Peace like
with Egypt:
Israelis can vacation in Nueiba and Dahab - They just need
to do
it as is customary between two countries, with
a visa and a
border crossing in Eilat. The popular
media published articles
about tourist attractions in Damascus.
The polls indicated that most of the Israeli public agrees to a
withdrawal from the Golan in exchange for
peace. Even three
months later, when the language of
imminent peace has changed
into one of a
"disappointment" with Syria, and the newspaper
headlines announced that "the support
for withdrawal is
decreasing", the public continued
to support: in a comprehensive
poll which was conducted by
the Tel Aviv university's Yafeh
institute for
strategic research, 60% of Israelis Jews supported
a withdrawal from
ALL of the Golan in exchange for peace with
Syria.
The conductor of the poll, Prof Asher Arian, explained
that this poll is more reliable than similar polls because it was
spanned over a month, and not over a week, as is usually
done,
people were interviewed in their homes and not over
the phone,
and the number of participants was large: 1201
compared to the
customary number of around 500.
How is it that despite the support of most of the Israelis,
no
agreement was realized?
This isn't, of course, the first time that the
Israeli-Syrian
negotiations appeared to have entered a high gear.
The previous
round, which began in 1994, seemed no less promising. On
11.4.94,
the main headline of Haaretz (one of many)
announced: "working
assumption -a full withdrawal from the
Golan". The negotiations
lasted nearly two years. Then, too,
Israel was flooded with "we
are with the Golan"
demonstrations, but in the negotiations,
nothing
moved. Rabin insisted that they will first discuss all
the
details of the security arrangements and demilitarization,
and postpone the discussion of the extent of the withdrawal to a
later stage. And so, after two years
of negotiations, the
committees were still
discussing the position of the early
warning
system and managed to produce one unsigned 'non-paper'
which doesn't mention the word
"withdrawal", while Rabin
continues to invest huge
sums in development and construction on
the Golan.
It appeared that Israel is planning on
many more years of
negotiations, and one
could wonder what their purpose is.
Apparently, a cold status-quo has been maintained with Syria for
years - Israel annexed the Golan, and Syria remained quiet. But
in fact, it was clear that without peace, Syria
won't lift a
finger against the Hizbollah, which was giving
the IDF hell in
Lebanon. Rabin discovered the
alternative recipe: during the
negotiations,
Syria must restrain Hizbollah, to
prove the
seriousness of its intentions. About a week
after the beginning
of the negotiations, we were informed
that "Syrian army units
raided Hizbollah strongholds
and confiscated weapons" (Haaretz
19.4.94).
During the two years of negotiations, there was relative quiet in
Lebanon, and it appeared that it is possible to impose
on the
Syrians the same tactics that Rabin played on the
Palestinians -
endless negotiations, during which the other
side replaces the
IDF in the police work of the occupation. But
in 1996 Assad was
fed up, and he withdrew from the
negotiations. Gradually, the
disasters for the IDF in Lebanon
renewed.
The feeling in December 1999 was that this peace round will
be
different. This time, "the agreement is almost all done" and will
be
achieved by short negotiations. It seemed that
things are
moving ahead at a high pace. On 16.12.99 the two sides met
for a
ceremony on the white house lawn and
in January, they were
already engaged in intensive talks
in Shepherdstown. But then it
all stopped.
Since the closing of the Shepherdstown meeting (on 9.1.00) there
were no negotiations and in the Clinton-Assad summit in Geneva on
26.3.00 the death of the process was declared.
The formal explanation which was given for the failure
of the
talks was Assad's insistence on controlling a small strip of
land
on the Kinneret shore. But examining the formal
documents, and
what appeared in the media,
reveals a completely different
picture.
DECEMBER 1999: FROM WASHINGTON TO Shepherdstown
The basic assumption in the Israeli public's perception of
the
process was that Israel is willing to withdraw from all
of the
Golan (excluding a small strip of land on the
Kinneret shore).
But what is the source of this assumption? Not
Barak's speeches.
He never said "withdrawal from the
Golan" or "dismantling of
settlements". An example
of the artwork of creating a wrong
perception: in Yediot of 10.12.99, the main
title announced:
"Barak on the Golan settlers: they will leave
their homes after
fulfilling a historic mission". On page two,
the exact quote from
Barak's speech at the labor center meeting
appears, and doesn't
include one word about evacuation - only
about the importance of
the settlers: "They built a home, and vineyard
and village, and
if it weren't for their work, determination and
moral stature it
wouldn't have been possible to begin negotiations
with Syria, and
we would have been now without security and without the
Golan. We
are all deeply connected to the
Golan's landscapes, to the
settlement mission on the
Golan, which was mostly done by people
who were sent by our party. I
say to the people of the Golan: we
take your hand in appreciation of
what you did."
The only source for interpreting his words as
willingness to
withdraw is: "Following the speech of the prime
minister ... a
senior minister said:
'It's all over, they need to start
evacuating' ".
Barak maintained the same vagueness when
he left for the
Shepherdstown discussions. At the airport,
he announced: "I am
leaving on a mission of the whole
nation, to bring peace, and I
am moved by the scope of the
responsibility. This is where Anwar
Sadat landed, and from here
Menachem Begin departed to make peace
with Egypt." (Haaretz 3.1.00). This is
what was absorbed in the
public's perception: the
analogy with the peace treaty with
Egypt. But
if we pay attention, we will see that the only analogy
is exactly what was
said: that in the Egypt affairs there were,
naturally,
departures and landings at the same Tel-Aviv airport
that Barak
was leaving to Shepherdstown from.
Here is the rest of his speech (as quoted by
Yediot of the
3.1.00): "Nobody knows what the border line will
be" (a position
which he will repeat all along the
Shepherdstown discussions)
"but I did not hide that
there is a painful price for an
agreement, and we will not sign one for any price. We are going
towards a difficult agreement, but one which is
necessary to
bring an end to the era of wars. I lost many friends on
the Golan
and this doesn't come easy to me. It hurts me a lot to talk about
the Golan". If you want, you can
interpret this pain over
discussing the Golan as
willingness to give it up. But the only
thing which Barak
explicitly promises at the end of his speech is
that "we will not sign an
agreement which will not strengthen, in
our opinion, the security of
Israel". And he kept this promise -
he indeed didn't sign any
agreement.
THE Shepherdstown DOCUMENT
At the end of the Shepherdstown meeting (8.1.00) the
mediators
prepared a summary document (which
was supposed to remain
confidential) that outlines the
positions of both sides. The Arab
language newspaper Al Hayat printed on
9.1.00 a summary of this
document, based on Syrian sources.
Israel denied the authenticity
of the summary and exposed the full
document to the media. It
appeared in Haaretz and
Yediot on 13.1.00 Comparing the Syrian
version with the
Israeli version is highly revealing.
>From examining the Syrian version, it appears
that peace is
indeed reachable. First, it appears that the
border dispute can
be resolved: It has been often claimed in the
Israeli media that
the debate remaining between the Israeli and
Syrian negotiators
regards a small strip of land between
the international border
(Israel's position) and the border at
the time of the 67 war (the
'June 4' line - Syria's position). The
importance of this strip
is in the control over water
sources. The news in the Syrian
version of the
document is the clause that "Syria acknowledges
that the
June 4th line is not a border and is not drawn,
and
therefore is willing to cooperate in drawing the lines". (Section
A:
"borders committee"). Interpreters in Israel
viewed this
clause as signaling that Syria may be willing
to compromise on
this issue, and perhaps will agree to symbolic
water gestures, as
was the case in the agreements with Jordan.
Another claimed area of dispute has been the nature of the peace
relations. On this, Syria proposes now "to
constitute regular
peace relations, as between two neighboring
countries" (Section
B: "the normal peace relations"). That is, peace
like with Egypt.
As for the security concerns of Israel, Syria
"welcomes the
presence of international forces under the
US command in the
Golan Heights" (Section C:
"security arrangements"). Even more
significant, in this
respect, is what's behind the screen: Syria
is committed to make sure
that the Hizbollah will not operate
against
civilians in the Israeli North, and has already passed a
painful
test, when Lebanese children were bombarded
in the
Southern Lebanon village Arab Salim. Syria prevented
retaliations
against Israeli civilians (which were permitted in case
civilians
are targeted in Southern Lebanon, according to the terms
of the
agreement reached between Israel and the Hizbollah
following the
1996 'Grapes of Wrath' war).
There is no doubt that the Syrian leak to El Hayat indicated its
readiness for peace.
However, the full version of this document reveals how far away
agreement is (contrary to Syria which published a summary, Israel
published the full text of
the document). During the
Shepherdstown
talks it was reported that Barak refused to commit
himself to a border
line and like Rabin before him, insisted that
the borders issue will
be discussed only in the end of the
negotiations. This stand is confirmed in the document. All that
the document says about the border line is that "the location of
the border line will be determined by taking security and other
considerations into account..." (section I).
Let us examine the relevant parts of the document.
Section I - establishing
peace and security in
recognized borders
1. The state of war between
Israel and Syria now ends
and peace is
established between them. The sides will
maintain normal peace relations as defined
in section
III.
2. The international, secure and recognized border
between Israel (I) and Syria (S) is the
border defined
in section II. The position of
the border was agreed
between the
sides (S: based on the June 4th 1967 lines)
(I:
will be determined by taking security and other
considerations into account, as well as
other crucial
considerations
of both sides and
their legal
considerations). The state
of Israel will (S: withdraw)
(I:
redeploy) all its military forces
(S: and
civilians) behind this
border line according to the
appendix to this agreement. (S: from
this point on,
each side with exercise
its full sovereignty on its
side of the international border, on top
of what
appears in this agreement).
Section II - the international border
1. The international border between Israel and
Syria is
as appears in the maps in the appendix -
this border is
the permanent, secure,
and recognized international
border
between Israel and Syria, and comes to replace
any other border or boundary between them.
(Haaretz, 13.1.00)
The document is a draft prepared by the US for a peace treaty, if
and
when it will be signed. It outlines a general framework, but
marks by
parentheses the points on which Israel (I) and Syria (S)
differ. On the
borders issue, the document refers us
to an
unnumbered appendix. Meaning, an appendix which doesn't exist
yet
and which is to include the maps that will be agreed
upon. At
this stage, Israel hasn't even offered yet a draft for
the map,
and only provided the general phrasing that we mentioned.
But what really reveals what Barak was willing to give for peace
is
the meaning he gives to this mysterious border line which will
be determined
at the end of negotiations: throughout the whole
document
the Israeli version stresses that after the peace treaty
there will be no
"withdrawal" of the Israeli army, but only
"redeployment of forces". The difference might
appear to be
semantic, but the experience of the Oslo accords,
in which Israel
committed only to redeployment, reveals its
meaning: withdrawal
entails complete evacuation of
military and civilian forces,
including dismantling of
settlements, and shifting sovereignty,
while redeployment
means only moving the forces outside of
certain areas, thus maintaining control of the occupying side.
Indeed, Israel insists that only military forces, but no Israel
civilians, will be redeployed in the Golan Heights,
while the
Syrian version explicitly mentions withdrawal
of military and
civilian forces. Meaning, the document
reaffirms what has been
reported on other occasions in the
Israeli media: Israel did not
commit to the evacuation of a
single settlement on the Golan.
Israel's intentions
to leave the settlements intact appear in
another
place in the document:
Section III - normal peace relations Appendix -
defines
the agreed procedures for
establishing and developing
these
relations (I: including the time frame for
finalizing the
necessary agreements and the
arrangements for the
inhabitants and the Israeli
settlements in the areas from which the military forces
will be moved according to section I) (S: ?)
All Israel has offered, then, is a meaningless redeployment which
will
leave the Israeli settlers and settlements in
place. To
remove all doubt, let's look again at section I: Israel
does not
accept the Syrian position that after the moving of
forces "each
side will exercise its sovereignty in its side
of the border".
So, whatever line will eventually be
declared as 'border', the
sovereignty over the Golan
Heights will remain Israeli.
In the meantime, not only did the construction
on the Golan
continue all through the negotiations, but
immediately when the
talks began, the Golan was awarded priority
A status, which gives
it preference for development (Yediot 17.12.99).
After Israel published the full text of the document (which was
supposed to remain confidential), the Syrians suddenly
stopped
the negotiations. (When the
Shepherdstown round ended, the
Israeli media mentioned a
second round to be convened soon, but
the Syrians did not return
to the negotiation table). How can
this be
explained? It is reasonable to believe that Assad knew in
advance, that
Barak has no intention of offering him more than
Rabin's
concept of endless negotiations. This is why he wasn't
enthusiastic, at first, about renewing the negotiations, and as
was mentioned again and again in the Israeli and US
media, it
took massive pressure to bring him back to the negotiating
table.
In normal circumstances, the need for this pressure seems strange
- He is offered all of the Golan with withdrawal from Lebanon; he
is
offered a water arrangement with Turkey, and
he refuses:
Without threats and pressure he won't agree to
have the Golan
back. But assuming that all he was offered
was to continue to
fight Israel's war with Hizbollah in
return for a Rabin style
peace show, it is
understandable why pressure was necessary.
Assad gave in to the pressure, because he was
threatened, not
only with severing of the economic sanctions in
the midst of a
drought year, but also with a Kosovo
style war: the IDF will
leave Lebanon unilaterally,
and with the first katyusha on the
Galilee (which even
Assad cannot control) the West will be at
peace
seeking Israel's side when it will attack Syria.
Barak, at least, mentioned his Kosovo
vision on several
occasions. Already in July
1999 he said: "I am confident in
entering agreements when the IDF is very strong, equipped
with
the most advanced systems in the world, the type which enabled in
Kosovo, for the first time in History, to lead a war which will
bring the surrender of a local dictator without one casualty on
the attacker's side." (Aluf Ben, Haaretz, 27.7.99, page 3b). But
this isn't only about words. All through the negotiations,
the
IDF held extensive maneuvers on the Golan, which
simulated war
with Syria. During the Shepherdstown meeting,
we were informed
that the IDF is holding the fifth maneuver in
this series. (Amir
Oren, Haaretz 14.1.00). What would have
Israel said if Syria
would have done the same during
negotiations?
But the carrot beside the Kosovo stick was
the negotiations
excuse and the appearance that Israel is
indeed considering to
give up the Golan. With these, Assad could
justify to his people
the continuation of the talks. In
this spirit, he ordered to
publish an optimistic
version of headway at Shepherdstown. The
publishing of the
full Shepherdstown document canceled even the
appearance. Even
if the contents of the document didn't sink in
the Israeli
public perception, it was published all over the
world and it was no longer possible for the Syrians to
pretend
that they believe that Barak is close to giving
up the Golan
heights. Assad decided to leave the talks.
MARCH 2000: THE CLINTON-ASSAD SUMMIT
Clinton summoned Assad to a summit meeting in Geneva on 26.3.00.
Before this summit, the media went a long way
to depict the
negotiations as stuck due to Syrian
stubbornness. In Yediot of
24.3.00, a large lettered title
for an article by Shimon Shiffer
said "Clinton will tell Assad: it is
your turn to be flexible".
But in the article itself
we read that American sources are
saying that
their problem "is that Barak is not willing to give
us clear
answers regarding the withdrawal to the June 4, 1967
lines, as Assad demands. He prefers to wrap his position by vague
statements about what his predecessors
have committed to,
commitments which he cannot erase, and
we are left to interpret
his hints and convey them to Damascus."
Barak is quoted in this
article as saying "I will not give
any political commitment to
Assad before we know exactly
what we will get in return..."
And indeed, the summit failed. The Israeli and
most of the
foreign media continued the line it
started: Assad refused to
compromise on the Kinneret
shore, and by this said a definite no
to peace. They topped this by
stating that this was his last
chance to reach
an agreement with Israel.
But along this version, another one appeared: the one which was
reported by Robert Fisk in the British Independent on
26.3.00:
"The two men held three hours of talks, through interpreters,
at
the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, with the
Syrian leader
patiently explaining he was not going
to fall into the same
'peace' trap as
the Palestine Liberation Organization leader
Yasser Arafat. He will not make
peace with Israel before
guaranteeing the return of all of
the occupied Golan, captured by
Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Mr Arafat signed a peace
settlement then failed to
gain a majority of the occupied West
Bank or a capital in
Jerusalem."
In this narrative, the dispute is not over the 500 meters at all
("it was conveyed on behalf of Assad that he
is willing to
compromise on the withdrawal line,
and even to full Israeli
control over the whole of
the Kineret shore, while continuing to
negotiate water rights"). The
dispute is over the model of the
peace. There are two
models in our history: in the Egyptian
model, all stages of the withdrawal and guarantees were finalized
before
the treaty was signed (the later discussions surrounded
the autonomy for the Palestinians). The withdrawal was
set to
spread over three years, and only
after 2/3 of Sinai was
evacuated, embassies were set
up. The Taba issue remained. Both
sides held it precious, and
the Israelis used to spend their
vacations on
its shores. That's why the decision regarding it was
left for the end.
In the Arafat model, the Oslo agreement was signed with
almost
nothing agreed upon, besides Israeli declarations
of principle
about willingness for a withdrawal. Seven years
later, it turns
out that the Palestinians have halted the
Intifadah, but Arafat
didn't get anything of what was promised
to him in the west bank.
What was realized was the autonomy plan
which the Palestinians
always rejected. Assad said that he will
agree to a Sadat style
peace, and not to an Arafat style one.
Barak is demanding that he
will first sign, open embassies and
fight the Hizbollah. And
then, if we will be satisfied,
we will withdraw. This is the
Arafat model.
Barak does not agree to the Sadat model.
Yediot of the 27.3.00 also reported that Syrian sources said that
Assad
brought with him to Geneva "a compromise offer regarding
normalization", and that he had agreed to
an early warning
station on the Hermon which will
be staffed by American and
French technicians, along
with some from a "third party", which
could include Israelis.
But this appeared in the small letters.
The titles announced
that "The summit with Assad failed" on the
first page and "Assad
said no" in huge letters on pages 2 and 3.
To remove any doubt as to who is to blame for the collapse of the
talks,
Nahum Barnea provided an analysis in the same newspaper,
in
which he described the summit as a slap on the face which the
ego
driven Assad gave to Clinton, and added: "Syria belongs to a
type of
country which is disappearing. The moustache type. Assad
brought with
him to Geneva some dozens of such moustaches, who
sat
yesterday in the Hotel lobby, whispered to each other
and
were really frightened whenever a non-Syrian
approached them.
Tyrant regimes can probably last, for years. If Sadam
Hussein is
lasting in Iraq, there is no reason why Assad will
not last in
Syria..."
Beyond the demonizing which describes
people as frightened
moustaches with whom we certainly cannot
achieve peace deals, it
is worthwhile to remember
that during the gulf war, Saddam
Houssein was
compared to Hitler, an analogy which was
based
mainly on his moustache. Now, Assad is compared to Hitler
based
on the moustache analogy Assad is Saddam is Hitler.
Barnea, the
senior reporter who accompanies Barak in his
travels, gives a
good illustration of the tones with which
the media accompanied
the negotiations with Syria. Already
at the first meeting in
Washington all we heard was
how A-Shara is primitive, doesn't
understand the
feelings of the Israelis, and is not a serious
candidate for peace at all.
If anyone in Israel really intended to bring about some kind of a
historic compromise with Syria, there was not a single evidence
for this intention, either in the media
or in the formal
documents.