By Xinhua,
Beijing : One of the latest developments in the Mideast is the mediation by Turkey to restart peace talks between Syria and Israel, a move analysts say meant more to sound out each other than discuss issues of substance at this stage.
By far, all the three parties have confirmed the mission by Ankara, though they have different versions about the efforts that started last year.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a visit to Damascus late last month. He confirmed that Syria and Israel had asked Ankara for mediation, adding that such efforts would start at a low level before bringing the leaders together if successful.
Ankara has reportedly passed a message from the Jewish state expressing readiness to withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for peace.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Qatari daily Al-Watanin an interview that “What we now need is to find common ground through the Turkish mediator.”
But the Syrian president denied secret talks with Israel, saying “What Syria could do in this regard will be announced to the public and the only criterion to accept any talks is to be serious and committed to UN resolutions.”
Israel, for its part, sounds more positive about the process.
Early this month, government spokesman Mark Regev announced “preliminary work” on resuming long frozen peace talks with Syria.
“We don’t just want to restart only a process of negotiations, we want to start a political dialogue,” said the spokesman.
Peace negotiations between Israel and Syria broke off in 2000, when Ehud Barak, then Israeli prime minister on behalf of the center-left Labor Party, offered to withdraw from most of the strategic plateau, but wanted to keep a buffer strip along the Sea of Galilee’s eastern shore, at the foot of the Golan.
Syria has consistently demanded a full return of the Golan down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee — Israel’s main water source — as its price for peace.
Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981, a move never recognized by the international community.
Israel is now sweetening its peace offer in hope not only to end the state of war with Syria, but also to press for a windfall of isolating Iran and militant groups like Hamas in the Gaza Stripand Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted a senior official as saying last month: “If Syria breaks away from the axis of evil, ifthe transfer of arms to Hezbollah is halted and if Jihad and Hamasbases are removed from Damascus, this will constitute progress.”
Arab commentators said that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is negotiating with Assad over the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in order to break Syria’s tight embrace with Iran, Israel’s archenemy.
A commentator from the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat wrote that by concluding a peace treaty with Syria, Israel could “strike Iranin the middle of the heart” and also weaken Hezbollah, which is reportedly getting Iranian weapons via Syria.
Just as Israel conditions its offer on Syria’s cutoff of ties with its enemies, Damascus likewise expects more in a peace deal with Israel.
Neutral Arab observers believe that Assad is trying to wriggle out of the international isolation through renewed peace talks with Israel. Damascus probably think that the negotiations could end an investigation of Syrian officials suspected of links in the2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
For the time being, Assad seems in no hurry to move quickly in the aftermath of the failed talks in 2000, despite Israel’s touting of the back-channel contact that may worry Iran and Hezbollah.
Instead, Assad stressed Syria was ready to negotiate with Israel through Turkey to “find common ground” for peace, but any direct talks must wait until a new U.S. president is elected.
Despite the trial balloon objective of the move at the moment, analysts believe that Syria and Israel, the long-time enemies in the Middle East have taken a positive step. Knowing each other better is probably the first step to make peace in a region that has been plagued by violence for so long, they say.