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MJ: Newly Announced Israel-Syria Peace Talks Run Against Grain of Washington's Anti-Engagement Policy.
Just a week after President Bush, speaking at Israel's Knesset, likened those who would advocate engagement with "terrorists and radicals" to Nazi appeasers, the governments of Israel and Syria—a close ally of Iran—have announced that official peace talks are underway between their nations, mediated by Turkey. "It is better in this situation to speak rather than to shoot," declared Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in a statement Wednesday. "This is what the sides agreed." [...]
While Bush-era Washington has been consumed with ideological debates over whether talking to hostile regimes and militant groups rewards or legitimizes them, a parade of veteran senior Israeli security and diplomatic officials has pushed the case, both in Israel and Washington, that engaging adversaries such as Syria and Hamas could advance their nation's security interests. "The alliance between Syria and Iran is mainly one of convenience," Israel's former foreign ministry director general and Mossad official David Kimche told me in January in a suburban Tel Aviv cafe. "There is no deep connection. And it's worth our while, if we could weaken that link." [...]
Alon Liel, former director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, has participated on the Israeli side of back channel Israel-Syria talks in recent years. "One of the reasons that I believe we should explore the possibility of speaking with Syria on an official level is that this body needs oxygen," he told me in February during a visit to Washington. "And we can keep the [peace] process alive through the Syrians because we can bluff with the Palestinians for another two months, but not more. We need a real process, and the Syrians are open to do it." [...]
Washington and Jerusalem also part ways over Syria's role in Lebanon. The Bush administration sees Lebanon's March 2005 Cedar Revolution -- which led to withdrawal of Syrian troops a month later, and subsequent democratic elections -- a crowning achievement in its efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East. Some Israeli officials take a more jaundiced view. "We were very active in Lebanon, and we learned a lot of things," Kimche told me. "The Syrians do not see Lebanon as independent. They see it as part of Syria. There is no Syrian embassy in Lebanon, and there never was a Syrian embassy in Lebanon." [...]
More from Gershom Gorenberg: "Liel has stressed - in a press briefing in January 2007, and since - that a critical part of any deal is a switch in Syrian orientation from pro-Iran to pro-West. That would necessarily mean dropping support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Syria’s secular regime wants the reorientation in order to maintain its independence, Alon reports. For Israel, such a deal would mean much more than removing the direct military threat from Syria. With Hamas and Hezbollah weakened, Iran’s power in our area would be sigificantly reduced. But the deal requires a third party: Washington. Syria won’t and can’t risk dropping Iran without a new patron; otherwise it will be totally isolated in the region. And Bush’s Washington isn’t interested."
Update II: More analysis from Marc Perelman: "On its face, the simultaneous announcements by Israel and Syria this week that they were officially engaged in peace talks mediated by Turkey offered the most tangible evidence to date that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have stalled. Similar Israeli shifts in the 1990s between the Syrian and the Palestinian negotiating tracks typically meant the abandonment of one in favor of the other. But this time, things could be different. According to some observers familiar with the process, stepping up one track could actually strengthen the other."