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Home , 1948 and After, Akiva Eldar, Avi Shlaim, Banias River, David Hirst (journalist), Golan Heights

Lost Opportunities for Jerome Slater Peace in the Arab- Israeli Conºict and , 1948–2001

Until the year 2000, during which both the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian negotiating pro- cesses collapsed, it appeared that the overall Arab-Israeli conºict was ªnally going to be settled, thus bringing to a peaceful resolution one of the most en- during and dangerous regional conºicts in recent history.The Israeli-Egyptian conºict had concluded with the signing of the 1979 Camp peace treaty, the Israeli-Jordanian conºict had formally ended in 1994 (though there had been a de facto peace between those two countries since the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli ), and both the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian conºicts

seemedLost Opportunities for Peace on the verge of settlement. Yet by the end of 2000, both sets of negotiations had collapsed, leading to the second Palestinian intifada (uprising), the election of Sharon as Israel’s prime minister in February 2001, and mounting Israeli-Palestinian violence in 2001 and 2002.What went wrong? Much attention has been focused on the lost 1 opportunity for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, but surprisingly little atten- tion has been paid to the collapse of the Israeli-Syrian peace process.In fact, the Israeli-Syrian negotiations came much closer to producing a comprehen-

Jerome Slater is University Research Scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo.Since serving as a Fulbright scholar in Israel in 1989, he has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conºict for professional journals such as the Journal of International Relations and Political Science Quarterly. He also serves on the advisory board of Tikkun and writes regularly for the magazine.At present, he is at work on a book about the and the Arab-Israeli conºict.

1.There are a number of analyses of the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2000/01 that challenge the conventional view that an intransigent and radically revanchist turned down a far-reaching and fair Israeli offer of a two-state compromise that would have given the a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state.See especially , “On the Basis of the Nonexistent Understandings,” Ha’aretz, November 16, 2001; Akram Hanieh, “The Camp David Papers,” Journal of Studies, Vol.30, No.2 (Winter 2001), pp.75–97; Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” New York Re- view of Books, August 9, 2001; “The Palestinian Response to the Clinton Proposal,” December 30, 2000, reprinted in Report on in the Occupied (Washington, D.C.: Founda- tion for Peace, January–February 2001); Ron Pundak, “From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?” Survival, Vol.43, No.3 (Autumn 2001), pp.31–45; William B.Quandt, “Clinton and the Arab-Israeli Conºict,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.30, No.2 (Winter 2001), pp.26–40; Yezid Sayigh, “Arafat and the Anatomy of a Revolt,” Survival, Vol.43, No.3 (Autumn 2001), pp.47–60; Jerome Slater, “What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol.116, No.2 (Summer 2001), pp.171–199; and Deborah Sontag, “And Yet So Far: A Special Report,” New York Times Magazine, July 26, 2001.

International Security, Vol.27, No.1 (Summer 2002), pp.79–106 © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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sive peace treaty than did the Israeli-Palestinian process.Their eventual failure is the latest in a long series of lost opportunities for peace, both between Israel and Syria and in the overall Arab-Israeli conºict. On some occasions, opportunities for peace were missed when one side in the conºict presented genuine and fair compromise proposals that took into account the vital interests of its adversary, only to be rejected when the other side either refused to enter into a negotiating process or conditioned its entry on maximal demands that effectively ended the chances for a settlement.On other occasions, serious negotiations for comprehensive settlements did take place, with the result that the distance between the two sides was so reduced that the remaining issues seemed to require only relatively small compromises. Yet in the end, because of the stubbornness of one or both sides, no agreement was reached. Which side has been most responsible for the failure of efforts to end the conºict? The assigning of historical responsibility is not an exercise in moral- ism, empty ªnger-pointing, or hindsight reasoning devoid of contempo- rary relevance; most of the issues are still central to the ongoing conºict, the resolution of which is critical not only to and but to the entire world. In this article I argue that although both sides in the Arab-Israeli conºict have often been inºexible, ideological, and prone to maximal demands, most observers—at least in Israel and the United States—have overstated Arab ri- 2 gidity while understating Israeli inºexibility. Because these perceptions are so widespread and harmful to the prospects for peace, this article emphasizes the Israeli rather than the Arab responsibility for the remaining deadlocks. I begin with a brief overview of the conventional mythology about the over- all Arab-Israeli conºict, and the challenges to it by the Israeli “new history” movement.The rest of the article reviews and analyzes the mythology of the Israeli-Syrian conºict.The main topics are the 1948 war and its immediate af - termath; the 1951–67 period; the 1967 war and the Israeli capture of the Heights; the relationship between Syrian President Haªz al-Asad and the Is- raeli leadership, especially in the 1990 negotiations; Israeli Prime Minister and the Israeli-Syrian negotiations; and the current situation.The conclusion recapitulates the overall argument and suggests what conditions might make a settlement feasible.

2.Of course, in most of the rest of the world (including to a considerable extent ), the con - ventional Israeli-U.S. views are not accepted. This was true even before the current disenchant- ment with Israel’s present policies toward the Palestinians.

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Myth versus Reality in the Arab-Israeli Conºict

Among the most enduring Israeli/U.S. myths about the Arab-Israeli conºict is that the Arabs bear the overwhelming responsibility for the conºict because of their refusal to accept the existence of the state of Israel and to reach a negoti- ated settlement with it.Because of this implacable Arab hostility and rejectionism (the mythology holds), there has been no one with whom Israel can discuss a settlement, the exceptions being Anwar al-Sadat of in the late 1970s and King Hussein of in the 1980s and 1990s.Furthermore, ev - ery Arab-Israeli war was unavoidable, forced on Israel by the rejectionism of its Arab neighbors. This view, however, does not stand up to serious examination.In the past ªfteen years, there has been a remarkable burst of historical scholarship, mostly by Israeli academics and journalists, on the origins and dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conºict.The Israeli new history movement is based on earlier crit- ical scholarship and contemporary accounts; declassiªed Israeli, American, British, and archives; the private diaries and public memoirs of Israeli political leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, , , , and Moshe Sharett; and interviews with Israeli 3 policymakers.

3.The leading Israeli new history works are Uri Bar-Joseph, The Best of Enemies: Israel and in the War of 1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1987); Mordechai Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Is- rael’s Road to Suez and Back (New York: St.Martin’s, 1994); Michael Bar-, Facing a Cruel Mirror: Israel’s Moment of Truth (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990); Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Land- scape: The Buried History of the since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Simha Flapan, and the Palestinians (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon, 1987); Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s Fateful Decisions (London: I.B. Tauris, 1988); Yossi Melman and Raviv, Beyond the Uprising: Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians (New York: Greenwood, 1989); , The Birth of the Palestinian Problem, 1947–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Benny Morris, : Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: , 1990); Benny Morris, Israel’s Border , 1949–1956: Arab Inªltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, 1993); Ilan Pappé, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conºict, 1948–51 (London: Macmillan, 1988); Ilan Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conºict, 1947–51 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992); , 1949: The First Israelis (New York: Free Press, 1986); Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Henry Holt, 2000); Gershon Shaªr, Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conºict, 1882–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1989); Gabriel Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: Biography of a Political Moderate (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1996); , Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Press, 1988); Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); and , The Founding Myths of Is- rael: , , and the Making of the (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). In addition, there are a number of important works in the new history vein by non-Israeli schol- ars, including David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East

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The new history movement has produced a sweeping reassessment of the entire course of the Arab-Israeli conºict.It demonstrates that since 1949 the policies of the most important Arab actors—Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, , and Syria—have been considerably more complex and differen- tiated than was previously understood.These Arab actors at various times have been genuinely open to the possibility of fair compromise settlements.On the other hand, if the Arabs have been more ºexible, the Israelis have been considerably less so on two central issues: resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conºict and settlement of Israel’s territorial conºicts with neighboring states.

The Israeli-Syrian Conºict

The new history scholarship offers numerous examples of lost opportunities for peace in Israel’s conºicts with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians.The same is true of the Israeli-Syrian conºict.Because Syria is commonly regarded as one of Israel’s most implacable foes, an examination of the lost opportuni- ties for Israeli-Syrian peace is particularly revealing of the limits of the conven- tional U.S.-Israeli mythology on the overall Arab-Israeli conºict. The Israeli-Syrian conºict dates from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when Syrian forces moved down from the and seized a small amount of ter- ritory assigned to Israel by the 1947 UN partition plan, advancing to the or just beyond as well as to the northeast shore of the Sea of .The conventional view of the 1948 war holds that the Arab invasion, in general, and the Syrian attack, in particular, were unprovoked acts of aggression in- tended to destroy the new state of Israel.The Israeli new history scholarship persuasively argues, however, that Arab actions were motivated far less by 4 anti-Israeli rejectionism than by three other factors. The ªrst was inter-Arab rivalries.In particular, the leaders of Egypt and Syria were alarmed by the barely concealed collaboration between the Zionist leadership and King Abdullah of Transjordan, under which Israel (motivated by the desire to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state) would acqui-

(London: I.B. Tauris, 1988); Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland (London: Faber and Faber, 1987); and Mark Tessler, A History of the Is- raeli-Palestinian Conºict (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 4.For general discussions of the Arab invasion that challenge previous interpretations, see Flapan, The Birth of Israel; Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conºict; Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe; and Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan. On the limited nature of the Syrian attack in particular, see the major work by Israel’s leading scholar of the Syrian-Israeli conºict, Moshe Maoz, Syria and Is- rael: From War to Peace-making (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.16–20.

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esce in a Jordanian seizure of the in return for Abdullah’s agree- ment to keep his out of the areas designated by the UN as Israeli 5 . Abdullah’s capture of the West Bank, however, alarmed his dynastic rivals in the Arab world, who feared even greater Hashemite , perhaps threatening their own lands or even their rule.Consequently, to block further Transjordanian territorial gains and to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel, Egypt and Syria sent relatively small expeditionary forces into Palestine. Second, the Arab invasion was at least in part a response to the Israeli expul- sion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, beginning in late 1947 when Is- raeli forces started moving into areas (especially in the Galilee) designated by the UN for the Palestinian state that was supposed to be created as part of the overall partition settlement.Even though the autocratic leaders and monarchs who then controlled most of the Arab states may have had little interest in the fate of the Palestinians, they could not entirely disregard the outrage of the “Arab street,” that is to say, the general population. Finally, border disputes played a signiªcant role, particularly in the Syrian invasion, which was designed to ensure that the ªnal border between Israel and Syria would allow Syrian access to the Jordan River and Lake (also known by its biblical name, the , and sometimes by its Is- raeli name, Lake Kinneret).The dispute over the border has its genesis in the colonial era.After their victory in , Britain and seized and then incorporated large parts of the into their empires: The 6 British took and Palestine, and the French took Syria and . The Anglo-French Agreement of 1923 drew up the Syrian-Palestinian border in such a manner that the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias would be in Pales- tine.Two of the three main rivers that feed the Jordan River, however—the 7 Hatzbani and the —originate, respectively, in Lebanon and Syria’s

5.Perhaps more than any other factor, Abdullah’s decision to keep the Arab Legion (the most powerful Arab army of the time) out of the battle against Israel made possible the smashing Israeli victory. 6.The most important work on the post–World War I division of the Middle East is David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914–1922 (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), especially pp.263–305, 389–403, 441–449, 493–530, 558–567.See also Fred Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1968), pp. 1–42; Howard M. Sachar, A (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1989), pp.89–137; and Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conºict, pp.145–184. 7.The third tributary is the , which originates in northern Israel, although very close to the border with Syria.Roughly 50 percent of the Jordan River is drawn from the Dan, and 50 per - cent from the Hatzbani and Banias.Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p.229.

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Golan Heights; in addition, the Jordan is fed by smaller streams ºowing from the Golan Heights (see Figure 1). Thus the 1923 border clearly places Lake Tiberias and the main branch of the Jordan River in Israel.The Anglo-French agreement, however, and subsequent practice during the British mandate period, distinguished at least partially be- tween the question and the question of water usage.The agree - ment stated that “any existing rights over the use of the waters of the Jordan by the inhabitants of Syria shall be maintained unimpaired ...and the inhabitants of Syria and Lebanon shall have the same ªshing and navigation rights on ...Lake Kinneret [Tiberias] and the River Jordan ...as the inhabitants of 8 Palestine.” Moreover, the treaty gave the Syrian government the right to have a pier on the lake. What made it feasible to distinguish between sovereignty and water usage was the placement of the borders.At the northeast corner of Lake Tiberias, the border was only 10 meters to the east of the shoreline; and for several miles north of the lake, the boundary was within 50–400 meters of the Jordan River. Thus, in implementing their agreement, both Britain and France allowed Syr- ian villagers to use the lake for ªshing, to feed their cattle, and for drinking wa- ter.In short, the 1923 treaty—on which Israel still relies to defend its position that Syria has no legal right to a border on Lake Tiberias—gives Syria some drinking and ªshing rights to both the Jordan River and the lake. Regardless, Syria could still draw drinking water from the on the Golan Heights—and today perhaps even from the Hatzbani River in Leba- non, over which Syria has effective control.This geography is particularly im - portant for assessing the real causes of the breakdown of the Israeli-Syrian peace process in 2000 which, as I argue later, had more to do with symbolism and national pride than with conºict over water.

1948–51: early israeli-syrian negotiations During the 1948 war, Syria advanced west from the 1923 border, capturing the northeast shoreline of Lake Tiberias, the east bank of the Jordan River north of the lake, and a small salient of Israeli territory just west of the river.Immedi - ately following the war, armistice talks under UN auspices were held between Israel and its Arab neighbors.In the negotiations with Egypt, Jordan, and Leb - anon, Israel insisted that the armistice lines must reºect the war’s military out-

8.The Anglo-French Treaty of 1923, quoted in Akiva Eldar, “Bordering on the Ridiculous,” Ha’aretz, May 4, 2000.See also Fredric C.Hof, “The Line of June 4, 1967,” Middle East Insight, Vol. 14, No.5 (September–October 1999), pp.1–9.

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Figure 1. Jordan River Watershed.

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come, which resulted in Israeli territorial gains going well beyond the UN partition plan boundaries.In bilateral talks with Syria, however, the Israelis ar - gued that military conquests could not be allowed to negate previous agree- ments on borders and demanded that Syria withdraw to the 1923 international 9 boundary. Syria disputed the legitimacy of that boundary on grounds that it was a mere colonial imposition and initially refused to withdraw its forces. In July 1949, the issue was supposedly resolved in a compromise that created three demilitarized zones (DMZs) in the disputed areas.Syria would remove its forces from these areas, located between the 1948 cease-ªre lines and the 1923 border, and Israel would refrain from moving its own forces into them (see Figure 1).Civilian life in the demilitarized zones would return to normal under the oversight of a UN-Israeli-Syrian commission, while the ulti- mate issue of political sovereignty would be resolved in future negotiations 10 that would replace the armistice with a political settlement. This compromise was followed by two highly promising Syrian peace over- tures to Israel.In a March 1949 military coup that was secretly supported by the United States and, most likely, Israel, Col.Husni Zaim took power in Da- mascus.Zaim wanted an agreement with Israel for a variety of reasons, includ- ing his desire for U.S. economic and military assistance; American diplomats made it clear to Zaim that such aid could be granted only after the Israeli- Syrian conºict had been settled.11 Shortly after gaining power, Zaim made a re- markable offer to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s ªrst prime minister: In exchange for permanent access on an equitable basis with Israel to the waters of the Jor- dan River and Lake Tiberias, Syria would agree to a peace settlement with Is- rael.Moreover, Syria would accept the permanent resettlement in its territory of some 300,000 of the estimated 700,000 Palestinian —which would 12 have been a major contribution to settling the refugee problem.

9.Aryeh Shalev, Israel and Syria: Peace and Security in the Golan (: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, , 1994), p.29. 10.The most important primary source for the armistice negotiations is Aryeh Shalev, The Israel- Syria Armistice Regime, 1949–1955 (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1993).General Shalev was an Israeli delegate to the talks and later served as the Israeli representa - tive on the Syria-Israel Armistice Commission.Similar accounts are Alisdair Drysdale and Ray - mond A.Hinnebusch, Syria and the Middle East Peace Process (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1991); Maoz, Syria and Israel; Donald Neff, “Israel-Syria: Conºict at the Jordan River, 1949–67,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.23, No.4 (Summer 1994), pp.26–40; and , The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 11.Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken, pp.86–90. 12.The Zaim offer is discussed in Shalev, Israel and Syria; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp.45–47; Segev, 1949, pp.16–18; and Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken, pp.65–110.Rabinovich, one of Israel’s most

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However, despite urgings from the U.S. government, UN mediator Ralph Bunche, and many high Israeli ofªcials (notably Abba Eban, then Israel’s am- bassador to the UN), Ben-Gurion refused even to discuss the offer. The Israeli leader’s adamancy was partly a function of his overall refusal to consider any territorial concessions to the neighboring Arab states, and partly a function of his unwillingness to share the waters of the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias. As Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, reported to the , Zaim’s offer was un- acceptable because “what is at stake is the water’s edge, the shore of Lake Tiberias, the East Bank of the Jordan River....Wewant to keep these waters 13 within the state’s territory and not to make Syria a partner.” Remarkably, Zaim then made an even better offer: After a cease-ªre based on the existing military lines, Syria would negotiate a peace settlement within three months, but this time on the basis of the 1923 border. This convinced Sharett, but not Ben-Gurion, who continued to refuse even to meet with 14 Zaim. Zaim was soon succeeded by another Syrian military government. Adib Shishakli, the new Syrian leader, was determined to continue the moderate, pragmatic policies of his predecessor. Accordingly, he banned the fundamen- talist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood in Syria; sought to end border incidents with Israel; and gave priority to improving relations with 15 both the United States and Israel. Even more important, Shishakli proposed a modiªed renewal of Zaim’s original offer: Syria would settle its conºict with Israel and increase to half a million the number of Palestinians it would absorb, provided that Israel agreed to divide the demilitarized zones with Syria, thus legitimizing Syrian access to the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias. But this, too, came to naught, as Ben-Gurion again refused to consider territorial or water- 16 rights concessions, even in exchange for peace.

prominent academicians as well as the former head of the Israeli negotiating team with Syria dur- ing the 1990s, regards himself as a critic of the Israeli . Nearly his entire account of early Israeli negotiations with Syria (as well as with Egypt and Jordan), however, provides crucial support for the major new history arguments. For two discussions of The Road Not Taken that argue that there is a marked disjuncture between the book’s detailed historical analyses and its conclu- sions, see Ian Lustick, “Refuting Revisionism,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 ( 1992), pp. 100–102; and Jerome Slater, “The Road Not Taken,” Israel Studies Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Fall 1992), pp. 19–23. 13. Quoted in Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken, p. 97. 14. Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 46. 15. Impressed with Shishakli’s actions, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson cabled U.S. diplo- mats in the Middle East to say that “the interest of the west is to aid Shishakli in his efforts to con- vene a progressive, stable, and pro-Western government in Syria.” State Department cable, , 1951, U.S. National Archives, quoted in Shalev, The Israel-Syria Armistice Regime, p. 95. It is not clear whether there was any U.S. or Western follow-up to Acheson’s suggestion. 16. On the Shishakli offers and Israel’s response, see Maoz, Syria and Israel, pp. 28–31.

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1951–67: growing israeli-syrian conflict In the early months after the signing of the 1949 armistice agreements and the creation of the UN-monitored DMZs, there were no violent incidents between the Israelis and the .In early 1951, however, Israel made “an extreme turnabout,” asserting its sovereignty over the DMZs without (as Aryeh Shalev 17 notes) “putting forward any serious arguments in support of its claim.” Rather Israel sought to settle the matter unilaterally, by “creating facts on the ground.” Its ªrst step was to remove the Arab residents from the DMZs, re- 18 placing them with paramilitary agricultural settlements. When the settlers began cultivating the formerly Arab land, Syrian forces overlooking the demil- itarized zones ªred on them.This in turn provoked far larger Israeli retaliatory raids on the Syrian positions.Shalev sums it up: “In the ªrst years of the - stice regime it was Israel that tried unilaterally to effect changes in the in the DMZ....[initiating] activity on the ground to change the status quo in its favor and secure full control of the area.Many of the ensuing incidents were triggered by Israel’s attempts to extend the areas under cultivation on 19 Arab-owned land, with the Syrians opening ªre in response.” At the end of armed conºicts in the early 1950s, the Lake Tiberias demilita- rized zone was effectively partitioned, with Israel establishing control over the western sector to the west bank of the Jordan River, and Syria retaining control 20 over the northeast corner of the lake and the east bank of the river. This parti- tion created a de facto border that remained in place until the 1967 war, when it was breached by Israeli forces.It is this border, which has come to be known as the “line of June 4, 1967,” that Syria insists must be re-created in a ªnal settle- ment.An important precedent was set during this period, one that is likely to become relevant in any future Israeli-Syrian settlement: During the nineteen years that Syria had access to the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias, it made no 21 effort to pump water from either of them. During the mid-1950s, the conºict again escalated.When the Syrians sought to establish their right to ªsh the waters of Lake Tiberias, shots were ex- changed between Israeli and Syrian patrol boats, which in turn led to major Is-

17.Shalev, The Israel-Syria Armistice Regime, pp.41, 99. 18.Shalev quotes the Israeli chief of staff as noting that the Arab villages were razed “to en - sure....[thatthe] is cleansed of Arabs next to the border.”Ibid.,p.77. 19.Shalev, Israel and Syria, pp.45, 49. 20.Hof, “The Line of June 4, 1967,” p.2. 21.Aryeh Shalev, private correspondence.Shalev notes that there was one trivial exception: Dur - ing the armistice regime, Israel allowed a Syrian farm just north of the lake to continue irrigation with water from the Jordan, as it had done during the British mandate.

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raeli raids on Syrian military positions.In December 1955 a young Israeli military ofªcer, , led a raid on Syrian positions along the shore of Lake Tiberias that killed ªfty men, an action that Shlaim terms “an unpro- voked act of aggression.” According to Shlaim, the Syrians had not been ªring on Israeli settlements or even ªshing boats, but only at patrol boats that had 22 been deliberately sent close to shore to draw Syrian ªre. This was no isolated incident.According to Moshe Dayan’s private secre - tary, Mordechai Bar-On, several of the raids were intended to be large scale, disproportionate, and destructive.Ben-Gurion and his protégé Dayan, sug - gests Bar-On, sought to provoke Egypt (which had recently signed a mutual defense pact with Syria) into providing military support to Syria so as to jus- tify a “preventive war” against Egypt—a policy that was bitterly opposed by 23 an overwhelming majority of Ben-Gurion’s own cabinet. Throughout the 1950s Israel’s provocative policies in the demilitarized zones continued, as it built roads, conducted forward patrols, seized territory, and 24 initiated or escalated ªreªghts. As the conºict continued to escalate, the Syri- ans began supporting Palestinian guerrilla raids on Israel; Israel responded with massive retaliatory raids that often went beyond military objectives to in- clude attacks on local Arab villages, a policy that Israeli critics suspected was part of Ben-Gurion and Dayan’s attempt to provoke a full-scale war with Syria before the could absorb the new weapons that the 25 had begun supplying. Even more serious clashes occurred over the waters of the Jordan River and its tributaries.In the early , Israel began diverting the headwaters of the Jordan River to the Desert, as part of its policy to reclaim the Negev as agricultural land.Syria responded by seeking to divert the Hatzbani and

22.Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p.149.In his autobiography, Abba Eban describes one of these many in - cidents, when in 1964 the Syrians ªred on an Israeli ªshing boat.Although no one was hurt, the Is - raeli retaliation killed seventy-three Syrians, which Eban called a disproportionate and “shocking spectacle of carnage.” Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), p.198. 23.Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza, p.64.In 1986, before Bar-On conªrmed the deliberately provocative policies of Ben-Gurion, one of Israel’s leading political scientists had described a pattern of unilat- eral Israeli encroachments in the DMZ to deliberately provoke a Syrian response, so that Israel could retaliate with massive force.Avner Yaniv, “Syria and Israel: The Politics of Escalation,” in Moshe Maoz and Yaniv, eds., Syria under Assad: Domestic Constraints and Regional Risks (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp.157–178.Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 1981); and Shlaim, The Iron Wall. According to Safran, p.356, “Syria had ...placed its armed forces under Egyptian command.” 24.See Yagil Levy, Trial and Error: Israel’s Route from War to De-Escalation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977); and Maoz, Syria and Israel, pp.45–52. 25.Maoz, Syria and Israel, pp.45–49.

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Banias tributaries further upstream, in and the Golan Heights, which in turn led to Israeli raids that destroyed the Syrian diversion facilities.

the golan heights and the 1967 war The escalating conºicts over the demilitarized zones and water were the back- drop to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.Another factor, however, may have also played a role: Ben-Gurion considered the Golan Heights—indeed much of southwestern Syria—to be an integral part of biblical Palestine, and therefore belonging by historical right to the that he aspired to bring into existence.It was not just a matter of Zionist , for in his memoirs he em - phasized the practical need for Israel to establish sovereignty over the entire Jordan River watershed: “Erez Israel ...covers an area ...on both sides of the River Jordan....For that reason we had always insisted on the obvious de- mand that Palestine must include the southern bank of the Litani [in Lebanon], the sources of the Jordan as far as the Hermon, and the Huaran District up to the al-Juja River, south of ....Despite the great importance of the northern and eastern parts of Palestine for the growing of cereals, they were even more important as a reservoir for the country’s .The main rivers of the country were the Jordan, the Litani, and the Yarmuk....The pos- sibility of using these rivers freely was a basic condition for mass settlement in 26 Palestine and for the country’s economic independence.” The Golan Heights and other parts of Syria were also included in Zionist vi- 27 sions of a Greater Israel. As one proponent of the new history movement has written: “Ben-Gurion’s territorial aims were large.He never tired of reminding his Arab listeners of the historical boundaries of Erez Israel.He had advocated these historical boundaries since 1948.Ben-Gurion demanded that they accept a Jewish state in all of Palestine including Transjordan, and Jewish settlement 28 in Syria and Iraq.” In addition to these ideological claims and the water issue, by the 1950s Ben- Gurion and Dayan had developed security concerns about the Golan Heights. As Shlaim has noted, in 1950 “various proposals were ºoated by Dayan for the capture of the , [on the Golan Heights], and the West Bank, all designed to stem the tide of inªltration ...[and] to round off Is -

26.David Ben-Gurion, My Talks with Arab Leaders (Jerusalem: Keter Books, 1972), pp.7, 10–11. 27.See the 1919 World Zionist Organization’s map of the intended Jewish homeland, in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p.16. 28.Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, p.144.

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rael’s borders....Dayan wanted Israel to threaten the Arabs and to constantly escalate the level of violence so as to demonstrate her superiority and to create 29 the conditions for territorial expansion.” In light of the expansionist dreams of Ben-Gurion and Dayan, as well as ac- tual Israeli behavior, it is clear that the Syrians had good reason to fear for the 30 future of the Golan Heights. Indeed, even before the Syrian shelling of Israeli settlements in the 1960s, the Zionist leaders began moving to seize the Golan. In January 1954, for example, Dayan outlined plans to Sharett for creating a se- 31 ries of “accomplished facts” by seizing the Golan if Iraq moved into Syria. Sharett was shocked by this, and in his diaries he accuses Dayan of seeking to provoke Syria into attacking Israeli outposts and settlements beneath the Golan Heights to justify an eventual Israeli counterstrike to seize the area. A number of Israeli specialists and even Israeli settlers in the demilitarized zones subsequently conªrmed Sharett’s account.For example, in 1990 Allen Shapiro, an Israeli journalist and political analyst who since 1960 had lived on a below the Golan Heights, wrote that the Syrians had not engaged in systematic or unprovoked shelling in the 1950s and 1960s: “In fact, the Syrians employed their artillery in a very restrained and disciplined fashion.They opened ªre whenever Israel carried out development projects in the demilita- rized zones or on former Arab-owned land.Indeed, their actions were so pre- dictable that typically the Israeli response was prepared and the civilian population put under cover before actions were taken that were certain to pro- 32 voke the Syrians into opening ªre.” In a 1976 off-the-record interview published after his death, Dayan con- ªrmed that Israel had deliberately sought to provoke the Syrians.He also ad - mitted that Israel had instigated “more than 80 percent” of its clashes with Syria: “It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow someplace ...in the demilitarized area, and [we] knew in advance that the Syrians would start to

29.Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan, p.571.See also Zohar, Facing a Cruel Mirror, p.21. 30.In reviewing Israeli behavior and Ben-Gurion’s expansionist statements, Maoz cautiously - serves: “It is important to point out....thedeep sense of fear—justiªed or not—among many Syri - ans of what they considered Israeli aggression and expansionism since 1948.” Maoz, Syria and Israel, p.32.See also Shalev, Israel and Syria, pp.128–129. 31.Livia Rokach, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (Washington, D.C.: Association of Arab-American Uni- versity Graduates, 1985), quoting from Sharett’s diary entry of January 31, 1954, p.19.Sharett con - sidered this plan to be part of “the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invited, and of the many clashes we have provoked.” Ibid., p. 6. Maoz discusses the conºict between Sharett and Ben-Gurion, emphasizing the aggressive nature of Ben-Gurion and Dayan’s policies, which “possibly” were designed to provoke Syria and Egypt into declaring war.Maoz, Syria and Israel, p.47. 32.Allen E.Shapiro, “What Price Peace with Syria?” Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1990, p.4.

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shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would annoyed and shoot.And then we would use ar - 33 tillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.” Five days after war broke out between Israel and Egypt on June 4, 1967, Is- rael attacked and seized the Golan Heights.Though Syria still had a military alliance with Egypt, it was not anxious to enter the war; it accepted a UN cease-ªre resolution in the early days of the war, and its forces remained in de- fensive positions.Dayan later claimed that he bowed to the pressures of Israeli hawks and kibbutz leaders, who were motivated by greed for the Golan’s wa- ter sources and fertile farm land.Later Dayan revealed that he had initially op - posed an Israeli attack on the Golan, principally because he feared provoking 34 U.S. anger and even Soviet military intervention. For a brief period after the 1967 war, the Israeli government seemed willing to acknowledge the 1923 international border and return the Golan to Syria in exchange for a peace treaty that included the total demilitarization of the area and an absolute guarantee that Syria would not interfere with the free ºow of water to the Jordan River from the Golan’s tributaries.There is considerable 35 doubt, however, over whether this decision was ever conveyed to Syria. In any case, when the Arab states refused direct negotiations with Israel after the 1967 war, the Israeli government rescinded the initial policy decision and be- gan expelling some 130,000 Syrian villagers from the Golan and replacing 36 them with Israeli settlements.

hafiz al-asad and israel Haªz al-Asad rose to power in Syria in 1970, winning out in an internal power struggle with more radical members of the Ba’th political movement, which

33.Interview conducted by Israeli journalist Rami Tal, “Moshe Dayan: Seoul Searching,” Yediot Aharanot, April 27, 1997, quoted in Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p.235.The same story is recounted in Tanya Reinhart, “Evil Unleashed,” Tikkun, Vol.17, No.2 (March–April 2002), pp.14–18.When Tal protested that Syria was a serious threat to Israel, Dayan responded: “Bullshit.…Just drop it.” Quoted in Reinhart, “Evil Unleashed,” p.17. 34.A discussion of Dayan’s memoirs, published only in Hebrew, is contained in the journal Israel Horizons, Autumn 1997.In his 1976 interview with Tal, “Dayan confessed that his greatest mistake was that, as minister of defense in , he did not stick to his original opposition to the storming of the Golan Heights.” Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p.235.Although Dayan’s account could be regarded as self-serving, it is generally accepted by Israeli scholars as credible and supported by other evidence. 35.The June 19 Israeli cabinet decision is described in Maoz, Syria and Israel, p.102; Shalev, Israel and Syria, p.52; and Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp.253–254.Shlaim points to evidence suggesting that the decision was never conveyed to Syria.If not, a possible explanation is that Israel expected ne - gotiations and did not want to reveal its bottom line. 36.The December 1967 policy change is described in Shalev, Israel and Syria, pp.53–54.

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had ruled Syria since 1963.While the Ba’th movement was initially strongly ideological, radical, nationalist, and anti-Israeli, Asad was relatively moderate and pragmatic.In fact, the main issue over which Asad came to power was his opposition to Syrian support for a guerrilla war against Israel, arguing against his more radical Ba’th opponents that Syria lacked the military capability to re- 37 pulse the inevitable Israeli retaliation. In particular, Israel’s development of nuclear weapons in the late 1960s con- vinced Asad—as it had Nasser—that any invasion of Israel within its pre-1967 38 boundaries would be suicidal. Instead, while remaining committed in princi- ple to supporting the creation of an independent state in Palestine, Asad was primarily committed to recovering the Golan, through either negotiations or force.To this end, he needed to establish a military equilibrium with Israel, and so he joined in a military alliance with the Soviet Union and, with the as- 39 sistance of Soviet arms and advisers, began a military buildup. When Egypt attacked Israeli troops in the Sinai in October 1973 to regain the , Syria joined the war and struck at Israeli forces on the Golan Heights.With the initial advantage of surprise and superior numbers, Syrian forces overran most of the Golan, with advance units even approaching the Jordan River.They stopped before reaching the Jordan, however—even though there were few Israeli forces left to resist them—rather than give Israel reason to fear that they intended to cross the river into Israel proper.Later analysis conªrmed that Syria’s war plans were limited to the recapture of the 40 Golan Heights.

37.Raymond A.Hinnebusch, “Does Syria Want Peace?” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.26, No.1 (Autumn 1996), pp.42–57. 38.For example, in 1969, according to Egyptian President ’s conªdante Mo - hammed Heikal, Nasser told Muammar al-Qaddaª of Libya that it was no longer realistic for Arab leaders to seek to liquidate Israel because there was “a strong probability” that Israel had nuclear weapons.Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle Press, 1975), pp.76–77.A number of Israeli security specialists have argued that beginning in the late 1960s, the presumed Israeli nu- clear deterrent had deeply affected the thinking of pragmatic Arab leaders such as Nasser, Sadat, and Asad, and that it had played a major role in the decisions of both Egypt and Syria not to attack Israel within its 1967 boundaries in the 1973 war.See Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence; A Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp.59–61, 87–88; Safran, Israel, pp.596–597; and Avner Yaniv, Deterrence without the Bomb: The Politics of Israeli Strategy (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1987), pp. 195–196. 39.On the Syrian-Soviet relationship, see Helena Cobban, The and the Syrian-Israeli Conºict (New York: Praeger, 1991); Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Hinnebusch, “Does Syria Want Peace?”; , The Soviet Union and Syria (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1988); Maoz, Syria and Israel; and Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria (London: I.B. Tauris, 1988). 40.On the Syrian war plans and the evidence that “Syria had abandoned any ambitions regarding Israel proper,” see Drysdale and Hinnebusch, Syria and the Middle East Peace Process, p.108.Further evidence was provided in 1976, in an analysis of the Syrian campaign by the military affairs jour-

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In the latter stages of the 1973 war, Israel regained its military advantage and once again drove the Syrian forces from the Golan.Thereafter, Asad effectively abandoned the use of force in favor of diplomacy.In 1974 he announced Syria’s acceptance of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which call for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli political settlement, under which Israel would re- turn lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for a guaranteed peace. Throughout the 1970s, in meetings with U.S. ofªcials such as , Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and , Asad reiterated his com- mitment to ending the military conºict and gradually moving toward a full peace settlement.This would be followed by the eventual normalization of diplomatic and economic relations after Israel completely withdrew from the Golan Heights and reached a settlement with the Palestinians.In that event, Asad promised the Americans, he would agree to a general demilitarization of 41 the Golan Heights in an effort to reassure Israel about its security. Asad maintained this position throughout the 1980s, joining in the 1982 Arab state Fez Declaration, which called for a peaceful settlement with Israel based on the principles of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.After came to power in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s and made it clear that there would be no Soviet military support for radical Arab policies toward Israel, the Syrian military option—even for a limited war to re- gain the Golan Heights—effectively came to an end.

negotiations in the 1990s In September 1992, Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara announced that Syria was prepared to sign a “total peace” with Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal

nalist Charles Wakebridge.Wakebridge noted that on October 7, the second day of the 1973 war, Syrian tanks descended from the Golan Heights but abruptly stopped before reaching the border, even though “there was little in the way of Israeli defenses to stop them.” In an interview with the Syrian defense minister, Gen.Mustafa Tlass, Wakebridge asked him to explain.Tlass responded that the orders came from the highest authority—meaning Asad—and that the Jordan River was “the natural Syrian boundary.” Wakebridge, “The Syrian Side of the Hill,” Military Review, Vol.56, No.2 (February 1976), p.27. Later Asad conªrmed this assessment, telling his biographer that “the goal was the retrieval of territory which Israel occupied in 1967....Syria’s aim was the recovery of the Golan.”Seale, Asad of Syria, p.197.Asad’s post facto claim might be considered suspect; it is lent credence, however, not only by the actions of the Syrian forces but also by Asad’s known fears of Israeli nuclear retali- ation (cf.n.34).Asad evidently failed to inform Israel of his limited intentions, however, leading Dayan to order the deployment of nuclear missiles.Maoz, Syria and Israel, p.130. 41.On Asad’s position in the 1970s, see Drysdale and Hinnebusch, Syria and the Middle East Peace Process; and Seale, Asad of Syria, pp.250–255, 296.In their diplomatic memoirs, Kissinger, Vance, Brzezinski, and Carter all speak well of Asad, regarding him as intelligent, ºexible, and realistic, as well as ready to come to grips with the necessity of an Arab-Israeli settlement.

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from Arab lands occupied in 1967.Subsequent interviews with Syrian ofªcials made it clear that by “total peace” Syria meant not merely a nonbelligerency 42 accord but full diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. Israeli and other analysts concluded that, with no military option available, Asad had de- cided that Syria must rely on diplomacy to regain the Golan Heights.More - over, Asad’s plans for Syrian economic development required U.S. and other international aid, trade, and investment, for which a peace settlement with Is- rael was a sine qua non. After considerable hesitation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to 43 enter into negotiations with Syria. Four major issues had to be resolved: the return of the Golan Heights under conditions that would not threaten Israeli security, disposition of the water sources on the Golan, the precise location of the Israeli-Syrian border, and the terms and timing of the diplomatic and eco- nomic normalization process. Over the next two years, Israel and Syria engaged in intense secret negotia- tions, resulting in a draft agreement that resolved most of the differences on 44 these issues and greatly narrowed those that remained. Over a three- to ªve- year period, Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights to the line of June 4, 1967, and full Syrian sovereignty over the Golan would be restored.In ex- change, Syria would agree to the demilitarization of the Golan, a water-sharing agreement, and full normalization of relations, in phase with the gradual Is- raeli withdrawal. Both sides had made signiªcant concessions.Asad initially demanded that the Syrian demilitarization of the Golan be matched by corresponding demili- tarization of Israeli territory west of the Golan.For the Syrians the issue of eq - uity was more than symbolic.As Shalev observes, from the Syrian perspective, “Israel was the aggressor in the majority of its wars....Syria has its own secu -

42.Maoz, Syria and Israel, pp.216–217. 43.In June 1990 Rabin (then defense minister) had said that he would rather retain the Golan Heights even if this prevented peace with Syria rather than make peace with Syria and relinquish the Golan.Maoz, “Syrian-Israeli Relations and the Middle East Peace Process,” p.15. 44.The most important sources on the secret negotiations in the early to mid-1990s are Helena Cobban, The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991–96 and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: United States Insti- tute of Peace, 1999); Hinnebusch, “Does Syria Want Peace?”; interview with Syrian Ambassador Walid Al-Moualem, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.26, No.2 (Winter 1997), pp.81–94; two books by the leading Israeli ofªcial during the negotiations, Itamar Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace: The Is- raeli-Syrian Negotiations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); Itamar Rabinovich, Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); and Patrick Seale, “The Syria-Israel Negotiations: Who Is Telling the Truth?” Journal of Pales- tine Studies, Vol.24, No.2 (Winter 2000), pp.65–77.As in his book on the early Syrian-Israeli conºict, The Road Not Taken, Rabinovich is very good on the details of the conºict and the negotiat- ing process, but excessively cautious in drawing the logical conclusions of his analysis.See n.11.

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rity sensitivities....The major current risk in Syrian eyes lies in the fact that the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is poised on the Golan Heights only 60 km 45 from the Syrian capital.” On the other hand, the Israelis argued that the small size of their state precluded a matching Israeli demilitarization, because in the event of war Israel would need to hold forward positions while it mobilized its reserves.The issue was close to being resolved by a compromise under which Israel would agree to establish a small zone within its territory in which there would be a limited number of Israeli forces, in exchange for Syrian agreement to more extensive demilitarization of the larger Golan Heights area. In the most important Israeli concession, Rabin agreed that in the context of full peace and normalization, Israel would withdraw to the June 1967 line, rather than insist on a return to the 1923 boundaries—meaning that Syria 46 would once again have a position on Lake Tiberias. After long denying re- of this crucial concession, Israeli ofªcials have now conªrmed it.Indeed Prime Minister Ehud Barak told his cabinet in February 2000 that Rabin had agreed to such a withdrawal, which he considered to be binding on his govern- 47 ment. In return for this concession, Asad agreed to negotiate a detailed accord on an Israeli-Syrian sharing of the waters of the Golan.Subsequently, Syrian ofªcials indicated that Syria would agree not to draw drinking water from Lake Tiberias, the source of about 40 percent of Israel’s scarce freshwater re- sources, so long as Asad was granted the symbolic victory of regaining all the territory lost in 1967 and a ªnal repudiation of the 1923 British-French boundaries. By 1993, though some details remained to be negotiated, an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement was at hand.It failed to materialize, however, when Rabin suspended the talks on the grounds that Israeli public opinion could not simul- taneously accept an agreement with the Palestinians (i.e., the of 48 1993) and one with the Syrians. When talks resumed in 1994, Rabin added a new Israeli precondition: Any agreement would have to be ratiªed by the Is- raeli public by means of a national referendum.This was a major problem for

45.Shalev, Syria and Israel, p.128. 46.Seale, “The Syria-Israel Negotiations”; and interview with Ambassador Al-Moualem. 47.Aluf Benn, “Barak: Past PMs Set Syria Talks on ’67 Lines,” Ha’aretz, February 28, 2000; and Wil- liam B.Quandt, “Clinton and the Arab-Israeli Conºict,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.30, No.2 (Winter 2001), p.30. 48.Cobban, The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks; interview with Ambassador Al-Moualem; and Rabino- vich, Waging Peace.

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Asad, because it might mean that Syria could end up with no agreement at all despite having made painful public concessions to Israel.Even so, Asad was willing to continue the negotiations.In the summer of 1995, however, Rabin broke them off again, probably because domestic Israeli opposition to a with- drawal from the Golan Heights was growing and thus Rabin was considering calling early elections. Following the assassination of Rabin in November 1995, be- came Israel’s prime minister.Peres initially decided to emphasize the Syrian rather than the Palestinian negotiations track, proposing to Asad that the talks be accelerated. Asad responded positively, and in subsequent U.S.-sponsored negotiations at Wye, Maryland, in early 1996, the Syrians were ready to agree not only to diplomatic normalization and economic cooperation but also to a broad range of security measures, if Israel agreed to withdraw its forces to the 49 pre-June 1967 line. Domestic opposition to any Israeli withdrawal from the Golan continued, however.Even Peres’s own foreign minister, Ehud Barak, was known to be against a complete withdrawal.Thus, when Peres decided in early 1996 to seek early national elections, he backed away from the Syrian negotiations.With the election of the Israeli government of in May 1996, the Is- raeli-Syrian negotiations effectively came to an end for the next three years, an- gering Asad, who—all the evidence indicates—was prepared to settle the 50 Syrian conºict with Israel.

barak and the israeli-syrian negotiations After Barak defeated Netanyahu in May 1999, the Israeli-Syrian negotiations resumed.Barak’s views on the security implications of the Golan Heights had evolved: He no longer insisted that Israel had to hold on to the area, so long as it was demilitarized.Further (as noted earlier), Barak initially seemed ready to implement Rabin’s agreement to return to the June 1967 line, thus giving Syria a limited presence on Lake Tiberias.As Barak noted in an interview with , once the Golan Heights were turned over to Syria, it was stra-

49.Cobban, The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks, p.10. 50.The best source for the Peres and Netanyahu years is ibid.Rabinovichprovides much support - ing evidence for Cobban’s conclusion that Peres lost the opportunity to conclude a peace agree- ment with Syria.This is especially true in his discussion of a 1997 Israeli newspaper interview with Uri Savir, one of the main Israeli negotiators: Savir stated that Peres could have reached an agree- ment, but with elections pending he was unwilling to confront the opposition of some leading Is- raeli generals—led by Barak—to a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights.Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace, p.241.

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tegically irrelevant whether Syrian sovereignty extended to the lake, rather 51 than to a meaningless line 200 meters to the east. During late 1999 there were intensive negotiations between Israel and Syria, mediated by the U.S.government.InJanuary 2000 the Clinton administration presented a draft peace treaty to both countries, setting forth the areas of agree- 52 ment and the remaining differences. The treaty would have terminated the state of war between Israel and Syria and committed each side to establishing full normalization of diplomatic and economic relations, even including coop- eration in tourism—though no timetable was set forth. The Golan Heights would be returned to Syria and demilitarized.In return, Israel would agree to establish areas within its own territory in which there would be a “limitation of forces and capabilities.” There was no agreement at this point, however, on whether the demilitarized zones would be, as Syria in- sisted, “of equal scope on both sides of the border.” There was also an agree- ment that the Israeli early warning facilities atop Mount Hermon in the Golan would be retained by an international peacekeeping force led by the United States and France, though Syria rejected the Israeli position that there must be “an effective Israeli presence” as well. On the water issue, the Syrians conceded that there must be a full resolution, though there continued to be differences on what that meant.The Israelis ar- gued that the arrangements must “ensure the continuation of Israel’s current use in quantity and quality of all the surface and underground waters in the areas from which Israeli forces will be relocated,” which of course meant that Israel would continue to have full use of the Jordan River, its tributaries in the Golan, and Lake Tiberias. Syria was not willing to go that far, maintaining simply that the water issue should be “based on the relevant international principles,” which apparently implied that, at least in principle, the waters of the Golan were subject to Syr- ian sovereignty.In statements away from the negotiating table, however, Syr - ian ofªcials stressed that they had no intention of diverting the headwaters of

51.Jane Perlez, “Clinton Will Meet Syria’s President on Israeli Issues,” New York Times, March 21, 2000, p.A1. 52.The draft treaty was published in Akiva Eldar, “A Framework for Peace between Israel and Syria: The Draft Peace Treaty Presented by the Clinton Administration to Jerusalem and Damas- cus,” Ha’aretz, January 13, 2000, http://www3.haaretz.col.il/eng/scripts/showArchiveArticle. asp?id=66110&wordd=.Unless otherwise noted, quotations in the following three paragraphs are taken from the draft treaty.

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the Jordan River or withdrawing freshwater from Lake Tiberias—a commit- ment lent credibility by the (previously noted) fact that, during the nineteen years the Syrians were on the lake, they refrained from pumping water from it. For Syria, they insisted, the issue was not water, but the national/symbolic one of restoring Syrian sovereignty over “every inch” of land lost in 1967; as For- 53 eign Minister Shara put it: “Land is not subject to negotiation—water is.” The boundary issue remained unresolved, however, despite Barak’s admis- sion that the Rabin government had agreed in principle to the Syrian position. Thus the draft treaty simply noted Syria’s insistence that the international boundary must be based on the June 1967 line.Signiªcantly, the Israelis did not ºatly reject this line.Instead they argued that the boundary must “take into account security and other vital interests of the Parties as well as legal consid- erations of both sides.” There matters stood, until Barak repeated the earlier process of Israeli back- tracking.Facing continued domestic resistance to Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and contemplating an agreement with the Palestinians that would re- quire extensive withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, Barak was unwill- ing to risk putting both issues, more or less simultaneously, to the test of a national Israeli referendum.The Clinton administration continued to try to broker an agreement, but it was unwilling to put any real pressure on Barak. When Clinton told Asad that Barak could not take the political risk of agree- ing to a return to the June 1967 line, “a deal that seemed ripe for the making” 54 collapsed. In the spring of 2000, Barak abruptly ended Israel’s negotiations with Syria. According to subsequent Israeli reports he acted unilaterally, without consult- ing his cabinet and without any internal discussion of what Israel’s vital inter- ests were.There is now evidence that top Israeli military ofªcials—not known for their dovish views—were willing to agree to the Syrian position on the bor- der: “IDF ofªcers now feel at liberty to state explicitly that ...responsibility for the failure of negotiations with Syria last year is borne by Barak, not Hafez Assad.General Staff ofªcers were willing to assent to Assad’s demand that Is -

53. Aluf Benn, “Syria Gets Tough in Reply to U.S.,” Ha’aretz, April 10, 2000, p.1. 54. Quandt, “Clinton and the Arab-Israeli Conºict,” pp.26, 30.Many stories in the daily Israeli press during this period made clear the domestic political risks that Barak—or for that matter any Israeli prime minister—would run by not only returning the Golan to Syria but agreeing to a Syr- ian presence on Lake Tiberias.Internal Israeli divisions over concessions to both Syria and the Pal - estinians were, and remain, a major obstacle to peace settlements.

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rael withdraw from the northeast shoreline of Lake Kinneret [Lake Tiberias], and they believed that Barak’s intransigent refusal to comply with the Syrian demand reºected a triumph of passing domestic political considerations over 55 permanent security needs.” Furthermore, one of Barak’s advisers, Gada Baltiansky, told news reporters: “I heard senior members of the Israeli delegation saying that an agreement was possible within two or three months.On all the issues—normalization, se - curity, and water—we got more than we’d gotten before....The Syrians, on the other hand, did not have any reason for optimism, because they didn’t hear an answer from us on ...withdrawal to the 1967 lines....In the negotiations with Syria, there was no creativity, no openness, no readiness to shatter 56 myths—just like in the negotiations with the Palestinians.”

the current situation Haªz al-Asad died in June 2000 and was succeeded by his son, Bashar al-Asad. In his ªrst months in ofªce, the new Syrian leader signaled on several occa- sions that he was prepared to restart the negotiations and sign a peace treaty with Israel, provided that the remaining issues were satisfactorily resolved. Barak insisted, however, that before negotiations could resume, Syria would have to agree to abandon its claim to any part of Lake Tiberias.This position reportedly angered some members of Barak’s government, who argued that he “was not responsive enough to the signals that emanated from Damascus fol- lowing the death of Haªz al-Asad,” instead giving Syria “the same ultimatum that he gave Arafat: First, announce your willingness to compromise and 57 then ...we renew the dialogue.” When the second Palestinian intifada broke out in the fall of 2000, any re- maining chances of a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement disappeared; neither side 58 could contemplate signiªcant concessions in the prevailing atmosphere. Driving home this new reality, the Israeli government announced plans to con-

55.Amir Oren, “IDF to Tell Sharon to Show Restraint This Month,” Ha’aretz, March 9, 2001, p.1. 56.Quoted in ibid.Cf.also the op-ed by Aluf Benn, “Resuscitating the Syrian Option,” Ha’aretz, October 18, 2001, in which Benn writes that Barak’s “gravest blunder” was his failure to sign a peace treaty with Syria.Like Rabin, Peres, and Netanyahu, Barak “backed out at the last minute when faced with the prospect of the price tag of an Israeli withdrawal to the shores of the Sea of Galilee.” Uri Shavit, “Between the Lines,” Ha’aretz, March 9, 2001, p.14. 57.Uri Benziman, “Reading Barak’s Body Language,” Ha’aretz, September 22, 2000, p.B2. 58.According to Bashar al-Asad, Sharon asked Syria to resume secret negotiations, but the Syrians refused to allow Israel “to use the Syrian track to blow up the Palestinian track.We won’t agree to

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59 struct 1,500 new homes in the Israeli settlements on the Golan. And in May 2001, Asad greeted Pope John Paul in Syria with the suggestion that Christians and Muslims make common cause against the Jews, “who try to kill the princi- ples of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Christ ...[and] in the same way they tried to commit treachery against 60 .” As indicated, many Israeli ofªcials have acknowledged that Israel bears the greater responsibility for the latest breakdown in the Israeli-Syrian peace pro- cess.Because the Syrians will not give up their aspirations to regain the Golan Heights as well as symbolic access to Lake Tiberias, and because neither side can afford a war, at some point negotiations will have to resume.And it does not auger well that the Israelis will then have to deal with Bashar al-Asad, rather than his more experienced and politically sophisticated father. Even so, given the progress made in the past, if the intifada is ªnally brought to an end in a manner satisfactory to the Palestinians, an agreement should be attainable.In the spring of 2001—before the worst of the Israeli-Palestinian violence—the Israeli government received messages from Damascus sug- gesting that Asad would be willing to pick up the negotiations where they were broken off by Barak a year earlier.According to Ha’aretz, “General Staff ofªcers ...[believe] that following a dialogue conducted along secret channels, 61 a peace deal could be struck after a very short summit meeting.” The most important of the unresolved issues continues to be whether the Syrians will regain “every inch” of the territory they lost in 1967, which re- quires a concession by the Israelis that the ªnal border will be that of 1967, not 1923.There is no security issue: No one argues that the tiny strip of land—a ºat immediately below the Golan Heights, which will eventually be re- turned in its entirety to Syria—is important for either side’s military security. Because of the growing scarcity of freshwater in the , on a ªrst assess- ment the water issue seems to be the crucial sticking point.But a closer look at the geography of the area, as well as a detailed analysis of the negotiating pro-

resolve the Golan issue before the Palestinian issue—and especially Jerusalem—is resolved, be- cause these are affairs that affect all of us, Arabs and Muslims.” Quoted in Daniel Sobelman, “Assad: Sharon Sent ‘Secret’ Peace Envoy,” Ha’aretz, March 20, 2001, p.1. 59.Avi Shmoul, “Government to Press Ahead with Golan Projects,” Ha’aretz, November 1, 2000, p.3. 60.Alessandra Stanley, “Pope, Arriving in Syria, Hears Its Leader Denounce Israel,” New York Times, May 6, 2001, p.A4. 61.Oren, “IDF to Tell Sharon to Show Restraint This Month.”

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cess in the 1990s, reveals that the water issue can be resolved—and in most re- spects, came very close to being resolved—regardless of the precise location of the boundary relative to Lake Tiberias and the rivers that supply a substantial portion of freshwater to Israel. To begin with, the Syrians have repeatedly indicated that they are willing to negotiate a detailed settlement over water.The settlement would have in - cluded an agreement that in exchange for Israel agreeing to the 1967 bound- aries, Syria would agree to share the waters of the Golan Heights and to refrain from drawing water from or polluting Lake Tiberias or the Jordan River—a credible commitment, in light of Syria’s responsible behavior during the nine- teen years it had access to those areas.An agreement over water would be greatly facilitated if it were supplemented by an additional tripartite Israeli- Syrian-Turkish accord: , which has a large surplus of freshwater, could agree to sell enough water to both Israel and Syria to make up for any short- 62 falls in either country’s water needs. There would be little reason for the Syrians to renege on such an agreement. If that were truly a central concern of the Israelis, they never would have agreed to the principle of complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, because once that is accomplished the Syrians would directly or indirectly con- trol two of the three major tributaries of the Jordan River, putting them within several kilometers of the Dan River, the only Jordan tributary originating in Is- rael.Indeed the Syrians would be all but sitting on the Jordan itself north of Lake Tiberias, in control of the high ground. In other words, if the Syrians wanted to use water as a weapon against Israel after a settlement is reached and they regain control over the Golan Heights, it is irrelevant whether they have a direct foothold on the northeast corner of Lake Tiberias.But use of the water weapon would be equivalent to declaring 63 war on Israel, which is far stronger militarily than Syria. The consequence— at a minimum—would be that the Israelis would not only drive the Syrians from the shores of Lake Tiberias but almost certainly would reconquer the en- tire Golan Heights.In those circumstances, the Israelis would have widespread international support, and it would be hard to imagine that they would ever

62.The terms of such an overall settlement of the water problem were discussed in ’el, “Water Pressure Means Regional Pressure,” Ha’aretz, March 21, 2001, p.4.A number of Israeli and other water experts have pointed out that both Israel and the Palestinians can solve their water problems by a combination of purchases from water-surplus states and the building of desalina- tion plants, at costs that are reasonable—especially compared with the prospective cost of wars over water. 63.For a similar assessment, cf.Shalev, Israel and Syria, p.164.

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again relinquish this territory.There is every reason to believe that the Syrians fully understand the logic of this situation. In any case, the waters of the Golan Heights, the Jordan River, and Lake Tiberias are a rapidly wasting asset.Israel today controls all these water sources; nonetheless, the combination of a growing population, years of drought, and water mismanagement have created a water crisis in Israel.Thus the precise division of these waters is becoming increasingly irrelevant: Even 100 percent Israeli control is barely working today, and it will work even less well in the future. The long-term solution, as nearly all water specialists agree, must come from the regional water-sharing arrangements and the building of 64 plants already under way in Israel and neighboring countries. As one Israeli columnist asked, “Will we sacriªce the longed-for peace with the Arab world for the sake of 300 million cubic meters of water? Three desalination plants will 65 do the trick and the United States will be glad to provide the money for it.” When enough desalination plants have been built and are put on line, perhaps in another ªve years, there should be water enough for everyone—including the Palestinians.In the interim, as the current regional drought deepens, the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias are becoming even more depleted; so the grow- ing shortfalls must be met by the purchase of freshwater from Turkey or elsewhere. In short, nationalism—not water rights—is at the core of the Israeli-Syrian conºict over the Golan Heights.If this analysis is correct, it leads inexorably to a rather startling conclusion: There is no formal peace between Israel and Syria today, despite the resolution in principle of all the truly important issues, be- cause both sides dug in their heels over a largely symbolic issue.

64.On the overall problem of water shortages in the region and its implications for an Israeli-Syr - ian peace settlement, see Peter Gleick, “Water and Conºict,” International Security, Vol.18, No.1 (Summer 1993), pp.79–112; Stephen C.Lonergan and David B.Brooks, Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conºict (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1999); Miriam R.Lowi, “Bridging the Divide,” International Security, Vol.18, No.1 (Summer 1993), pp.113–138; Miriam R.Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Ba- sin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Joyce R.Starr, “Water Wars,” Foreign Policy, No.82 (Spring 1991), pp.17–36.For a recent review of the current water situation in Israel and the prospects for solving the problem in a few years with the building of desalination plants, see Wil- liam A.Orme Jr.,“Israel Raises Its Glass to Desalination,” New York Times, June 23, 2001, p.C1. 65.Avraham Tal, “Now It’s Assad’s Turn to Wait,” Ha’aretz, April 6, 2000, p.5.In any case (as noted above), the costs are not great, and are dropping, because of improved desalination technol- ogies.Some specialists now argue that seawater can be desalinated for less than Israel currently pays for freshwater.Mort Rosenblum, “Mideast Drought Adds to Political Pressures,” Buffalo News, July 8, 2001, p.A4.

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In that case, who should give way? If allowing the Syrians a symbolic return to a corner of Lake Tiberias is the price for peace, there seems to be no persua- sive reason that the Israelis should not pay it.As Avraham Tal has put it, “Is it worth making 100 meters on the shore ...into a red line? Is it permissible to sacriªce the fortiªcation of Israel’s strategic position in the region, the strengthening of its ties with the United States and the pressing need to handle 66 domestic matters for the sake of being able to stand tall?”

Conclusion

The history of the Israeli-Syrian negotiations has followed a familiar pattern in the general Arab-Israeli conºict since 1948: There have been many lost oppor- tunities for peace, and Israel bears the greater responsibility for not seizing them—at least before costly and unnecessary wars.At different junctions, all the major Arab actors in the conºict—Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, the Syri- 67 ans, and the Saudis —have presented concrete and genuine compromise pro- posals for settlement, essentially based on “”: If Israel withdrew to its pre-June 1967 borders, there would be peace accompanied by a variety of measures designed to protect Israel’s security.But Israel was not willing to trade land for peace with Egypt until the mid-1970s, and the Jordanian-Israeli formal settlement in 1994 was reached only because King Hussein ªnally relin- quished any Jordanian claims to the West Bank and Jerusalem.Though of course there are issues other than land for peace between Israel, Syria, and the Palestinians, the territorial issue—which goes to the heart of Zionist ideology 68 in the case of the Palestinians, but not with Syria —is still the major stumbling block. The core Syrian position has essentially been the same since the late 1970s: a peace settlement if Israel withdrew from the Golan Heights, which would then be largely demilitarized, with international guarantees, perhaps including an international/U.S. peacekeeping force. Initially, the Syrians also insisted that an Israeli-Syrian agreement would have to be accompanied by an Israeli-

66.Tal, “Now It’s Assad’s Turn to Wait.” 67.Even before the current Saudi offer by Crown Prince Abdullah to normalize Arab relations with Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 line, the Saudis had proposed a roughly similar settlement in 1982. 68.As the Ha’aretz columnist Aluf Benn has put it, the Israeli-Syrian dispute involves “no emo- tional land mines, such as the or the Palestinian right of return.” Benn, “Resusci- tating the Syrian Option.”

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Palestinian settlement, and it was also clear that Haªz al-Asad had in mind a cold peace—more of a permanent armistice than a normalization of relations. By the late mid-1990s, however, the Syrian position had evolved: Not much more than lip service was paid to the Palestinian cause, and Asad was willing to include a resolution of the water issue and the gradual normalization of eco- 69 nomic and diplomatic relations with Israel as part of an overall settlement. In the end, however, the Israeli-Syrian peace process broke down over an es- sentially symbolic issue that both sides conceded was devoid of either security or economic signiªcance: a Syrian presence on Lake Tiberias, where in fact there had been one prior to the 1967 war.It could certainly be argued that the failure of rationality and concrete self-interests to prevail over symbolism is no less the responsibility of the Syrian than the Israeli government.On the other hand, the evolution of the Syrian position to one that on the far more impor- tant issues made signiªcant concessions to the Israeli position suggests that Israel could and should have made this ªnal concession to Syrian pride. So long as the escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence since September 2000 continues, it will be psychologically and politically impossible for both Syria and Israel to even renew negotiations, let alone make substantial concessions. Therefore the ªrst step in reaching an Israeli-Syrian agreement must be an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.Should that occur, Syria’s price for its own settle- ment with Israel almost certainly will continue to be a return to the borders of June 4, 1967, so that Haªz al-Asad’s insistence on regaining every inch of land lost in 1967 can be realized. It is not Israeli security nor even access to water that is the main obstacle to an eventual settlement.Rather, it is the persistent Israeli misperception about the origins and dynamics of its conºict with Syria, together with a preoccupa- tion with symbolism, that must be overcome.Unlike Syria, moreover, Israel will have to contend with domestic public opinion.The task of reeducation, for both Israel’s leaders and its society, will be formidable. Meanwhile an avoidable conºict continues.It seems unlikely that a new war will occur, as Syria seems to reluctantly prefer the status quo over war.This can only be strengthened since September 11, 2001, because an attack on the Golan Heights by a Syria that has supported some terrorist groups would now

69.Although clearly reluctant to do so, Syria has agreed to the recent Saudi peace plan. Inºuencing the Syrian decision was a modiªcation to the plan making it clear that full Israeli with- drawal from the lands conquered in 1967 referred to the Golan Heights as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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be even more likely to lead to U.S. intervention on the side of Israel. In any case, the imbalance of military power between Israel and Syria continues to ex- pand, both because Israel spends far more on its armed forces than does Syria and because Israel has access to much of the new U.S. military technology, which once again has demonstrated, this time in Afghanistan, its remarkable 70 power. Thus, since September 11 the Golan Heights has remained quiet: Bashar al-Asad has continued the policies of his father—avoiding provocation in the area and preventing Palestinian guerrilla warfare or terrorism from us- ing the Golan as a base for attacks on Israel, or even attacks limited to the Is- raeli-occupied Golan itself. Even so, in the absence of a peace settlement and the concrete measures that would be included to prevent future conºicts, the risk of a war breaking out as a consequence of unforeseeable circumstances cannot be regarded as too slight to be signiªcant.The history of warfare certainly demonstrates that in the con- text of hostile or adversarial relations, devastating wars that nobody sought or wanted can occur. The inexorable spread of weapons of mass destruction makes intolerable even the smallest risk of war that serves no state’s rational interests.And be- cause of its efforts to forge an Arab coalition against terrorism, as well as be- cause an Israeli-Syrian war could have devastating consequences throughout the Middle East and conceivably even to the U.S. homeland itself, the U.S. gov- ernment should return to active efforts to mediate Israeli settlements with both the Palestinians and Syria.

70.For a detailed analysis of Israel’s military superiority over Syria, see Shai Feldman and Yiftah Shapir, eds., The Middle East Military Balance, 2000–2001 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

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