Briefing on Track II Peace Dialogue Between Israel and Syria, 2004-2007
April 16, 2007Geoffrey Aronson
From September 2004 to September 2006, Syrians and Israelis worked to formulate understandings for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria in a series of secret meetings in Switzerland. Dr. Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, and Syrian-American businessman Ibrahim Soliman were the principal personalities participating in discussions that Geoffrey Aronson organized and that were funded initially by Robert O. "Bobby" Muller, president of Veterans for America, and later by the government of Switzerland. Participants were not official representatives empowered to negotiate an agreement, but rather serious and well-connected individuals determined to devise solutions to problems that had obstructed formal peace negotations in the past. Because of the great interest excited in Israel by our efforts, Liel and Soliman appeared in closed session before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on April 12.
Below is the document the parties drafted, described as a "non-paper," prepared in August 2005 and a transcript of the February 12, 2007 presentation recounting the workings of the “Swiss Track.”
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Elements of a Peace Treaty Agreed Upon by Participants ("non-paper")
Briefing on Track II Peace Dialogue Between Israel and Syria, 2004-2007