Syria Seeks Peace, Advocate Tells Israelis
April 16, 2007New York Times
JERUSALEM, April 12 — A Syrian-American peace advocate, Ibrahim Suleiman, made an extraordinary appearance before a parliamentary committee here on Thursday to convey a message to Israel’s generally skeptical leadership that Syria is serious about wanting to negotiate a peace deal.
Mr. Suleiman has had unofficial contacts with Israeli officials since 1991. After meeting with Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, he told reporters that he believed that peace between Israel and Syria could be achieved within six months if officials from both sides were to “sit down quietly.”
His visit opened a new level of debate in Israel about the possibility of negotiations with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel has rejected Mr. Assad’s recent peace overtures, saying that Damascus must first stop giving support and safe haven to terrorist organizations, and prevent the flow of weapons across the Syrian border to the Lebanese militant organization, Hezbollah. Mr. Olmert’s press officers said Thursday that Israel’s position remained unchanged.
Mr. Suleiman’s message was coolly received in Arab capitals as well.
“The Syrian government has repeatedly denied any involvement with this guy,” said a political commentator in Damascus. “He’s acting on his own. He’s only representing himself.”
One veteran observer, Ziad Haidar, the Damascus bureau chief for the Lebanese daily Al Safir, said Mr. Suleiman’s efforts might pay off some day, if Syria and Israel ever sit down together. “But the two sides just aren’t ready to talk right now,” he said. “It’s irrelevant right now.”
From 2004 until 2006, Mr. Suleiman, a former academic and retired businessman, participated in unofficial talks with Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Eight rounds of dialogue, held under Swiss auspices in Bern, culminated in an unofficial blueprint for an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement.
When the existence of the unofficial proposal was leaked to the Israeli news media in January, both the Israeli and Syrian governments denied any involvement with it. But Mr. Liel said that he had reported on a regular basis to high-level officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and that after each round of talks, a Swiss diplomat and participant, Nicholas Lang, had traveled to Syria and to Israel.
“We got reports all the time from the Swiss government that things were coordinated,” said Mr. Liel, a former diplomat of 30 years. He added that Israeli officials had met with Mr. Suleiman in the United States.
Exactly for whom Mr. Suleiman, 70, speaks is a crucial question in Israel. He is believed to be very well connected in Syria, though he immigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an American citizen 10 years later. One of his longtime Israeli contacts described him as a “peace entrepreneur” whom the Syrians sometimes used in order to test the waters with Israel. But Mr. Suleiman has not served as an official conduit for the Syrians in the past, the Israeli interlocutor said.
Mr. Suleiman, who is also known as Abe, emphasized that he did not “speak for Syria in any way, shape or form,” but said his friends in Damascus included “high officials.” He refused to identify them so as not to jeopardize his relationships.
“We do not know who Abe Suleiman represents,” said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Olmert. “Israel has always yearned for peace with its neighbors, including Syria, but according to our best intelligence assessments, we do not think the present Syrian government is interested in peace.”
Yet Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and a member of Mr. Olmert’s Kadima Party, told Israel Radio that he had “definitely received the impression” that Mr. Suleiman “has direct and intimate access to the Syrian leadership, including the Syrian president and his father before him.”
Mr. Suleiman said he did not know whether he had succeeded in convincing the Israeli legislators of Syria’s intentions, but he was impressed that the meeting, scheduled for one hour, went on for two and a half. His very presence there, he said, was “a convincing sign that peace is possible.”
The legislators “begged President Assad,” through Mr. Suleiman, “to give some signals” to prove Syria’s good intentions, Mr. Liel said. Israel wants to see confidence-building measures like the closing of the Damascus headquarters of militant groups like as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
But Mr. Liel said that in his experience, things did not work that way.
“The position of the Syrian government is that we are enemies,” Mr. Liel said. “Each country holds onto its cards until the moment of negotiations.”
In Syrian eyes, he said, “giving those cards up unilaterally would make Syria look weak.”
Official talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000 over the issue of sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and access to the waters of the Sea of Galilee.
The Liel-Suleiman blueprint would give Syria control over all the territory of the Golan Heights, but suggests that the delicate area along the shore of the Sea of Galilee would be turned into a park that would be open to Israeli visitors.
“Syria won’t touch the water,” Mr. Liel said, adding that Damascus understands “the fears in Israel over a lack of water.” And there would be a five-year timetable, he said, for the military withdrawal and evacuation of Jewish settlements from the Golan Heights, during which Israel could “check if Syria has changed its orientation.”
Hugh Naylor contributed reporting from Damascus.