In an investigative article that appeared in the New Republic in July 1999, I provided the inside story on Binyamin Netanyahu's clandestine negotiations with – and extensive concessions to – the Syrian government in August-September 1998. The account interpreted his efforts as an effort to boost his chances at re-election and showed how Ariel Sharon, foreign minister at the time, had obstructed the agreement.
Now Sharon is prime minister and Netanyahu finance minister and the latter has a new, far more robust – and from my point of view much superior - viewpoint. He is quoted in today's Jerusalem Post saying about Syria:
Here we have this godforsaken tyranny that is among all those Arab states cringing with fear that it will be the next to go. Syria needs peace with us like a breath of fresh air. It needs it more than we do. We should take advantage of our lead and make some demands ourselves. It's about time that the old formula was erased. Israel should not have to be the only one making concessions for a peace agreement. Let them make some concessions for a change.
With this sort of attitude, something good might finally come of Syrian-Israeli diplomacy. (January 8, 2004)
Jan. 1, 2011 update: In 2004, Netanyahu was finance minister; since early 2009 he is again prime minister. According to a WikiLeaks caable reported in the Kuwaiti paper Ar-Ra'i, he may have gone back to his 1990 ways. Herb Keinon reports for the Jerusalem Post:
the US was contacted by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem with the message that Damascus was ready to renew dialogue with the Israelis and reach a peace deal. A cable written from the US embassy in Tel Aviv on June 18, 2009 indicated that while Foreign Ministry officials believed Syria was only interested in a diplomatic process because it would give it international legitimacy, [Israeli] Defense Ministry officials viewed the Syrian-Iranian alliance as a "marriage of convenience," and believed that Syria might be serious about removing itself from Iran and withdrawing support for Hizbullah in exchange for reconciliation with the West, especially the US, and the return of the Golan Heights.
In the cable, Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's diplomatic-security bureau, was quoted as asserting that peace with Syria was "critical to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace due to Syria's ability to support spoilers." According to the sources quoted in the Kuwati paper on Saturday, The Obama administration believes peace between Israel and Syria would constitute a breakthrough that would help kick-start stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The paper quoted senior adviser to US President Barack Obama, Dennis Ross as saying the Syrians were prepared to distance themselves from Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas and cooperate with the US in the war on terrorism.
These recent developments, according to the paper, were responsible for Obama¹s decision Wednesday to bypass the Senate and appoint Robert Ford as the first US ambassador to Damascus since 2005.
June 6, 2018 update: Netanyahu's former adviser Uzi Aradconfirms those rumors from 2012, saying that Jerusalem and Damascus held two rounds of "serious" negotiations, one in 2009 and the other in 2011; once again, the prime minister was open to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, though his office denied this assertion.
Arad affirmed that Netanyahu's government entered talks with Damascus upon being elected in 2009, building on negotiations held by his predecessor Ehud Olmert — and by earlier talks Netanyahu himself had as prime minister in the late 1990s with Assad's predecessor and father, Hafez.
Arad was Netanyahu's diplomatic and national security adviser in his first two terms as Israel's leader, in 1997-1999 and 2009-2011. He was also Netanyahu's point man on Syria. He quit those posts in 2011. ...
In both rounds of negotiations, Assad demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, Arad said.
The first round was said to have come to a halt after Assad flatly rejected an Israeli proposal for a land swap, which involved Israel pulling back only two miles (3.2 kilometers), giving up many Druze villages but keeping most of the territory. According to the reported proposal, Syria would also receive some Jordanian territory in the area of Aqaba in the south, near Eilat.
The second round of talks was initiated in 2010 by US president Barack Obama's administration, which conveyed to Israel the proposal via envoys Dennis Ross and Frederic Hof, Arad added. "It was clear that the Syrians wanted to return to the 1967 lines, and despite this Netanyahu didn't abandon the talks, there was no moment in which he said 'over my dead body,'" he said.
Conceding that the talks didn't yield any concrete results, Arad said the main focus was defining what the "1967 lines" — meaning, the border on the eve of the Six Day War — were.
The Prime Minister's Office denied the report, saying that "the facts are incorrect. Our commitment has been — and still is — keeping the Golan. We won't give up the Golan."
