Syrian, Israeli backdoor talks now emerging

Hizbullah's growing threat may drive Israel to fashion a peace deal with Syria.

JERUSALEM - The last time there was a peace breakthrough that surprised the world, a few offbeat Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals gathered in 1993 at a country house in Norway and came away with the Oslo Accords.

So when news broke this week in Israel's respected newspaper Haaretz, that Israel and Syria had reached a series of secret understandings, it is no surprise that it sent shock waves through a region often plagued by stalemate and violence.

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Officials here are distancing themselves from the meetings that took place between Israelis and Syrians in Europe from September 2004 to June 2006, portraying them as an "academic" exercise. But that doesn't mean Israel isn't open to a deal with Syria.

In fact, some Israelis see Syria as a possible key to undermining Hizbullah's threat. The Israeli losses to Shiite militants in Lebanon last summer prompted Wednesday's resignation of the Israeli army's chief of staff, and is triggering calls for the prime minister and defense minister to follow. Swapping the Golan Heights – for Syria withdrawing support for Hizbullah – might be considered, say Israeli analysts.

And, the very fact that Israelis have been meeting with Syrian representatives is indicative of a willingness on the part of some of the region's players to restart a peace track that has long been viewed as derailed indefinitely.

"If it would be up to us academics, we could have solved it a long time ago. But it is up to the leadership," says Moshe Moaz, an Israeli political scientist and Syria scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Moaz – speaking by telephone from Boston, where he is currently on sabbatical at Harvard University – was involved in several of the meetings that took place, which involved both a combination of academics, officials, and former officials, he says.

"I have the sense that the government was informed, but didn't approve of it," he says.

Reports of a resurrection of the Israeli-Syrian track, which broke off officially around the same time Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations collapsed in the summer of 2000, conjure deeply different reactions – and come at a volatile, precarious time in the region.