Syria And The Peace A Good Chance Missed

In late October 1991, Syrian and Israeli leaders sat down at the Middle East peace conference in Madrid and committed themselves to holding face-to-face talks to conclude a final resolution of the 43-year conflict between them. The promised bilateral negotiation opened that December: It was the first negotiation to be conducted directly between representatives of the two states.1 In the 50 months of discussions that ensued, the Israelis and Syrians surmounted some quite extraordinary difficulties. They were able to overcome (indeed, they drew vital strength from) a change of government in Israel in June 1992. They survived the November 1995 assassination of Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin, numerous setbacks in the overall climate of Israeli-Arab peace-making,2 and several changes in the format of the talks themselves. In addition, while much of value was accomplished in the face-to-face negotiations in Washington, a parallel high-level track was kept constantly in operation, undertaken by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who made over a dozen visits to the Middle East during the first Clinton administration, and also through summit meetings and frequent letters and phone calls to the two leaders from the White House. According to several authoritative accounts, among the contentious issues that the negotiators were able to resolve were the depth of the projected Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and the nature of the envisaged peace. The talks also resulted in agreement on the text of the all important "Aims and Principles" document (full title "the Aims and Principles of the Security Arrangement"). After Shimon Peres' favored negotiator, Uri Savir, had completed his first round in the negotiations with Syria in early 1996, officials from Israel, the United States, and Syria all expressed confidence that 1996 2 would see agreement on the final text of the Israel- Syria agreement. But in early March 1996, after the Israeli population suffered 79 losses from bombs set off by Palestinian extremists, the Peres government suspended its participation in the talks with Syria. Immediately thereafter, the Israeli-Syrian relationship plunged into a rapid downward spiral of mutual recriminations and hostility which neither Israel, nor Syria--nor the United States--appeared to do anything to brake. The rhetoric of the Middle Easterners shifted quickly from expressions of optimism regarding the peace talks to increasingly gloomy prognostications. With dread inevitability, this descent into political and rhetorical confrontation between the two states became transformed (as had occurred so often in the past) into an actual confrontation in Lebanon. On the night of April 10-11, 1996, the Peres government launched a much-expanded version of an earlier (July 1993) bombing campaign against its neighbor, which this time included intensive attacks from air, ground, and sea on facilities throughout the south of the country and up to, and including, Beirut.

Drawing on a newly developed theoretical definition of “missed opportunity,” Chances for Peace uses extensive sources in English, Hebrew, and Arabic to systematically measure the potentiality levels of opportunity across some ninety years of attempted negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict. With enlightening revelations that defy conventional wisdom, this study provides a balanced account of the most significant attempts to forge peace, initiated by the world’s superpowers, the Arabs (including the Palestinians), and Israel. From Arab-Zionist negotiations at the end of World War I to the subsequent partition, the aftermath of the 1967 War and the Sadat Initiative, and numerous agreements throughout the 1980s and 1990s, concluding with the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and the Abu Mazen-Olmert talks in 2008, pioneering scholar Elie Podeh uses empirical criteria and diverse secondary sources to assess the protagonists’ roles at more than two dozen key junctures. A resource that brings together historiography, political science, and the practice of peace negotiation, Podeh’s insightful exploration also showcases opportunities that were not missed. Three agreements in particular (Israeli-Egyptian, 1979; Israeli-Lebanese, 1983; and Israeli-Jordanian, 1994) illuminate important variables for forging new paths to successful negotiation. By applying his framework to a broad range of power brokers and time periods, Podeh also sheds light on numerous incidents that contradict official narratives. This unique approach is poised to reshape the realm of conflict resolution.

For more than forty years Yitzhak Rabin played a critical role in shaping Israeli national security policy and military doctrine. He began as a soldier in the Palmach, the elite underground unit of the Jewish community in Palestine, served in the 1948 War of Independence, and ultimately became chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), defense minister in several governments, ambassador to the United States, and, twice, prime minister. As chief of staff, Rabin led the IDF to its triumph in the 1967 Six Day War. He was assassinated in 1995 as prime minister as he left a peace rally. Drawing on unpublished materials and interviews with important sources, including Rabin himself, Efraim Inbar's work offers a systematic study of Rabin's strategic thinking and his policies. Topics include the evolution of Rabin's thinking, his contributions to IDF military buildup, his stress on Israel's relationship to the United States, his attitudes toward the use of force, and his approach to Israel's nuclear status in the Middle East. Inbar's conclusion evaluates Rabin's contribution to Israel's national security and assesses Rabin's personal transition from warrior to peace maker. Because of Rabin's crucial role in Israel's defense establishment at important junctures in its history, this book provides an important view into the security challenges Israel has faced and how the country has responded over four decades.

From the opening of the Middle East peace process in Madrid in 1991 to the marathon round of negotiations at Maryland s Wye Plantation in 1996, the unsuccessful attempt to forge a peace agreement between Israel and Syria spanned five years and many venues.Helena Cobban here provides a fascinating look at the painstaking negotiations between the two Middle East powers that thrice went to war in the past half-century, and the role that the United States played in trying to bring Israel and Syria closer together on crucial points.Through interviews with U.S. officials and key players in the Israeli and Syrian delegations, Cobban paints a portrait of small but important breakthroughs and often frustrating encounters between the Israelis and the Syrians as they sought to negotiate not just a bilateral peace treaty, but also a broader regional peace. The study concludes with a careful analysis of what went wrong in the final phases of the negotiations and future prospects for resuming the talks."