Word: golan
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There was even a sign of possible progress on what has been one of the most intractable of all Middle East issues: the Golan Heights. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had insisted that the area was so vital to Israel's security that Jerusalem could never give the tiniest bit back to Syria. But his successor, Yitzhak Rabin, says the principle of trading land for peace applies to the area, and Israel need not "cling to every single centimeter...
None of which signals the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Israel is nowhere near meeting Syria's demand that it get all of the Golan back. On the issue of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there is a wide gap between the Israeli proposal for an "administrative" council and Palestinian demands for a "legislative" body, an embryo parliament for a Palestinian state. But gone are the days when, as Palestinian delegate Ghassan Khatib puts it, "proposals were prepared for confrontation, not agreement." Propaganda ideas are yielding to suggestions that might be negotiable. Someday. Maybe...
...focusing first on a Palestinian settlement irritates President Hafez Assad, who is skeptical about ever achieving peace with Israel and is determined that no Arab party should conclude a separate deal. Even if Damascus-Jerusalem talks do proceed, Rabin has taken a very tough line on returning the Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 war. Yet without Moscow as a patron, Assad has little choice but to renounce his traditional role of spoiler and board the peace train if he wants access to Western trade and investment...
Precisely. U.N., E.C. and all the other entries in the dictionary of collective security (c.s.c.e., oas, etc., etc.) are powerless in the face of fighting. They keep the peace only in places where hostilities have already ended, places like the Golan Heights and Cyprus, where neither party is intent, at least today, on going to war. Yet we know from history that as soon as one or the other party changes its mind, all bets are off. In May 1967, Egypt, preparing war against Israel, ordered the U.N. to get its peacekeeping troops out of Sinai. Within days they were...
...Syrians were probably thinking of their image when they finally took possession of an Israeli paper, which detailed areas of concord and discord between the two parties. Until now, the Syrians have said they would deal seriously with Israel only after it agrees to withdraw from the disputed Golan Heights. Certainly, Damascus was responding to U.S. pressure when it announced that it was abolishing discriminatory travel restrictions on Syria's 4,500 Jews...