Word: syrians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Inside the bunker, Brigadier General Ali Hussein, the Syrian sector commander, offered us tea and baklava. Hussein, who spent one year training in the U.S. at Fort Benning, explained that in former days "the Arabs and Jews lived with each other. They used to love each other. But then came Israel and forced the Arabs out. Then came the feeling of hostility...
...late afternoon, we were back at Damascus' airport. Weary from yet another conference with Syrian President Assad, Henry Kissinger told the crowding local press that there had been progress but no agreement. Then he flew off to Jerusalem to try once again to reason the two sides into not shooting at each other...
...Purple Line." Kissinger had persuaded the Israelis to extend to the Syrians what the Israelis described as their maximum concessions. They were willing to withdraw from most of the territory in Syria that they had captured last October, and even from some land on the Golan Heights west of the "purple line," as the post-'67 war boundary is colored on Israeli maps. The Israelis were also willing to give up much of the bomb-blasted Golan town of Quneitra and allow a limited number of Syrian refugees to return there. Their conditions for disengagement included a United Nations buffer...
Until last week, some Kissinger aides said, Syrian negotiators had spent their time vetoing Israeli proposals. But in the final stages of the latest Damascus-Jerusalem shuttle, they made a few tentative proposals of their own. One was for either Syrian or Syrian-U.N. administration of all of Quneitra. Equally important, Damascus agreed to accept a U.S.-Soviet guarantee that Israel would eventually pull back from all captured Syrian territory rather than insist that Israel make a politically awkward public pledge to do so. The pull back, however, had to be the first item on the agenda...
...private discussions after Ma'alot, Syrian officials did not condone the Arab raids or condemn Israel for retaliating. To U.S. diplomats that was a clear sign that the Syrians ? despite their support of the Palestinian cause ? did not want last week's twin massacres to interfere with negotiations. When Kissinger at one point suggested that the talks could be postponed temporarily, both sides insisted that he continue...