Odd ways to say 'peace' By Moshe Zak (JPOST) (January 5) - The three-way talks between Israel, the US, and Syria in Shepherdstown have been accompanied by ragged cliches and ambiguous phrases full of internal contradictions. Here is a lexicon: Painful decisions - Israel's territorial concessions to Syria. For some reason, the American and Israeli negotiators have relieved Syria of any painful decisions and have assigned pain exclusively to Israel. They have given up the principle of territorial compromise, which president Bush proclaimed at the opening session of the Madrid conference. Painful peace - a peace imposed by a conqueror. But Israel has not been defeated nor is it demanding a territorial settlement that will express the full weight of its victory. To achieve true peace the government and the people should make wise decisions, not painful ones. These tired phrases don't bring peace any nearer. They harden the Syrians' stance and give them the impression that they've finally won the long conflict with Israel. Land for peace - a pathetic expression implying that in return for a total peace Israel must withdraw totally from all the territories, without defining in advance what "all the territories" means. Does it mean only the territories occupied in the Six Day War or any territories beyond what was allocated to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan? Before the Madrid conference US president George Bush promised the Israeli government not to mention the "land for peace" formula in his speech. Afterwards, in conversation with Yitzhak Shamir, Bush said, "I did as you asked and didn't use a formula that you don't accept." Now that formula has been revived by US President Clinton, and we are repeating it without examining its implications. An historic summit - a misnomer on two counts. It's not a summit, because Hafez Assad is not there, unlike Anwar Sadat who was at Camp David. And it isn't historic, because Ehud Barak has already met a senior Syrian figure, Gen. Hikmat Shihabi, then chief of staff and closer to Assad than Farouk Shara, the Syrian representative at Shepherdstown. Fifty years ago Syrian leader Hosni Zaim expressed interest in a meeting with Ben-Gurion to reach a peace settlement that would include sharing the Kinneret. Ben-Gurion rejected the proposal. He preferred the waters of the Kinneret to a "historic meeting." Normalization - used during the negotiations with Egypt. Despite disappointments, it has taken such deep root with us that it has returned to the agenda now. An Israeli team has been set up for the Shepherdstown talks on normalization, even though Gen. (res.) Uri Saguy, the head of the negotiating teams, has already explained why it is unacceptable to the Syrians. Anyone dreaming of humous in Damascus would do well to read Saguy's comments: "Imagine a totalitarian ruler like Assad looking out of his window every Saturday and seeing the market in Damascus full of 5,000 tourists from Tiberias. They would be a problem for Syrian society, which is unable to accommodate so rapidly a too-fast and too-comprehensive openness to another culture. And even if it could, Assad wouldn't want it to." After the Syrians read this, will Saguy be able to go on demanding normalization in return for IDF withdrawal from the Golan? Uri Savir, who headed the delegation to talks with the Syrians four years ago, says his Syrian counterpart claimed that the Israeli demand for normalization has no parallel in Syria's international relations. Savir submitted drafts for 18 agreements as part of normalization, but the Syrians rejected them all. Still Israelis cling to the slogan that conceals the withdrawal from the Golan and obscures the real issues. Withdrawal from occupied territories - a principle applied only to Israel, but should also be applied to Syria, which in 1948 invaded Israel and occupied territories beyond the international border. Must Israel recognize Syria's occupation, since it was marked on the map as "cease-fire lines" and existed until June 4, 1967? The international border - never recognized by Syria. When Israel informed the Americans at the end of the Six Day War that it was willing to conduct negotiations with Syria on the basis of the international border, it didn't agree to an automatic withdrawal to that line, but to negotiations on a border yet to be fixed. So the cliche that Israel has already given Syria an undertaking to withdraw to the international border doesn't stand up to examination. In the run-up to the referendum on an agreement that has not yet been reached, we are ignoring the real issues and letting ourselves be carried away by cliches. The Jerusalem Post |
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