All quiet on the Golan Heights
The saying goes that the Arabs can't make war without Egypt,
but there can't be peace without Syria
For the first time in years, the possibility of Israel returning the Golan Heights to its arch-enemy, Syria, has made an unexpected comeback. Syrian President Bashar Assad announced last week that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had assured him that Israel was willing to withdraw from the occupied plateau, in exchange for a peace treaty. Coming after Israel's military assault on an apparent nuclear reactor in northeastern Syria in September and the assassination of a leading Hezbollah figure in the streets of Damascus in February, many were surprised that the confrontational attitude of the two countries had so quickly changed.
They shouldn't have been. The makings of a deal have been in place for more than a decade.
When Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, few people knew just how close he was to a peace treaty with Syria. Even his successor, foreign minister Shimon Peres, is said not to have known quite how far the Israeli leader had been prepared to move to achieve a breakthrough.
And move is the operative word... www.theglobeandmail.com
