It sounds more than a little fanciful to imagine Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signing a historic peace agreement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the White House lawn, with President Barack Obama looking on. Taken at face value, Israel's new, hard-line government is not exactly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Netanyahu's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, sent out aggressive signals, renouncing some of the relatively dovish positions of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — whose government spent its final year in office negotiating indirectly with Syria and directly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Lieberman rejected the Bush Administration's Annapolis peace initiative, under which Olmert and Abbas had talked about the parameters of a Palestinian state. And he insisted that Israel would never withdraw from the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967. "Whoever thinks that he will achieve something by way of concessions — no, he will only invite more pressure and more wars," Lieberman said. "If you want peace, prepare for war." (See pictures from Israel's recent war in Gaza)
It remains to be seen whether Lieberman would be willing to accept a truly independent Palestinian state — Netanyahu has indicated that he won't, insisting, in the name of the Jewish state's security, that Israel control the air space and borders of such an entity, and have veto over its military and foreign policies. Netanyahu's track record, however, is also more pragmatic than ideological. Despite his open loathing of Yasser Arafat, his previous government in 1998 signed a deal with the late PLO leader for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the West Bank, including the sensitive biblical town of Hebron.
It's worth noting, of course, that even had the more dovish Tzipi Livni been in charge, peace with the Palestinians would not be achieved any time soon. That's because political divisions on the Palestinian and Arab side are an even bigger mess than the hawkish Netanyahu's hodgepodge coalition of ultranationalist hard-liners like Lieberman and longtime peace negotiators like his Defense Minister, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak.
Still, Netanyahu is experienced enough to know that his success as a leader of Israel will depend substantially on his ability to manage the peace process — and, at least, to be seen to be making progress. And that may make him more open to pursuing the Syria option.
Publicly, at least, Netanyahu continues to take a hard line, rejecting the idea of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in order to get peace with Syria. Lieberman talks only of "peace for peace," rather than land for peace. But Netanyahu knows that no peace deal is possible without returning the Syrian territory captured in the war of 1967, and he may be ready to find a formula for its return if Syria is truly ready for a peace deal. Syrian President Assad, having established firm control of the often opaque regime he inherited from his late father, Hafez al-Assad, appears to be willing to pick up where his father left off in seeking a deal with Israel. Assad was instrumental in starting indirect, Turkish-mediated talks with Israel despite initial opposition by the Bush Administration. In the past, two former Labor Prime Ministers, the late Yitzhak Rabin and Barak, were ready to withdraw from almost all of the Golan Heights. Netanyahu himself may have been, too: during his first term as Prime Minister, he reportedly ran a back-channel negotiation with the Syrians.
President Obama recently sent two senior officials to Damascus to test the waters, signaling Washington's willingness to end its campaign to isolate Syria. And early success on the Israel-Syria track would do wonders for the Administration's wider Middle East ambitions. Not only would it formally cement the 40-plus years of relative calm on the Israeli-Syrian frontier, it would potentially detach Syria from its alliance with Iran, and enlist Damascus in moderating or eliminating two key radical elements — Hamas and Hizballah — on Israel's borders. Iran's resulting loss of influence in the region could, in turn, help induce Tehran to rethink its more confrontational positions, particularly on the nuclear issue.
A "Syria-first" approach to peace talks has often encountered resistance in diplomatic circles on the grounds that the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Palestinian problem. That may be true, but the counterargument might go that in the Middle East, you also have to play the hand you're dealt. Despite their hawkish talk, Netanyahu and Lieberman are unlikely to resist an opportunity to conclude a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. And nor will Obama.
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