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  Israelis and Palestinians: Peace Talks Back from the Dead

Israelis and Palestinians Peace Talks Back from the Dead

By Ralf Beste, Christoph Schult and Bernhard Zand

Part 2: The Syrian Trump Card

The Syrian president himself explained, in an interview only two days before Annapolis, why Syria would not attend the conference. But Assad changed his mind and sent his deputy foreign minister to the meeting -- over Tehran's objections. Sources in Damascus say that a telephone conversation between Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to "personal antagonism."

Syria seems to be on the verge of a fundamental shift in its foreign policy -- not unlike the 1990s when Damascus withdrew its support for both a beleaguered Iraq and for Turkey's Kurdish Workers' Party, the PKK. A similar scenario appears to be taking shape in relation to Palestinian groups like Hamas, whose leaders have had their military headquarters in Damascus for decades. The Syrian regime cancelled a counter-summit at the last minute. When Tehran offered to hold the meeting instead, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus received a letter from 10 Palestinian leaders, who wrote that the time for the counter-summit was "unfortunately inopportune, despite Tehran's tempting offer."

Syria, which US President George W. Bush still considers a rogue nation, plays an important role within the broader context of the dangerous game taking shape in the Middle East. The key issue in the region is no longer the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the growing confrontation between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Iran. If Syria changes sides, the West will have deprived Tehran of its closest Arab ally -- an incalculable gain for the anti-Iranian alliance of Arabs, Israelis and the West.

The German Role

German diplomats, in particular, feel that they deserve at least some of the credit for Damascus having symbolically distanced itself from the camp of aggressive enemies of Israel last week. "Now we are seeing nations sitting at the same table that don't even have diplomatic relations with each other," crowed German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Berlin's chief diplomat has spent most of the last year and a half trying to set up talks with Damascus -- an effort that the United States, the Israelis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have all viewed with skepticism. When he announced plans to travel to Damascus for the first time, in the summer of 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged her German counterpart not to go. Merkel also made it clear that she was opposed to the visit.

But Steinmeier was undaunted. It was mid-August, and he was already sitting on a plane on the runway in Amman when he received the news that, only hours earlier, Syrian President Assad had made a statement praising Hezbollah's armed fight against Israel. After several hectic phone calls, Steinmeier cancelled his trip to Damascus, partly out of fear of criticism from Germany's allies.

He tried a second time last December, when he spent two hours meeting with Assad, explaining to him what rapprochement with the West could mean for his impoverished and isolated country. Steinmeier was relieved to report that Assad had made it clear "that Syria no longer wants to be part of the problem in the Middle East, but part of the solution."

Next Stop, Russia

But he wasn't done. Within the last three months, he sent Andreas Michaelis, the head of his Middle East and North Africa Affairs department, to Damascus three times. In recent weeks, Steinmeier noticed that even the Americans were abandoning their policy of isolating Syria. Steinmeier met with Rice again in early November at a conference on Iraq held in Istanbul. The US Secretary of State asked her German counterpart to use his contacts to convince Syria to attend the conference in Annapolis, and he agreed.

Ultimately, if the peace process is to be successful, it needs to be supported by as many Arab countries as possible, making Syria's role a key one. The challenge, though, is to make sure that every country participating in the process has more interest in success than it does in failure. When it comes to Syria, that means that Israel must give Damascus realistic hope that the Golan Heights will be handed back. In return, Syria would have to abandon its support for Hezbollah and help prevent the extremist group from launching further military strikes against Israel in southern Lebanon.

The government in Jerusalem is opposed to what it calls the "internationalization" of the Middle East conflict, instead preferring to conduct secret negotiations. But Prime Minister Olmert also recognizes that Annapolis has set a process into motion from which he would find it difficult to withdraw.

The Russians have announced a follow-up conference for next spring, with the Syrian-Israeli question at the top of the agenda. Russian President Vladimir Putin is using his strong connections to Damascus as an incentive for Olmert. "I am the only one who has influence over Assad," Putin said. "It would be a waste not to use this advantage."

Given the complicated negotiations with the Palestinians, Olmert is thankful for the Syrian option. Several times in recent months, he has, through middlemen, signaled his willingness to negotiate with Assad, but the Americans have repeatedly stood in his way. The Annapolis conference has now eliminated this hurdle. In a private meeting in Washington, US President Bush told Olmert that he would not oppose Israeli-Syrian negotiations. His one condition was that he wants to be kept up to date on the status of talks. "Just don't surprise us," Bush warned Olmert.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan