JERUSALEM: Israel and Syria announced on Wednesday that they were engaged in negotiations for a comprehensive peace treaty through Turkish mediators, a sign that Israel is hoping to halt the growing influence of Iran, Syria's most important ally, which sponsors the anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas. Senior Israeli officials from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office and their Syrian counterparts were in Istanbul on Wednesday, where both groups had been staying separately, at undisclosed locations, since Monday. The mediators shuttled between the two. Syria and Israel have not negotiated this seriously in eight years. Syria's motives are clear: it wants to regain the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 war and to re-establish a relationship with the United States, something it figures it can do through talks with Jerusalem. For Israel -- which has watched the Palestinian group Hamas take over Gaza and gain ground in the West Bank, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah display raw power in Beirut -- an effort to pull Syria away from Iran could produce enormous benefits. An announcement on Wednesday of a peace deal that gives Hezbollah the upper hand in Lebanon's government probably added to Israel's sense of urgency.
JERUSALEM: Israel and Syria announced on Wednesday that they were engaged in negotiations for a comprehensive peace treaty through Turkish mediators, a sign that Israel is hoping to halt the growing influence of Iran, Syria's most important ally, which sponsors the anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
Senior Israeli officials from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office and their Syrian counterparts were in Istanbul on Wednesday, where both groups had been staying separately, at undisclosed locations, since Monday. The mediators shuttled between the two. Syria and Israel have not negotiated this seriously in eight years.
Syria's motives are clear: it wants to regain the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 war and to re-establish a relationship with the United States, something it figures it can do through talks with Jerusalem.
For Israel -- which has watched the Palestinian group Hamas take over Gaza and gain ground in the West Bank, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah display raw power in Beirut -- an effort to pull Syria away from Iran could produce enormous benefits. An announcement on Wednesday of a peace deal that gives Hezbollah the upper hand in Lebanon's government probably added to Israel's sense of urgency.
As long as they are just talking, Olmert will remain one of the Good Guys. But in the very unlikely event that they actually reach an agreement, there will be a major division in Israel, and U.S. politicians may have to take sides. This should be easy for Obama, but maybe not as easy for McCain.
If they solved the latter, all other issues would self-resolve. Without fixing it, all other treaties are so many cubic metres of hot air.
As this article hinted at;-
Independent - Adrian Hamilton - Any change from Bush's fundamentalism will do
Anybody taken in by this nonsense should read the two major speeches by President Bush on his Middle East "peace tour" over the past week. The first was his address to the Israeli Knesset on the occasion of the state's 60th anniversary last Thursday. The second was to the World Economic Forum meeting in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt last Sunday............. An American president, with probably more influence than any American leader since Israel's inception because of his total commitment to their cause, arrives in the country supposedly to pursue a peace plan and, in his most important public address, does not mention the peace and does not ask the Israeli government to make a single concession to further it. Not a reference or request or hint in the entire address, just a paean of praise for a country which has "forged a free and modern society based on the love of liberty, a passion for justice, and a respect for human dignity". Compare that to to Bush's speech to the Arabs in Egypt three days later. It is a long list of demands on them. They must, he lectured, institute "economic reform" if they are to take their "place in the centre of progress". "Economic reform must be accompanied by political reform". "Property rights" must be "protected and risk-taking encouraged". Primary schools must teach "basic skills, such as reading and math, rather than indoctrinating children with ideologies of hatred". And so the liturgy of requirements on these backward people goes on.
An American president, with probably more influence than any American leader since Israel's inception because of his total commitment to their cause, arrives in the country supposedly to pursue a peace plan and, in his most important public address, does not mention the peace and does not ask the Israeli government to make a single concession to further it. Not a reference or request or hint in the entire address, just a paean of praise for a country which has "forged a free and modern society based on the love of liberty, a passion for justice, and a respect for human dignity".
Compare that to to Bush's speech to the Arabs in Egypt three days later. It is a long list of demands on them. They must, he lectured, institute "economic reform" if they are to take their "place in the centre of progress". "Economic reform must be accompanied by political reform". "Property rights" must be "protected and risk-taking encouraged". Primary schools must teach "basic skills, such as reading and math, rather than indoctrinating children with ideologies of hatred". And so the liturgy of requirements on these backward people goes on.
