Turkish PM arrives in Damascus to discuss Syrian-Israeli peace

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This is starting to look interesting.

Turkey's prime minister arrived in Damascus Saturday for talks with Syria's leader on rising prospects for Syrian-Israeli peace after signs of progress in Turkish mediation between the two Mideast foes.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was originally here to open a
Syrian-Turkish business forum. But his visit has gained added significance with Syrian President Bashar Assad's announcement that he received an Israeli offer of a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for a peace treaty. Assad has said that Erdogan passed on the message that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to return the Golan and that he's looking to discuss the details with Erdogan. The two were to meet later in the day.

Turkey has close ties with both Israel and Syria as well as with the United States.

Assad also said in an interview with the Qatari newspaper al-Watan published Thursday that Turkish mediation over the past year could lay the groundwork for direct talks with Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978058.html

[bemildred]

1. Israel open to meeting with Syrians: officials

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel would be open to participating in a senior-level meeting with the Syrians brokered by Turkey to test the waters for renewed peace negotiations, Israeli officials said on Sunday.

Such a preliminary meeting between Israeli and Syrian representatives would be the next step in mediation efforts by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who held talks over the weekend with Syrian President Bashar al Assad, the officials said.

That meeting could lay the groundwork for more formal talks in the future, Israeli officials said, though Erdogan could face an uphill task bringing the two sides to formal negotiations before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January.

The Bush administration has been cool to renewing Israeli-Syrian negotiations, which collapsed in 2000 without resolving the fate of the Golan Heights, Israeli officials said.

http://www.dose.ca/news/story.html?id=3560ea8b-2c2d-42b2-b83b-0c7a78bb23ff

[bemildred]

2. ANALYSIS: Syrian-Israeli contacts worry Iran, Hezbollah

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According to another theory, it is Hezbollah, which proved a tough foe in its war with Israel two years ago, that is itching to fight the Jewish state again with Iran's support.

Secret, indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel - held since April 2007 with Turkish mediation and publicly confirmed by Turkey and Syria for the first time last week - make no sense at all in this context. Or do they?

Arab commentators conjecture that Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is negotiating with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in order to break Syria's tight embrace with Iran, Israel's archenemy.

A commentator from the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat wrote that by concluding a peace treaty with Syria, Israel could "strike Iran in the middle of the heart" and also weaken Hezbollah, which is said to be still getting Iranian weapons via Syria.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/202743,analysis-syrian-israeli-contacts-worry-iran-hezbollah.html

[The Magistrate]

3. Peace Between These Two, Sir, Would Put Hezbollah Out Of Business

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4. The Syrian-Palestinian lie

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In fact, Olmert is part of a big charade being held for the upcoming visit by President Bush, patron of the Annapolis declaration: "an effort to reach an agreement by the end of 2008." The talk of an alleged breakthrough in the attempts to renew negotiations between Jerusalem and Damascus are nothing more than camouflage for a major setback in Israel's talks with the Palestinians. A deep source in the negotiations revealed this week that the disagreements between the two sides far exceed the points of agreement.

It is hard to imagine that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be tempted to embrace the Israeli proposal, which requires the Palestinians to give up 8 percent of the West Bank (for compensation of no more than 2 percent) and to agree to Israeli sovereignty over the Holy Basin in Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as to mere crumbs on the refugee issue (family unification for 10,000 people). All while Israel continues to enlarge outposts and add roadblocks.

When the negotiations with the Palestinians come to a noisy end, and Hamas, having obtained calm in Gaza, drives the remnants of the "two-state camp" out of the Muqata in Ramallah, the balloon of the Turkish-mediated romance with Syria will also pop loudly. The supposed negotiations in two simultaneous channels will become a case of double Israeli recalcitrance.

Assad will wave around his fruitless wooing of Olmert and the violation of the Annapolis declaration. He will call for the implementation of the Arab League's Damascus declaration from March, he will claim that the peace initiative with Israel must be reexamined, and he will demand that Egypt and Jordan adhere to the standard of making normalization with the Jewish State conditional on its withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders. That is the danger of which King Abdullah spoke to Bush. That is why he invited Olmert to Amman.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/980176.html