RAMALLAH, 7 June 2007 — “Israel seeks peace with Syria, but we must be wary of miscalculations which could bring about an unwanted escalation,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday after the Security Cabinet meeting devoted almost exclusively to Syria.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Israel has no belligerent intentions toward Syria and has relayed this message to Damascus through various diplomatic channels. The results of the meeting that ended around noon were kept secret except for an announcement regarding a special forum that would be devoted to analyzing Syria’s intentions and relaying them to the prime minister.
The forum would receive updates from Israeli military intelligence sources and other security agencies. The members of the forum would be Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Labor, Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai.
The ministers are expected to hear briefings from various governmental agencies — the external spy agency Mossad, the National Security Council, military intelligence and the Foreign Ministry — regarding Syria’s intentions.
The meeting yesterday morning followed weeks of conflicting signals regarding whether Israel is, or should, look into the meaning of Syria’s declared interest in negotiations. In recent weeks, more and more Israeli voices — including central figures in the Israeli Army such as Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi — have advocated discreetly talking to the Syrians. Various Israeli Army officials have been quoted as saying that Syria may opt for war if its overtures were not positively received.
Others, however, foremost among them Mossad head Meir Dagan, have come out against responding to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s overtures, saying that they were meant only to relieve international pressure on Bashar, pressure likely to increase now with the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
However, those talking to the Syrians, such as Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, argue that doing so discreetly does not “cost” anything, and that Israel would then be in a better position to evaluate whether an agreement with Syria would pull it out of Iran’s orbit, get it to close its border to arms shipments to Hezbollah, lead it to drop its support for Palestinian “terrorism” and bring it into the “moderate” Arab camp.
Olmert’s position for months has been that the Syrians were interested in the “peace process” in order to end their international isolation, but not in peace itself. This position is very much in line with that of the Bush administration, which — despite a meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had recently with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem — continues to want to see Damascus isolated.
The US also believes that the focus of attention now should be on the Palestinian track, rather than the Syrian one, on the assumption that Israel cannot work on both tracks at the same time, and that the Palestinian situation is more urgent.
Peretz, asked by the Israeli Radio yesterday about the possibility of war with Syria, said that the military was preparing for any scenario, but added that Israel must not give up on diplomacy with Damascus. The Israeli Army has to be ready on all fronts, irrespective of intelligence reports on what is going to happen, Peretz told Army Radio a day after Israel Forces soldiers simulated an attack on a Syrian village.
But we have to relay to the Syrians that our exercises and preparations are a matter of course, and in no way reflect plans to attack Syria, Peretz added.
