JERUSALEM: Israel under right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not resume Turkish-mediated peace talks with Syria, insisting that any new negotiations be direct, a senior Israeli government official said on Wednesday.
“We have enormous respect and great appreciation for the Turkish efforts. But they have not succeeded — not because of the Turks,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Reuters in an interview. “It’s because of Syrian intransigence,” he added, saying there would be no new recourse to Turkish mediation.
Netanyahu’s centrist predecessor Ehud Olmert engaged Damascus through Ankara last year, with all sides reporting some progress. A political scandal that forced Olmert from office, and Israel’s January war in Gaza, put those contacts on hold.
In power since March, Netanyahu has offered direct talks without preconditions — a reference to the Syrian demand that Israel commit itself in advance to returning the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in a 1967 war.
Israel also insists Syria distance itself from Iran and from groups arrayed against the Jewish state in Lebanon and Gaza. Syrian President Bashar Assad has been dismissive of that demand and predicted no breakthroughs with Netanyahu.
Asked if the Netanyahu government was ruling out a return to the mediated talks, which both Turkey and Syria have proposed reviving, Ayalon said: “Correct.”
