The US has been the frontrunner of the Middle East peace process ever since the eruption of the conflict. It had also been the lead mediator in the Syrian-Israeli talks until Turkey's mediation. Egypt and Saudi Arabia played minor mediator roles during the 1974 negotiations by convincing Syria to accept US mediation or to prepare the list of the Israeli prisoners to be handed over to the US.511 Switzerland played a brief mediator role in secret informal talks in 2007 to negotiate the repatriation of the remains of Eli Cohen to Israel, a former Israeli spy executed by Syria in 1965.512
The US mediated several rounds of negotiations between Syria and Israel from 1974 until 2000. The first one of these was the peace talks that took place in 1974 following the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The renowned US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger under Richard Nixon mediated between Syria and Israel through shuttle diplomacy as part of the peace
509 Quilliam, Syria and the New World Order, 208. 510 Rabil, Embattled Neighbors, 33-34.
511 Saadia Touval, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1979, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1982, 254-255.
512 Assaf Uni and Akiva Eldar, “Switzerland says it mediated in informal Israel-Syria peace talks,” Haaretz,
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negotiations between Israel and the parties to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War resulting in a disengagement agreement on May 31, 1974.513
The US used indirect talks through shuttle diplomacy, summit diplomacy and direct talks as methods of mediation across the years. Probably the most notable one among these was Kissinger’s signature “step-by-step” approach used during the Arab-Israeli peace talks of 1974.514 During the negotiations Kissinger concluded that there was lack of sufficient points of convergence between Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to reach a comprehensive peace with Israel. He was not satisfied with the previous approaches such as the memorandum of Gunnar Jarring during the 1971 Arab-Israeli talks which “asked Israel for a commitment to withdraw to the pre-June war Egypt–Israel border, in return for Arab commitments to peace.”515
Kissinger therefore decided to follow a step-by-step approach with the idea to resolve each track separately before reaching a final comprehensive peace. He started by negotiating the separation of the armies of the three allies. He then conducted separate tracks of negotiations with the parties through shuttle diplomacy. The step-by-step approach also diverted attention from the main issues that were more difficult to resolve in the short run such as the recognition of Israel, the Palestinian issue, or the boundary issues into more doable issues such as disengagement agreements or prisoner swaps. In this sense, Kissinger followed a more “gradual approach” rather than a “comprehensive approach.”516
513 Ezzedine Choukri-Fishere, “Against Conventional Wisdom: Mediating the Arab–Israeli Conflict,” Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2008, 2.
514 Hoffmann, "A New Policy for Israel,” 405.
515 U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976
Volume 25, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973, Document 80, 80. Memorandum from the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Eliot) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, July 24, 1973.
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In an attempt to explain Kissinger’s “step-by-step” approach Stein notes, “Beginning generally with the issues most amenable to solution, he postponed indefinitely those he considered most resistant to compromise, expecting that progress in negotiation would itself generate momentum and change the bargaining environment to permit further progress.” Stein further notes with a criticism that, “What he [Kissinger] kept off the agenda was far more important than what he put on the table.”517
According to Seale, Kissinger’s step-by-step approach broke the Arab unity and dragged Egypt out of the coalition giving Israel considerable leverage in the negotiations.518
The first direct talk between Syria and Israel was mediated in Washington following the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference that was initiated by the US, hosted by Spain, and sponsored by the US and the USSR. The conference consisted of several tracks including bilateral talks between Israel and Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.519
The talks were held in Washington on November 3, 1991 and were mediated by the US Secretary of State James Baker under George Bush based on the principle of "land for peace" and resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) of the UN Security Council.520 Israel was represented by Yosi Ben-Aharon from the government of Yitzhak Shamir and Syria was represented by Muwafiq al-Alaf from the Syrian government. While security was Israel’s priority during the talks without addressing the issue of land, Syria sat on the table with the precondition that Israel returns to its borders of before June 4, 1967. The
517 Stein, “The Fundamentals of Peacemaking,” 231.
518 Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East, Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1989, 260-261.
519
Salem, “Syrian–Israeli Peace,” 4.
520 Rabil, Embattled Neighbors, 199; Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Statement by President Clinton on
Meetings between PM Barak and FM al-Shara,” December 16, 1999, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1998-
1999/Statement%20by%20President%20Clinton%20on%20Meetings%20between (accessed November 11, 2011); Helena Cobban, The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond, USIP Press: Washington, D.C., 1999, 15; Ma`oz, "Syrian-Israeli Relations on the Eve of the Peace Process,” 224.
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negotiations remained unresolved since both sides sat on the table with "zero-sum" solutions and were reluctant to make any concessions.521
The projected eagerness towards peace of the Yitzhak Rabin government, which came to power in the 1992 Israeli elections, was a new light of hope. The Rabin government accepted to withdraw from the Golan in exchange for Syria's word for peace and security. Syria, on the other hand, did not only give its word for peace, it also agreed on developing diplomatic relations, cooperating on tourism and commerce, allowing the Jewish minority in Syria to leave the country, and allowing the Banyas River to flow into the Jordan River.522 The favourable atmosphere was disrupted by the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, a radical Israeli citizen, following a peace march held in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995.523
Shimon Peres, Israel's then Foreign Minister, took over the government and continued the negotiations following Rabin's assassination. The parties met for another time at the Aspen Institute's Wye River Conference Centers on December 27, 1995 hosted by the US Secretary of State Warren Christopher under President Bill Clinton. Promising decisions were taken such as the normalization of relations, the establishment of economic relations, and normalization of Israel’s relations with other Arab countries including Lebanon. Despite certain ambiguities regarding the Golan and security, the discussion of these issues
521
Yossi Ben-Aharon, “Negotiation with Syria: A First-Hand Account,” Middle East Review of International
Affairs 4, no.2, 2000: 1-13.
522 Eyal Zisser, “Israeli-Syrian Peace Negotiations (December 1999-March 2000): A Missed Opportunity?,”
in Ginat, Perkins and Corr (eds.), The Middle East Peace Process, 230.
523
“1995: Israeli PM shot dead,” BBCHome, On This Day: November 4, 1995,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_2514000/2514437.stm (accessed October 8, 2014).
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were postponed to subsequent negotiations. However, as in past negotiations, the decisions were not implemented.524
The election of Ehud Barak as the prime minister in 1999 was well received in terms of the peace process. The talks were subsequently resumed in December 1999 and January 2000 under the mediation of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during Bill Clinton’s presidency. However, the negotiations did not achieve any concrete results. According to Rabinovich, although prospects were higher during 1990s for resolution compare to that of the Palestinian track, US mediation collapsed in 2000 as a result of reasons such as lack of mutual political will in terms of making concessions, the death of Hafiz al-Assad, change of government in Israel and in the US.
Although, Basher Assad's rise to power following the death of his father on June 10, 2000 had raised hopes and was thought to bring a new pulse into the peace talks, the negotiations were not resumed until Turkey’s mediation in 2008.525
The fact that Ariel Sharon preferred to spend his energy on the Israeli-Palestinian track, US growing hostility towards Syria, its accusation of Syria for the assassination of Rafic Harriri, and the growing tension between Israel and Hezbollah may be listed as reasons of the suspension of the talks.526
In 2010, the US briefly mediated between Syria and Israel under the mediation of Frederic Hof, a former US diplomat and special coordinator for Lebanon and Syria and Dennis B.
524 Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict, 52-54.
525 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Israel and Syria Resume Peace Negotiations,” December 9, 1999,
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/Israel%20and%2 0Syria%20Resume%20Peace%20Negotiations (accessed November 8, 2011).
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Ross, special assistant to President Obama on the Middle East. The talks were suspended as a result of the eruption of the Arab Spring.527