Two well-timed interviews by the president of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, and by his sophisticated foreign minister, Walid Mu’allem (a former ambassador in Washington, a veteran of the previous decade’s peace efforts, and a pleasant interlocutor with his many Jewish and even Israeli contacts), fanned the flames of an argument long brewing in the Israeli intelligence and planning community, which has now spilled over into the political arena. It is neither hard not surprising to find a close fit between Mu’allem’s message-speaking with the Washington Post, expressing a willingness to come to the table without preconditions-and the now-familiar recommendations of the Iraq Study Group:

• Recommendation 12: Asking Syria to help on Iraq;
• Recommendation 13: Reviving the comprehensive peace effort;
• Recommendation 14: “The unconditional calling and holding of meetings … on two separate tracks, one Syrian/Lebanese [suggesting a betrayal of any Lebanese claim to separate sovereignty], and the other Palestinian”;
• Recommendation 15: Expecting Syrian concessions on terror, Lebanon, and Iraq to be linked to this peace process;
• Recommendation 16: Postulating that “[1]n exchange for these actions and in the context of a full and secure peace agreement, the Israelis should return the Golan Heights, with a U.S. security guarantee for Israel.”

For many Israelis, this is a dangerous turn of events. Others see a real prospect for a breakthrough-given the intensity of the Syrian messages-at a time of upheaval on the Palestinian front. Powerful arguments are marshaled on both sides as the debate heats up; and much depends on the proper reading of American and international positions. Roughly speaking, two categories of arguments are raised in favor of early and intensive engagement with Assad’s regime:

1. In terms of our own national interest: “No Israeli government can say no to peace”-all the more so when the alternative might well be war, and Syria is indeed putting out minor but unmistakable signals that the military option (given the uncertain outcome of the summer war in Lebanon) is no longer as unthinkable as it used to be. “What will you say in three years’ time to the commission of inquiry [if a tragic war ensues, which a peace effort could have prevented]?” Given Syria’s power over Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and even Hamas (whose leader, Khaled Mash’al, is in Damascus), is it not time “to speak to the landlord” rather than fight his tenants? Even if war and violence do not come upon us overnight, the economic cost of vigilance on our northern front is high: Not surprisingly, among the voices raised-in a makeshift poll of ministers-in favor of negotiations were two of the four Shas ministers, Ariel Attias and Yitzhak Cohen (their party often seeking to portray itself as the voice of the poor), as well as the key social advocate in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s own Kadima Party, Ya’akov Edri, and the minister of education, Yuli Tamir, a Labor dove.
2. In terms of the regional balance: Here is an opportunity, presumably, to lure the Syrian regime over into the pragmatist camp in Middle Eastern affairs. Whether this is cast in the terms offered by the Baker-Hamilton framework (which seeks a “grand bargain” with Iran as well), this attitude, which has some powerful advocates in Israeli policy and political circles, certainly has much in common with the so-called “realist” analysis of regional affairs. Indeed, given President George W. Bush’s stance on Syria, the advocates of dialogue with Damascus openly suggest that the time has come for Israel to ignore or defy U.S. strategy, as long as it is still dominated by neoconservative visions. Here is, verbatim, what a prominent Israeli journalist, Ben Kaspit of Maariv, wrote on Monday:

If not for Assad, Syria would now be a Sunni state, associated with Sunni global terror, represented by Al-Qaeda, and all of this on the fences of Katzrin [a town in the Golan, not far from where Syrian armor arrived during the 1973 war] on the road to Tiberias.… The Syrian regime is far from being exemplary. But it is secular, sane, pragmatic, and motivated by considerations which normal people can recognize. This, in contradistinction with other regimes, which Bush insists on putting in power all over the Middle East, if given a chance. He [Bush] will not rest until Iraq is a terror state, which is why we now miss Saddam Hussein…. Everything is burning, and Bush continues to play his worn-out violin.

On the same day, Haaretz’s editorial took the same line, raising the specter of Golda Meir’s alleged failure, due to overreliance on U.S. Cold War considerations, to talk to Anwar Sadat; an option that some Israeli historians and politicians believe could have saved us the Yom Kippur War. (Others beg to differ, and argue that what Sadat offered in 1971-72 was far less than the peace treaty he signed in 1979.)

There are, however, equally powerful counterarguments, and the thrust and counterthrust of the debate are thus bound to be with us for a while. The case for caution, and in effect, rejection of the Syrian bid, was indeed made by Olmert in terms, first and foremost, of the American reaction. It is now the judgment of professionals and politicians alike in Jerusalem that this aspect of the ISG recommendations will be rejected by the Bush Administration-at least for the time being. Moreover, Bush is not alone in forcefully denouncing Assad: According to a diplomatic report leaked to Yediot Aharonot, a senior European has told his Israeli interlocutors that French President Jacques Chirac has warned against any dealing with the “regime of murderers” in Damascus.

At the heart of this specific argument is a question not necessarily of first principles, but of timing and priorities. Insofar as Lebanon has now become a symbolic (and, in some ways, strategic) focus of the fight for the future of the Middle East-a semi-democratic, market-driven, modern and liberal civil society, as envisaged by the Siniora government and the “March 14” movement; or a hostage to Hezbollah, dominated by Syria and indirectly by Iran-this is definitely the wrong time to strengthen Assad, to grant him legitimacy and immunity from international prosecution for the murder of Rafik Al-Hariri, and to cut the noose that had begun to tighten around his neck. At least until the Lebanese presidential elections in March next year, neither the U.S. nor France is willing to contemplate a major gesture of reconciliation-neither by them, nor by Israel. Moreover, timing (in the Lebanese context) is also relevant from a narrower Israeli point of view. The Syrian negotiations have been dormant since their failure in March 2000. To revive them now is to send a signal that terror-the Hezbollah campaign this summer, with Syrian-supplied missiles raining down on Haifa and the North-has, in fact, “delivered” for Damascus. Not a good idea, say the detractors, particularly when the Palestinians are just beginning to wake up to the full costs that they have been paying since January for having supported a murderers’ political party.

This is not all. There are also grave doubts, at the strategic level, as to the theory that the Alawites now ruling Syria can be “detached” from Iran (let alone that such a “loss,” if it were to happen, would have much of an effect on Tehran). At the practical level, why should Syria let go of a relationship from which it has reaped such rich rewards? And at the often misunderstood level of identity politics (which, in the Middle East, regularly trumps all practical considerations), how likely is Assad to break with the one regime in the world willing to regard his sect is being some sort of Shi’a Muslims?

And then, last but not least, there is the price. True, Syria may have dropped its insistence that the talks can only begin where they left off (i.e., based on the so-called “Rabin Deposit” and the assumption of full withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, lines), but there is little prospect that this basic goal has been abandoned in favor of a compromise solution. This demand, if accepted, would mean that a similar legal and political precedent would apply in the future to the Palestinian negotiations, in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Moreover, the Golan itself is strategically significant. It is vital to Israel’s hydrological balance (not a trivial matter, as we now enjoy-or endure, depending on one’s perspective-a long, breathtakingly beautiful, and totally rainless blue-skied winter). It is a prosperous region, and an attractive landscape that most Israelis have come to know in hikes and holidays. Support for its retention is so deeply ingrained that the present political buzz has yet to generate any signs of anxiety and anger (which were so evident in 1995 or 1999) among the Golan’s 15,000 or so Jewish residents or their Druze neighbors.

It is also a peaceful corner of the world. Some katyusha rockets fell there this summer. (Some even overshot their targets and fell in Syrian territory.) But otherwise, there have been no terror attacks or crossborder operations in more than thirty years: an unusual claim for any part of Israel. In other words, the actual opposite of war-if the Golan proves anything-is not peace per se (a more elevated form of interaction, which requires a profound change of mind), but rather a stable deterrence. It is the latter that has kept the weakened Syrian military from attacking Israel. The challenge, for the immediate future, is therefore not so much the revival of the peace efforts, as the restoration of deterrence, in the Syrian context. This sector will need to be closely monitored while Israel awaits the outcomes of other regional struggles-over the Iranian nuclear effort; over Hamas in power; and over the political balance in Lebanon.