Briefing on Track II Peace Dialogue Between Israel and Syria, 2004-2007 By Geoffrey Aronson, Director for Research and Editor of Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, Foundation for Middle East Peace (Note: Since 2004, Jeff Aronson has been part of an unofficial Israeli-Syrian dialogue on an Israeli-Syrian peace that resolves the minor issues that ultimately defeated peace talks between Israel and Syria in the 1990’s, including the issue of land Syria claims to the East of Lake Galillee. Following is a full transcript of Aronson’s talk on this Track II process, including questions and answers, at the Carnegie Endowment, Washington, February 12, 2007.) Phil Wilcox, President, Foundation for Middle East Peace: Welcome. As you know, for decades private citizens, retired government officials and others have been involved in informal, unofficial “Track II” diplomacy. There was a time when the US government opposed this. Indeed, there is a statute, which I think is still on the books, called the Rogers Act, which makes it a felony for private citizens to engage in diplomacy. Fortunately, this has been ignored for a long time, and a great deal of creative work has been done by private citizens of many countries to try to prepare the ground for official diplomacy and peacemaking. Track II diplomacy has been a prominent in the Arab-Israeli conflict. To mention a few examples, there were decades of private contacts between private Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs in the ‘70s and ‘80s. American citizens were deeply involved in a process that led to the commitments of the PLO in the late 1980’s to recognize Israel, forswear violence, and accept resolution 242.
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Briefing on Track II Peace Dialogue Between Israel and Syria, 2004-2007
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Briefing on Track II Peace Dialogue Between Israel and Syria, 2004-2007
By
Geoffrey Aronson, Director for Research and Editor of Report on Israeli Settlement in the
Occupied Territories, Foundation for Middle East Peace
(Note: Since 2004, Jeff Aronson has been part of an unofficial Israeli-Syrian dialogue on an Israeli-Syrian peace that resolves the minor issues that ultimately defeated peace talks between Israel and Syria in the 1990’s, including the issue of land Syria claims to the East of Lake Galillee. Following is a full transcript of Aronson’s talk on this Track II process, including questions and answers, at the Carnegie Endowment, Washington, February 12, 2007.)
Phil Wilcox, President, Foundation for Middle East Peace: Welcome. As you
know, for decades private citizens, retired government officials and others have been involved
in informal, unofficial “Track II” diplomacy. There was a time when the US government
opposed this. Indeed, there is a statute, which I think is still on the books, called the Rogers
Act, which makes it a felony for private citizens to engage in diplomacy. Fortunately, this has
been ignored for a long time, and a great deal of creative work has been done by private
citizens of many countries to try to prepare the ground for official diplomacy and peacemaking.
Track II diplomacy has been a prominent in the Arab-Israeli conflict. To mention a few
examples, there were decades of private contacts between private Israelis, Palestinians and
other Arabs in the ‘70s and ‘80s. American citizens were deeply involved in a process that led
to the commitments of the PLO in the late 1980’s to recognize Israel, forswear violence, and
accept resolution 242.
One of the most stunning examples of Track II Diplomacy were the Geneva Accords
which were developed by a group of distinguished private Israelis and Palestinians and created
what many people still think contains the substance of what an official Israeli-Palestinian peace
will ultimately look like.
More recently, a little known but very interesting Track II process between Israel and
Syria has been going on for three years. I don’t think it is complete by any means. It has
involved Syrians, Israelis, Swiss, Turks, my colleague, Jeff Aronson, and another distinguished
American, Mr. Abraham Soliman, who is here today. Mr. Soliman has devoted many years to
improving relations between the United States and Syria and he is deeply committed to Arab-
Israeli peace.
This Track II process has been going on for three years. It was made public in mid-
January in a series of articles by Akiva Eldar of Ha’aretz, and there were other articles in the
Israeli Press and a good piece in The Economist. We have provided the texts of these articles in
handouts today. This Track II exercise has taken place in the context of overtures from Bashar
al-Assad hinting that Syria was ready for renewed peacemaking with Israel.
Oddly enough, the current American administration has discouraged Israel from
pursuing this; whereas I know of no case, historically, where we have stood in the way of a
potential process that could lead to peace between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. This
Track II activity also comes at a time when the Iraq Study Group and many American experts
and politicians in both parties have advocated US and Israeli reengagement with Syria. Syria
as one of several important keys to help ease the process of a resolution in Iraq, peace and
stability in Lebanon, a long-sought peace between Israel and Syria, and a final status agreement
for the Israelis and Palestinians.
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Geoffrey Aronson: Thank you, Phil. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Abe
Soliman, for coming as well. The fact of your presence here is proof that when a tree falls in
the forest there is somebody there to pay attention. In that sense, I think you have distinguished
yourselves from the general response here in the United States in general, and in Washington in
particular, to news of our efforts. Just to take one example, which I think illustrates this lack of
attention that has been paid, there has yet to be one question in the State Department daily
briefing on the efforts that we have been involved in. Not one. This is an issue that has excited
a lot of interest in Israel in the Middle East, in Europe as well. And perhaps as a result of my
appearance here, some of you who may be State Department reporters may feel it worth your
time and that of the US government to at least address the issue of the prospects for engaging in
a dialogue between Israel and Syria.
Let me begin by noting that the responses to our meetings can be divided into, roughly,
two. One focused on the drama: Who met where, how many people, who knew, when, and so
forth; that occupied about 95 percent of the speculation and the reporting on this issue. The
other five percent was devoted to the substance of what we addressed and what I consider to be
the very creative and the very committed efforts on the part of the principals themselves to
address and to overcome the obstacles that have prevented agreement between Israel and Syria
in the past. If you will permit me, I'll turn those tables a bit today and speak more about the
substance and less about the drama.
I will start with the drama. We met over a period of three years in Switzerland at least
six or seven times, and, of course, there were numerous discussions among and between us in
the intervals. I live here outside of Washington, DC; Abe Soliman lives as well here. So, we
were in frequent personal contact. I have had an opportunity to travel frequently to the region
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and, once there, was able to, again, maintain effective communication with the principal
interlocutor on the Israel side, Alon Liel [a retired Israeli diplomat], and others who were part
of the track for a shorter period of time.
Track II discussions are meant to be deniable; these are unofficial contacts. The people
around the table never committed themselves, or described themselves, as officials. There was
always an understanding that this was an unofficial dialogue. It was also understood, however,
that the people sitting around the table were serious, committed individuals with whom one was
not wasting time by traveling long distances for meetings that lasted three, four, or five or only
six hours.
In the course of our work, the seriousness of the interlocutors was checked; it was
checked by the principals themselves; it was checked by third parties, whether the Swiss or the
Turks, and all of whom came to the conclusion that this was an exercise worthy of their
attention and, in some cases, worthy of their time and money.
What was my role? I knew both Abe Soliman; I knew Alon Liel. They did not know
each other. They were traveling in parallel universes, and I was the link that brought them
together. I had been discussing with Mr. Soliman off and on for many years the need --
especially in the aftermath of the failed talks at Geneva almost seven years ago, of the need to
create some sort of framework for resuming an effective dialogue between Israel and Syria.
The same with Alon Liel; Alon, former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, former
Israeli ambassador to Turkey and South Africa, author of books both about the road away from
apartheid in Syria and also the Turkish experiment as a Muslim country with democracy, and
also someone who arranged the meeting between the new prime minister, Ehud Barak and
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Patrick Seale [the British journalist and Syria expert] soon after Barak was elected prime
minister.
How one might start the ball rolling in some fashion -- and it was only after many
months beginning in 2003 of the discussions with each of these gentlemen in turn that we hit
upon a plan. The plan was to get the two of them plus Uzi Arad, who was formerly Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s National Security Adviser, someone who has been engaged in issues
related to Syria for quite sometime -- around the table, and see where that would go. We had
the advantage in our first meeting of financing our extensive travel requirements by a US
benefactor, Bobby Mueller, who may be known to some of you who as someone who has been
very active in the campaign against landmines. And we benefited greatly from his support. We
met in Switzerland, established the ground rules, which were, again, that this was an unofficial
dialogue; that the people around the table were there in their personal capacity, but that they
were in a position to be credible interlocutors and would, to the best of their efforts, seek to
share this information with people in the official tracks if the opportunity presented itself.
The importance of a first meeting in these efforts is to have a second meeting, and we
had a second meeting. As a result of Alon Liel’s chance meeting with the Swiss
representatives who have taken part in financing the Geneva discussions between Israelis and
Palestinians, we managed to bring in the Swiss and to win their agreement to provide what are
called “good offices” -- logistics, travel, and so forth; something that they succeeded in
admirably and for which we are forever grateful.
At that point, they were able to assume the financial burdens associated with this effort
and we met subsequently on five or six occasions. We did not aspire to write a peace treaty. We
did not try to imitate the Geneva experience where they were dotting i’s and crossing t’s and
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trying to write a comprehensive agreement with annexes and maps. What motivated us were
two or three things. The first was, again, to try to focus upon the issues that had proven to be
obstacles in the past; number two, to try to come to some sort of win-win understanding of how
those obstacles might be overcome; and, number three, to instigate a public dance, if you will,
between Israel and Syria, focused on confidence building measures that might jumpstart
attention to this issue.
When we first started this, the issue of discussions between Israel and Syria was
nowhere on the agenda; it was absolutely a non-issue. This was the middle of the intifada.
There was a war raging in Iraq. There was absolutely no public debate in Israel about this –
zero, nor in the US. In contrast, however, I think the Syrian view was fairly consistent. There
was a readiness to engage in an official dialogue. That was a public stance, which,
unfortunately, at that point had not been heeded. And we were well aware of this and in fact
were encouraged by the idea that were the US and Israel to reassess the prospects for an
agreement, they would at the very least find a basic readiness on the part of Damascus to
engage. And to go back to the last point, if there was an operational aspiration on our part, it
was to move beyond a Track II discussion and to facilitate the entry of officials into a dialogue
in which our presence might not be terribly important. We hoped to jumpstart a process and
then bow out gracefully.
Now, so that is the framework. Regarding the substance -- there were two related tracks
to the substance. One is the question of how you excite some sort of interest in this issue. And
in that sense, the focus was on confidence building measures that, for the most part, Syria
might take in order to jumpstart the process in Israel, in order to force them to pay attention.
There was a whole range of issues that we discussed, ranging from visits of Israeli Jewish
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figures to the gravesites of Jewish sages whose tombs are in Damascus; to information
exchanges on prisoners of war, or Syrians and Israelis who are now in the respective jails of
each country; to some sort of movement on resolving the issue of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy,
who was discovered and jailed and tried and hanged in Damascus in the mid-1960s, and whose
wife and children are still alive.
All of these, we discussed at great length and tried to ascertain what sort of sequence of
steps might work. The other and the more productive aspect of our efforts were focused on
what has come to be known as a non-paper that would contain principles and a framework that
we decided upon for overcoming the obstacles that had precluded agreement in the past. And it
is in that non-paper, I think, that I personally am most proud and that I think offers the best
indicator of the value of the work that we were able to do.
So if you will permit me, I'll just focus for a few minutes on the non-paper itself. The
non-paper was published in Ha’aretz in English. I have subsequently heard many comments
from journalists in the Arab world who, for some reason, were reading from translated copies
of this non-paper which bear no relationship to what we wrote; and so I made a point of
referring them back to the English language text. I'm sure it is available on our website –
www.fmep.org. [Note: See Analysis and Commentary: Syria]
As it was agreed by the parties - and again I'll refer here principally to Alon Liel and
Abe Soliman - there were two issues that obstructed agreement in the past. One was the issue
of water, and the other was the issue of control, access, and sovereignty around the Sea of
Galilee. The other issues are normalization, security, and so forth. I must admit we did not
spend too much time on these because as some of the principals themselves have said, 90