Peace In The North?

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earlier this year, Barak warned that a
peace accord with Damascus would
require "painful concessions" on the
part of Israel. He appealed to the
nation to entrust him with protect-
ing the country's security and inter-
ests, while strongly implying that
Israel would have to turn over a sig-
nificant portion of the Golan
Heights in exchange for peace.
The extent of an Israeli withdrawal
from the Golan Heights "will be
determined in negotiations, based on
the depth of peace and quality of
security arrangements," Barak said, as
opposition legislators heckled him
from the floor.
Opposition leader Ariel Sharon
accused the Israeli government of
sowing confusion among the public
and capitulating to the Syrians
without asking for anything in
return.
"You are hiding behind the decla-
ration you did not promise the
Syrians anything. That's true, not you
directly, but the Americans promised
in your name," Sharon said.
Likud and the other parties are
seeking to put aside their differences
in the interests of running a unified
campaign and wooing waverers in
Barak's coalition, especially the
National Religious Party, Yisrael
B'aliya and Shas.
One anti-withdrawal campaigner,
former Air Force Commander Herzl
Bodinger, said Sunday the referendum
needs to be decided by "a massive
majority," adding that "this is not a
matter for a 1 percent margin."
Not surprisingly, such sentiments
are roundly criticized by Barak's sup-
porters. But beneath their indigna-
tion, they know they will need a solid
success in the referendum to make the
decision stick — both internationally
and in terms of future domestic tran-
quility.
Meanwhile, Barak is facing the tac-
tical question of whether to hold the
referendum on an agreement with
Syria simultaneously with one on a
peace treaty with the Palestinians.
The premier is committed to
reaching a framework agreement with
Palestinian Authority President Yasser
Arafat on a final peace deal by mid-
February. That agreement is designed
to spell out, in broad terms, the shape
of the Palestinian entity • and the
related issue of Israeli withdrawals
from West Bank lands.
That ambitious timetable appears
to coincide with the hopes,
expressed this week both in
Jerusalem and Damascus, that Israel

and Syria can reach an agreement
within a few months.
At the core of the question facing
Barak is whether holding the two ref-
erendums at the same time will
enhance his prospects of achieving a
convincing endorsement of each deal.
On the face of it, presumably not.
Over the weekend, movements repre-
senting Golan residents and settlers in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip agreed
to work together in one massive anti-
withdrawal campaign. That would
seem to spell huge popular and politi-
cal resistance to the prime minister's
peace policies.
This same settlers coalition, on the
other hand, might galvanize the pro-
peace forces in a way that two sepa-
rate campaigns could never do.
Israelis who are dubious about ced-
ing all of the Golan would be swept
into Barak's camp by their deep-felt
opposition to the West Bank settlers,
who are widely seen as neo-messianic.
Similarly, people who are wary
about handing back biblical sites in the
West Bank might be drawn into sup-
porting the peace package in the refer-
endum because it means peace with
Syria, Israel's last "strategic" enemy.
Just as none of the pundits knew
that the breakthrough with Syria was
imminent, so, too, no one genuinely
knows what Barak is planning —
whether he intends to fuse the two
peace tracks together into one referen-
dum or would rather keep them stag-
gered. Fl

— JTA correspondent Naomi Siegal
contributed to this report.

SYRIAN GAMBLE from page 7

Iran, his control over Lebanon and the
credibility of his regime, which has
been constructed on the basis of hostil-
ity to Israel.
The assessment of Middle East ana-
lysts was that, with the collapse of his
Soviet superpower patron, Assad was
negoriatins to placate Washington;
that he was, in the words of one corn-
menrator, "traveling hopefully without
any expectation of arriving."
What, if anything, has changed?
Four factors have entered the equation
that were not present when Syrian and
Israeli negotiators met in 1996.
First, the health of Assad, 70, is
reported to have seriously deteriorated
— he is known to suffer from cardio-
vascular disease and is said to be bat-
tling leukemia and diabetes. Accordino-
io some reports, he is able to work no
more than two hours a day.

