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38
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
significant relaxation of ten-
sion along the Israel-
Lebanon border has become
the backdrop to next week's
second round of peace talks between
Israel and Syria.
Prospects for a final resolution to the
Lebanon morass could be critical for
Prime Minister Ehud Barak on two
fronts — both as he seeks to strike a
deal with Syria and as he seeks to con-
vince the Israeli public that withdrawal
from the strategic Golan Heights is
worth the price of peace.
Indeed, Barak will be heading to
West Virginia, where talks with Syria
are slated to resume Jan. 3, weakened
by political fissures back home that
could prove detrimental to his need for
widespread public support.
On Monday, the pivotal Shas Party,
with its 17 Knesset seats, announced
that it was leaving the governing coali-
tion, embittered over an ongoing dis-
pute regarding state funding for its edu-
cational network.
Some sources inside Barak's One
Israel bloc were hopeful that this storm
would blow over once the current ten-
sions surrounding the annual budget
debate have passed.
But ongoing coalition tensions could
continue to present obstacles for Barak
as he seeks public support for his peace
policies.
Seen in this light, the developments
along the northern border with
Lebanon appear especially significant.
On Sunday, Israel unexpectedly
released five long-term Lebanese prison-
ers, all men linked to the Shiite
Hezbollah guerrillas. They were flown
to Germany — which had acted as
mediator in securing their release —
and from there to Beirut.
International news agencies claimed
the deal involved new information sup-
plied, or to be supplied, by the
Hezbollah concerning the fate of Ron
Arad, the Israeli navigator downed over
Lebanon in 1986 and subsequently held
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Prospects for peace with Lebanon could
bolster chances for Syrian accord.
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hostage in Lebanon and possibly in
Iran. There has been no news of Arad
for years.
Israeli sources were more circumspect
in accounting for the decision to free
the five.
But they, too, did not deny that the
release could augur further tension-
reducing steps between Israel and the
Shiite fundamentalists and was made in
the context of the resumed talks with
Syria and the soon-to-be-resumed talks
with Lebanon.
The prisoner release was the fourth
in a series of recent developments that,
taken together, could mean a major
turning point in the sporadic, unrelent-
ing war on Israel's northern border.
• Hezbollah refrained from retaliat-
ing in early December after a school in
the southern Lebanese village of Majdal
Selim was hit by mortar shells fired by
the Israeli-controlled South Lebanese
Army. Several pupils were injured.
Observers believed that the Syrians, in
the interests of the resumed talks with
Israel, had reined in any Hezbollah
thought of replying with a round of
Katyusha rockets on towns in northern
Israel.
• Last week, Israel and the Hezbollah
quietly proclaimed — and observed —
a four-day cease-fire to enable the
Hezbollah to search for and retrieve the
remains of its men killed in the fighting
over past months and years. This, too,
was seen by observers as a significant
gesture by Israel.
• Over the weekend, Barak indicat-
ed, through high-level officials, that he
wants to bring Israeli troops home from
southern Lebanon before Passover.
The prime minister's commitment to
withdraw, unilaterally if need be, from
south Lebanon by the summer is
thought to have spurred the regime in
Damascus to agree to resume the long-
stalled peace talks. Barak's reported
tightening of the timetable is seen as a
reflection of his confidence that those
talks can successfully produce at least
the broad outlines of an agreement by
the spring. That agreement, of course,
would provide for peace not only
between Israel and Syria, but also