The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

Lebanon), if it were to press Israel to resume peace talks with Syria, this time in good faith. Although the Clinton administration attempt- ed to do just that during the Syria- Israel peace talks of the past decade, it could have pressed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak harder to withdraw from the Golan in exchange for Syria’s recognition of Israel. After all, history shows that virtually every Israeli prime minister, Labor and Likud alike, had at least one showdown with the U.S. For David Ben Gurion, it was Dwight Eisenhower’s order to quit the Sinai in 1956; for Menachem Begin, the most well-known face-off was Ronald Reagan’s 1982 demand to stop the shelling of Beirut. Even the late Yitzhak Rabin, serving his first term as prime minister in the mid-1970s, suffered a “reassessment” of U.S.-Israeli ties when Henry Kissinger, then negotiating a Sinai disengagement agree- ment with Egypt, insisted upon a deeper territorial with- drawal than Israel thought neces- sary. Serious U.S. engagement in the Syrian-Israeli issue that leads to peace is a win-win situation for all concerned. For the U.S., such an agreement would help stabilize the Middle East. As for Syria, recovery of its sovereignty over the Golan would facilitate its desire to achieve an honor- able peace. And for Israel, peace would accomplish what the Jewish state has sought throughout its embat- tled history: to be accepted in the region and to live with- in secure and recognized boundaries, free from the threat of war. In the final analysis, despite the sometimes overheated rhetoric emanating from some quarters, Washington’s regional interests and those of Syria are convergent, not mutually exclusive. It is time for U.S. policy to reflect that fact. n F O C U S 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 In the post-9/11 era, Washington was in no mood to offer Damascus any concessions.