Waiting for The Holdout

By Bruce W. Nelan

For Syria, the new surge of peacemaking in the Middle East is mostly a spectator sport. When the exuberant Israeli-Jordanian summit took place in Washington last week, Syrians gathered in hushed groups to stare at their television sets as Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin warmly pledged an end to a state of war and the beginning of an era of cooperation. Following so quickly on the return of Yasser Arafat and officials of his Palestine Liberation Organization to the Gaza Strip and Jericho, last week's handshake confirmed that the mood in the region is shifting strongly toward peace.

Many other Arab states in North Africa and the Persian Gulf are showing interest in better relations with Israel, especially economic ties. The ; alluring outline of something like a common market is beginning to glimmer over the sands of the Middle East. Peace between Israel and most of its Arab neighbors now seems inevitable. But to be truly stable, the process must include Syria, the hostile power to Israel's north and the de facto ruler of Lebanon. The crucial next decision is up to Syrian President Hafez Assad, who sits brooding in Damascus as the self-proclaimed embodiment of Arab nationalism. Will he join the trend or try to resist it?

Syria's participation is critical because of the country's friendly relations with the most implacable enemies of peace, the wielders of car bombs and plastic explosives, who were back in business last week attacking Jewish organizations. London was rocked by two blasts, one from a car bomb outside the Israeli embassy and a second at the headquarters of a Jewish charity. All told, 19 people were injured. The blasts came just a week after a truck bomb set off outside a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires killed at least 86 people. After the attacks in Britain, governments around the world went on the alert and threw up security cordons at Israeli embassies and offices.

Israel blames the wave of violence on Iran and the Islamic radical groups it supports. But Assad's laissez-faire attitude toward them, especially Hizballah, the main militant organization based in Lebanon, makes it easier for them to operate. Discussing attacks on Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon by Hizballah last week, Rabin noted, "If you ask me if Syria can place limits on Hizballah's activities, I will say yes." But does Syria want to use this power? "My answer is: In a very limited way."

Both Rabin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher felt certain Hizballah was, as the Secretary put it, "at the bottom of some of these" bombings of Israeli and Jewish targets. "Groups like Hizballah that wreak havoc and bloodshed," he said, "and Hizballah's sponsor, Iran," must not be allowed to prevail. If their goal is to halt the moves toward peace, they probably will not succeed. Car bombings and terrorist atrocities now seem irrelevant to a Middle East so close to an overall settlement.

Assad is virtually impossible to read, and maintains a public silence about details of a settlement. Christopher, who is trying to facilitate a potential deal between Syria and Israel, is mildly optimistic. "I think there is the possibility of progress," he said last week, "because both parties see it as in their interest." Israelis too are hopeful but reserve judgment. At a meeting with Bill Clinton in Geneva last January, Assad declared himself ready to make peace with Israel this year -- a pledge he repeated by phone last week. Christopher heads back to the region soon to shuttle between Damascus and Jerusalem, which have broken off bilateral talks.

The Syrians do not want to shake hands on a declaration of principles of the sort that stalled implementation of the Israeli-P.L.O. agreement for months. They want to settle on the specific terms of a treaty they can sit down and sign. In essence, it will probably be a straight swap: Israel will hand back Syria's Golan Heights, occupied since the 1967 war, and receive in return a real peace complete with diplomatic relations, an open border and trade.

Though the deal is simple in outline, neither side wants to make the first concession. Syria insists that Israel agree in advance to total withdrawal from the Golan; only then will Damascus spell out what it means by the word peace. Jerusalem says it must hear the specific terms of a peace agreement first, and wants to pull back from the Golan Heights in stages stretched over several years. Christopher hopes he can craft a compromise three-year phased withdrawal and normalization procedure similar to Israel's 1979 agreement to give back Egypt's Sinai peninsula.

Such a settlement may be in the works, but it won't happen overnight. U.S. officials expect it to come about only after months of repetitive and complex negotiations, which they hope to conclude before the end of the year. Luckily, that is just the sort of thing the dogged, lawyerly Christopher is good at. He will probably have to make multiple trips to the region, trying to persuade both Assad and Rabin that any compromise should not be taken as a sign of weakness.

Assad's most obvious goals are to get back the Golan Heights and to attract enough aid and investment to modernize his economy. He must also accommodate the growing belief among Syrians that peace with Israel is inevitable. "Since the Gulf War," says Sadik al-Azm, a philosophy professor at the University of Damascus, "Syrians have developed a sense of stoic resignation to the new facts created in the world." Further, Assad is concerned about the future security of his regime. He may hope to maneuver himself into a pivotal role in regional affairs and build up an American and Israeli stake in his political survival.

Officials in Jerusalem, as always, are determined to be cool and measured, but they admit they feel a new kind of vibration coming out of Damascus. "This is not the Assad we knew before," says Uri Dromi, head of Israel's government press office.

One important signal, he says -- and on this he agrees with Clinton -- was the fact that Syrian television twice broadcast those emotional scenes of Hussein and Rabin at the White House -- uncut, uncensored and with Arabic subtitles. Assad, they believe, put them on the air because he is preparing his people to emerge from radical isolation and join the peace tide that is sweeping the Middle East.

With reporting by Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem, Dean Fischer/Damascus and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington