World

Israeli Mayors To Visit Syria

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 23, 1999 / 7:00 AM EDT / CBS

Syria has agreed to an unprecedented visit by a group of Israeli mayors, an Israeli government ministry disclosed Monday. Coming a week after warm words between leaders of the two archenemies, the visit may signal a thaw.

News of the planned tour emerged when the Justice Ministry made public a warning letter to the mayors that said they must receive permission from the Interior Ministry to visit an enemy country. Since Israel's establishment in 1948, the two countries have technically been at war because they have never signed a peace treaty.

The group of Israeli Jewish and Arab mayors is scheduled to travel to Syria in July, according to a report Monday in the Israeli daily Maariv.

The visit would be the first official visit to Syria by Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs have visited Syria since the two countries joined multilateral Mideast peace talks in Madrid in 1991.

Last week, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad grabbed headlines in Israel when he described Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak in a newspaper interview as a "strong, honest man" who earnestly wants peace, reports CBS News Correspondent Jesse Schulman.

It's a shock for Israelis to hear praise from an Arab leader they've long hated and feared second only to Saddam Hussein.

And it's also a shock to realize Israelis could soon be giving Syria a piece of real estate they've been told for decades is vital to their own very survival.

The Syrian charm offensive hasn't been entirely a surprise. Since his election, Barak also has been whispering sweet nothings. He has paid tribute to Syria's importance in the Mideast peace process. Unofficial emissaries have been shuttling between Damascus and Tel Aviv. And for weeks, the papers here have been peppered with reports suggesting a deal is being readied, under which Israel would give back the Golan Heights.

Until very recently, the Golan Heights was a sacred cow in Israeli political life. The Golan is a plateau that looks down on northern Israel and on the Syrian capital, Damascus. Israel seized it from Syria in 1967.

CBS News Correspondent Jesse Schulman

Until lately, virtually every Israeli "knew" the Golan was an essential defensive barrier, to keep Syria's tank armies from invading the Israeli heartland. Syria's 1973 surprise attack to try to regain the Golan caused heavy Israeli losses, and enshrined the Golan in Israeli mythology permanently - or so it seemed.

For a reporter who has heard time and again the litany of how vital the Golan is, the current mood in Israel is a dramatic departure. Newspaper reports suggest that the outlines of a peace accord are already in place. Israel would give up all or most of the Golan, Syria would keep its army well away from Isral's border, and electronic early warning stations would be set up to give each side real-time insurance against unpleasant surprises.

Israel would open an embassy in Damascus, and vice versa.

Frankly, this reporter would have predicted only months ago that serious talk of giving back the Golan would put Israeli politics into a frenzy. This reporter would have been sorely mistaken. Most of the Israeli public is treating a Golan withdrawal as a done deal, and it doesn't seem to bother most of them at all.

Anyone who looked clearly and unemotionally at the Golan long knew it was over-rated as an asset, and knew as well that Syria's "mighty tank armies" were far mightier in Israeli public relations than in the real world.

In fact, Syria's tank fleet is largely junk - good enough for riot control, to keep Syria's own population from rebelling, but with far too few modern, well-equipped tanks to be any match for the Israelis.

And anyone who looked unemotionally at the potential deal knew it was good for Israel, too. Demilitarization, the Syrian army thinned out and stationed well away from the border; state-of-the-art electronics to make a surprise attack impossible; the "normalization" with Syria that Israel has been demanding for years; open borders and trade, all add up to a powerful reason to part with the Golan and make peace.

Israelis, though, overwhelmingly have not looked at the Golan unemotionally. The scars of the 1973 surprise attack, sitting deep in the Israeli political psyche, made that difficult. Hard-liners like defeated prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stoked their fears mercilessly, telling them that giving up the Golan would be committing national suicide.

It's hard to be sure what has changed - and the change is by no means complete. It's partly tied to the casualties Israel has been taking in its occupation of parts of neighboring Lebanon.

Whatever the reason, the change is substantial. Israel's public is apparently ready to think the once unthinkable, and accept the once unacceptable. Never before has an Israel-Syria peace deal seemed as achievable as it does now.