Is Peace possible for Israel and Syria?

A peace deal between Israel and Syria has been elusive for decades. But some experts think it’s possible. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Middle East expert Aaron David Miller.
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LISA MULLINS:  I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. The seeds of conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors were planted hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago. But to understand much of the current impost, you needn’t go back further than 1967. That was the year that Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Well the Sinai has since been returned to Egypt, as for the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, well Israel and the Palestinians have been arguing over their fate for decades now. And then there is the Golan Heights, Israel captures the land from Syria. In a moment, Golan residents are gonna tell us what’s at stake for them in the continuing efforts to resolve the territory’s future. It’s complicated. Even so, Middle East expert Aaron David Miller says the Golan Heights might be the most promising of the disputes to resolve.

AARON DAVID MILLER:  You have two States, Israel and Syria, which have abided by their agreements. You have a disengagement agreement that was signed on June 1st, 1974, which Henry Kissinger negotiated, which has made the Golan Heights in the Israeli/Syrian border the probably the quietest space in the entire Middle East.

LISA MULLINS:  There are reasons for hope on the Golan issue, indeed, this month President Obama moved to return a US ambassador to Syria after an absence of more than four years. “More importantly,” says Aaron David Miller, “the issues that divide Israel and Syria are not insurmountable.”

AARON DAVID MILLER:  They do not involve religious or emotional or ideological issues. So, on paper at least, the prospects of an Israeli/Syrian agreement between two States who can enforce the agreement and respect it, seems to be compelling. If you add to that the fact that you’ve got between 12 to 15 thousand settlers on the Golan Heights, and 290 thousand on the West Bank, not counting the quarter of a million Israelis who live in East Jerusalem, you begin to see the magnitude of the problem. Dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian issue, and the prospects of greater flexibility when it comes to Israel and Syria, that’s the basic case.

LISA MULLINS:  Can you remind us of the importance of the Golan Heights? What they are, and why at this point there’s still a major point to contention?

AARON DAVID MILLER:  Well there are three issues that drive this, one is Syrian honor. The Golan was occupied by the Israelis, in the wake of the 1967 war when the Egyptians and the Syrians, and the Jordanians, and the Israelis ended up in a major, major confrontation. So Syrian honor and dignity is involved in getting the Golan Heights back, as Syrian territory, Syrian land. Number two, there is security. And from the Israeli point of view, this escarpment, which overlooks the Jordan Valley and Israeli settlements, has been a point of vulnerability in Israel’s security outlook for the last 40 or 50 years. At least since the Israelis occupied the Golan Heights in 1967. [TALKS OVER] So you’ve got to consider–

LISA MULLINS:  [TALKS OVER] What, the point of vulnerability for what reason?

AARON DAVID MILLER:  Syrian governors would sit up with artillery on top of the Heights in shell, and it would, it would provide a huge advantage to any State who occupied the Heights, which is one of the reasons the Israelis in 1967 consolidated their control over it, and have now extended, even though they haven’t annexed it, they’ve extended administrative control over the Golan Heights. And finally there is water. That is to say, Israel’s national water carrier is the Sea of Galilee, the Kinneret, from which the Israelis get most, if not all of their water needs. There are three or four sources that feed into that lake. The Banias, which the Syrians controlled before the Israelis took the Heights, are now under the control of the Israelis. The Hasbani is in Lebanon, [INDISTINCTIVE] Israelis control. So if this area were returned to Syria, the Israelis would insist, as would the Syrians, that there would be regulation and control of water. So you have honor, you have security, and you have water. The stakes here are very consequential for both Israel and Syria.

LISA MULLINS:  Alright, well thank you very much. Aaron David Miller, former Foreign Policy Advisor to both republican and democratic Presidents. He’s now a scholar with a Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. Thank you.

AARON DAVID MILLER:  Thank you Lisa.

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