Myth: Syria does not want peace with Israel and is determined to destroy it

- Syria, under Bashar al-Asad, has consistently reaffirmed its desire for peace with Israel. See for example, the President’s interview in the New York Times, 1 December 2003, where he made no preconditions for resuming peace talks with Israel:

- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon treated these overtures with contempt. Not only did he reject a resumption of peace talks, but announced a plan to double the number of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

He reiterated on 31 October 2005 his plans to develop Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, and a week later he said: “Negotiations with Syria are ruled out because we do not envisage any withdrawal from the Golan Heights.”

- Flynt Leverett (former senior director for the Middle East Initiative at the US Government’s National Security Council), writes: “Bashar’s expressions of interest in resuming peace negotiations have come to naught in terms of a meaningful Israeli response.” See ‘Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial By Fire’, p. 129. Available here.

- This depressing situation contrasts sharply with peace efforts made in the 1990s, starting with Hafiz al-Asad’s participation in the October 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, convened after the first Gulf War, and concluding with the Clinton-Asad summit in April 2000 at which negotiations finally broke down. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressed his willingness to withdrawal fully from the occupied Golan Heights in the mid-90s, but this commitment was subsequently abandoned by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, much to Syria’s dismay. A source of comprehensive information on Syria-Israel peace talks is provided in The Middle East Review of International Affairs’ ‘Research Guide: Syrian-Israeli peace talk on the Web’, by Lawrence Joffe, a noted British journalist and MERIA’s UK representative whose books include ‘Keesing’s Guide to the Middle East Peace Process’: