Back to Ambassadorial Speeches - Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich

Remarks of Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Moderator: Robert Satloff, Executive Director June 21, 1995

AMB. RABINOVICH: Thank you very much, Rob. Thank you all for coming. I want to thank two groups in particular; my friends and colleagues from several Arab embassies and the Arab community here. Before this all began, the Washington Institute was one of the locations in which we Israelis and Arabs could have thought to meet and to talk. We now meet, at least with some of you, socially, in our respective embassies, and we continue to meet here, slightly differently but not less significantly.

I also would like to thank my colleagues from the embassy for coming. They must hear me during office hours, but to give up their lunch time in order to hear me voluntarily is highly appreciated.

It's a pleasure to speak again here at the Washington Institute. If my memory serves me right, I last spoke here in the autumn of '92 as a peace negotiator. At that time, my friend and colleague Martin Indyk was still the director of the institute, and Rob was a scholar in the institute and completing his book on Jordan. Since then, Martin became a member of the American peace team and subsequently my counterpart as the American ambassador to Israel, and Rob became the director of the institute. And it's a different configuration -- same people, more interesting.

What I would like to do today in my presentation is to offer my view and assessment of the state of the peace process -- where we are, the ground that we have covered and where we want to go and where we may be going in the next few months; to speak about the peace process generally, and address, of course, the Syria and Israeli negotiations as part of that. And then as we move to the discussion part, of course you'll determine the agenda.

In a few months, in October of this year, we'll be marking the fourth anniversary of the Madrid conference.

It will be four years since Israelis and Arabs under the auspices of the conveners met in order to put together the framework for the first sustained attempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the nearly 50 years of the conflict there has not been a previous sustained effort to resolve the conflict.

We have witnessed some short-lived attempts to resolve the conflict as a whole, we witnessed many more attempts at mediation, at resolving aspects of the conflict, which resulted in one comprehensive peace and several partial agreements, but by and large, both the parties and the international community accept it as an axiom that the conflict defied resolution, that any attempt equivalent to what we have been doing for nearly past four years would have been futile.

It was only in '91, against the background of circumstances well known to all of us, that the decision was made that ripeness may have been reached, and the time may have come to try and resolve the conflict. And it was no less than that than the conveners of the Madrid conference had in mind, and this is precisely what the agenda and the framework, the four bilateral tracks and the five multilateral tracks have been designed to do.

It is less certain that all the leaders who arrived at the head of their delegations to Madrid had precisely that in mind. We have yet to establish what exactly it was that Hafez al-Assad, Yitzhak Shamir, and Yasser Arafat, among others, had in mind when they agreed to and subsequently traveled to Madrid. We can quite safely assume that there have been changes of the agenda.

I'm quite positive that president Assad's view of a peaceful settlement with Israel today is quite different from what he had in mind in October '91. Not only the passage of time, but what has transpired through the negotiations and elsewhere in the peace process have undoubtedly affected changed -- his view of the process.

Likewise, Chairman Arafat -- the agreement that he signed in Oslo was probably not what he had in mind when he authorized the Palestinian delegation, without himself, to go to Madrid.

In the Israeli case, we've had a change of government, very much related to what was going on and what was not going on in the peace process, and that change of government brought to the head of the Israeli government, a team with a very different view of Madrid and the peace agenda than the team they had superseded.

And indeed, since the summer of 1992, the Israeli government and the peace negotiators empowered by that government have been seeking a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. And they began by outlining a strategy, focusing first and foremost on Syria and the Palestinians as to the two partners to the negotiations that were estimated by Israel to be the partners with the potential of effecting a breakthrough; and seeing Jordan and Lebanon, for very different reasons, as partners that would come into full play only later on.

And it is this agenda that has guided the government of Israel since 1992, continues to guide the government now, and will continue into 1996, a year which at some point will become a year of elections here in and in Israel and which will herald the closing of the diplomatic season at some point in 1996. But now and for the next few months, the government of Israel and its peace negotiators continue to seek the kind of comprehensive peace that they began seeking in 1992.

Now, having said that we are dealing here with an effort to resolve the Arab- Israeli conflict -- that is to say, looking at the comprehensive solution or resolution -- this implies that we are dealing with a system. The whole process needs to be seen in terms of a system. And nothing happens along any of the fronts of the peace process that is unrelated to other components of the peace process. There may be the first breakthrough on one track, there may be a greater degree of progress on another, but it ought to be seen and evaluated in systemic terms.

And it is from that point of view that I would like to offer what I will offer what will call my cyclical view of what has transpired in the peace process until now. I'll propose to you that we divide the period between the summer of '92 and the beginning of the summer of '95, roughly a three-year period, into a number of phases. I will not -- I will forsake my academic hat very soon, I will not take a lot of your time in an analysis of the past. But I think we need to spend a few minutes doing that in order to have a better perspective on where we are now in the present.

My first phase begins in August '92 and takes us to November '93. This is the phase in which we were looking for a breakthrough, looking primarily at the Syrian and Palestinian tracks, discovering that breakthrough availed itself first on the Palestinian track in the summer of '92, and this led to the Oslo Agreement, to the Washington signing.

It was followed in rapid succession by the donors' conference here in Washington, and it's a phase that ended in November after the failure of the attempt to translate the agreement with the Palestinians into a rapid success with the Jordanians. Early November 1993 was the high point of that attempt, and that came to an end in November.

Then between November '93 and May '94, we had a period of difficulties -- and according to my systemic approach, difficulties everywhere: Jordan, I said, no progress after the failure at the rapid breakthrough; with the Palestinians, the well-known difficulties of translating the Oslo and Washington agreements into an agreement on implementation -- it took until May '94 for that agreement that, according to the original scheme, should have been completed in December; with Syria, the backlash to the Palestinian agreement, the fact that the Syrians were angry at that agreement, were not happy with it. And we ourselves indicated that the traffic couldn't bear more than one breakthrough at a time. And we wanted to create a sequence, and that resulted in difficulties in the negotiations. And so between November and May '94 was a period of difficulties.

May '94 marked the beginning of a better phase that took us from roughly that period -- the spring of '94 into the end of '95 -- roughly December '95. And the good news happened again on all fronts.

Begin with Jordan. May '94 was the month of change, marked by King Hussein's visit here, the meeting between King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin in London, the discussion between King Hussein and President Clinton, and of course the Cairo agreement.

It marked the implementation, transition to implementation with the Palestinians that had its impact on the Jordanian view of the matter. And so what we saw was a transition from the May improvement to the July 25 Washington Declaration, then to the signing of the full-fledged peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.

On the Palestinian front, we had the implementation agreement in May, and then the rapid implementation, Arafat moved to Gaza, settled in Gaza, contrary to many expectations, established his administration in Gaza and Jericho, and it became a working proposition.

With Syria, the achievements were not as well-advertised, were not as easily perceptible, but several important developments happened in the Israel-Syria negotiations beginning in May and moving forward in December. The Israeli position was presented to Syria now in terms of a package, the four legs of the table that I will come back to in greater detail later. Sequencing was established. The ambassadors channel in Washington here was authorized by President Assad, and we began a serious negotiation that I will address again in later detail later. But during the spring and summer of '94, a series of positive developments occurred in the Syrian-Israeli negotiating track.

So that was a good period, culminating, if you wish, with the Amman conference -- I'm sorry, with the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian full-fledged peace treaty, and then with the Casablanca conference in October that could serve as the high mark of the normalization process between Israelis and Arabs in general that was generated by the peace process and was considered then the high point of Arab-Israeli peacemaking in terms of achievement and the message that it radiated to the whole region. In December we had the originally non- publicized meeting of the Israeli and Syrian chiefs of staff that was an attempt at achieving a breakthrough on the security issues regarding the negotiations.

So now I'm moving to another negative cycle, and again, it's roughly December '95 to -- '94, I'm sorry -- December '94 to last May.

And again, negative on practically all fronts.

With the Palestinians, it's primarily the successful raids -- suicide bombs by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the very negative reaction that they generated in Israel, as well as difficulties in negotiations concerning the next phases -- or the next phase of implementation, and a general sense of malaise and dissatisfaction I would say on both sides.

With Syria, a freezing of the negotiations. In January of '95, President Assad froze the negotiations. He froze them until early March. In early March, after a visit by the secretary, U.S. secretary of state, he authorized his ambassador to renew the negotiations with me. And -- but before resuming the security talks, he wanted us to agree on a set of understandings concerning the security talks, and it took another three months, from early March to late May, in order to complete that negotiation. So practically there was a freeze on the negotiations for that period.

With the Palestinians, it's a period of continued difficulties in the negotiations on the next phase of implementation, and during much of the period, not all of it, certainly during the early part of the period, Israeli dissatisfaction regarding the Palestinian delivery on the commitment to provide security to Israelis in and from Gaza.

With regards to Jordan, no major difficulties, but some sense of disappointment coming from various sectors in Jordan that -- not so much at peace itself but at the transformation of life that some people may have expected as a result of peace and which they have not seen as an immediate fruit -- occasional voices. Of course the mainstream here, the relationship between the two governments is excellent. The implementation of the peace is proceeding. Just today we can photographically see the implementation of the first water project. But earlier in the period we also needed to listen to some voices of dissatisfaction. And more broadly, if the Casablanca conference represented the high mark of Arab-Israeli normalization, what we began to see and hear in 1995 was some sense of disappointment.

The initial elation of mutual discovery, a sense that a new era was opening, that boundaries may fall, that Arabs and Israelis could cooperate, was replaced with a sense that more needs to be done before a normal, simple relationship could obtain. We heard phrases like "this is the peace of the elite, not the peace of the people," the Arab public opinion's dissatisfaction with peace, and other such manifestations. And another front of difficulty was the difficulties in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship generated primarily by the issue of the NPT, occasioned by something that none of us had control over, namely the April 1995 NPT conference in Rio, but it set in motion a process that led to great tension in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship. Egypt is a major player in the region, and of course when Egypt became dissatisfied it drew other partners. The Alexandria meeting is an example of the impact that Egypt had regionally, not just in the bilateral relationship with Israel.

For Israelis there was a more profound level to be worried by, at the sight of the tension between Israel and Egypt, and it went beyond the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli relationship. It characterized what I would call the shifting horizon syndrome. Some Israelis, primarily Israelis who are critics of the peace process, argue that you'll never come to an agreement with the Arabs because the horizon will keep shifting and as you move forward so does the horizon; so you come to an agreement with Egypt and you will have resolved everything and then normalization becomes dependent on the nuclear issue. The nuclear issue was not raised during the peace negotiations, it was quite dormant for 17 years, and suddenly it becomes an issue in normalization, becomes a hostage to this issue. Or it could be Jerusalem next time; and a third issue, final status negotiations with the Palestinians, two years down the road, with any Arab partner.

Now, I'm not saying that this is an intractable problem, but it's an issue that needs to be an addressed, and this is the deeper issue that was raised by the Egyptian-Israeli tension at that time.

But again, this came to an end in the magical month of May, and many of these difficulties began to disappear, or at least lose in significance.

First and foremost is the agreement between us and Syria on the resumption of the security negotiations, our ability to come to an agreement on that set of understandings that had been worked out during the previous three months. It represented the first complete agreement between Israel and Syria on something. I will address the question of what happened imperceptibly in the Syria-Israeli negotiations a little later. But this is an interesting phenomenon in itself, that it took almost 2-1/2 years for us and the Syrians to agree on a whole complex, but it happened. It's very significant for the Israeli-Syrian negotiations, but also sent a very important signal to the rest of the region.

With the Palestinians we have closed, narrowed down many of the differences. We are both working very hard towards a target date of July 1st, and I hope we'll meet it. With Egypt, the tension has been resolved, The visit 10 days ago by secretary of state and our prime minister to Egypt sent that particular message to the region. The press conference was remarkably free of tension. Of course not everything has been agreed, but we agreed to disagree in a friendly fashion. Yes, Egypt and Israel see the nuclear issue differently, but they have their ways of discussing it in a civilized fashion as two neighbors and partners do or ought to do.

As I remarked earlier, projects between us and Jordan are moving forward, We are both, and together with others, working with a view to the Amman conference, and on the whole, there is a greater sense of optimism regarding the peace process in Israel and among our Arab interlocutors.

So here we are, and the question is, where do we go from here? The two cutting-edge issues that I mentioned for '92 are cutting-edge issues for now: the Palestinian and the Syrian negotiations. The Palestinian negotiations, as I mentioned earlier, we are working hard in order to meet the July 1st target date. I hope that we shall. If we don't, I am quite confident that there will be an agreement, perhaps not meeting the target date, but one of the fallback dates that exist. It's something that we very much want to avoid; we very much do want to meet the July 1st target date, but of course not meeting it would not be a calamity, would not represent any crisis.

It will just indicate to us that we need to work harder and with greater imagination at trying to meet the end, the goal at a somewhat later date.

The negotiations with Syria are, of course, crucial because, beyond the innate, intrinsic significance of the Syrian-Israeli track, it represents the key to moving to that comprehensive settlement that I mentioned earlier as the goal of this peace process. It has the potential of integrating the very significant achievements that have been achieved into a totality that would represent a comprehensive settlement or at least the beginning of a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So where are we in the Syrian-Israeli negotiations? I said earlier that progress on that track has not been very perceptible. It's been incremental, discrete, with an -- spelled e-t-e" -- and not always perceptible. But if I look back on the past 2-1/2 years, nearly three years between December of '92 and now, and ask myself how much ground have we covered, my answer is that we've covered quite a bit of ground.

Let me take several issues and examine them. In the -- if you remember beyond the midst of three very busy years, we jump-started the negotiations in August of '92, and the Syrians then presented a paper for the first time, began discussing the paper, and after a while, we became stalemated by the famous, infamous debate on 5(a). Paragraph 5, section a of the Syrian paper was the paragraph that spoke about withdrawal, and the Syrians insisted on getting from us a commitment to full withdrawal, which we refused to give for reasons that we can elaborate on, and then they said, "Well, if you don't commit yourself, you don't accept the principle of full withdrawal, there's nothing to talk about." Never broke the negotiations, but negotiations did not move.

If we look at that issue, and I think my colleagues from the media very well remember the stakeouts and the semi-daily routine of "What about 5(a)?" we are long past that. I mentioned earlier the achievements of American diplomacy in the summer of '94. The secretary of state, when he presented to the Syrians our package in '94, obtained from Hafez al-Assad an agreement to discuss other issues before the disagreement on 5(a) will have been resolved.

In other words, to discuss security, discuss the time frame, even without coming to an earlier agreement on the question of withdrawal or on the question of peace.

So that has been a very important change what kept the negotiations almost frozen for a long period of time has been dealt with.

Secondly, the question of the channel. For a long time we negotiated through the legations in a very formal -- I would even say rigid -- fashion or mode, and we very much wanted -- demanded -- from the Syrians a change of mode, walks in the woods, discreet meetings and other changes of format.

Assad absolutely refused, but in the spring of 1994, in the summer of 1994 he agreed to have some variation, agreed to the ambassador's meeting here in Washington and serving as a negotiating channel and then to a meeting by the chiefs of staff. And basically here we are. These are the two changes. As you know -- and you must have if you read the Washington Post this morning -- we continue to want more in greater variation in the channels, but these two have been agreed to thus far and they also represent and important departure.

Thirdly, we demanded public diplomacy, argued that without public diplomacy this negotiated track would not move. The Syrians do not accept our or the U.S.'s view of the significance of public diplomacy, but -- albeit reluctantly -- agreed to several measures of public diplomacy. One of them was the interview given by Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara to Israeli television -- several others, and dispatching the chief of staff to Washington. First in December next week, second time, also has a dimension of public diplomacy.

The Syrian chief of staff is also a political figure, he's a member of the regional command of the Ba'ath party and is formerly also a political person, one of the senior persons in the regime, and the fact that he's being dispatched -- second time to Washington publicly, and that there will be a public dimension to his meeting with us can also be seen as a measure of public diplomacy.

Also, notice the change of tone of the Syrian media in the past few weeks, and this also has not been an accident.

On the issues of substance in this negotiation, when we negotiated the Syrian paper, it very much was a debate on language. And as I said earlier, in May '94 we changed that by offering to the Syrians an integrated package.

Package, figuratively speaking, is presented by us as the four legs of a table or a stool. And they are, as I'm sure you will know by now, one leg concerning the formula on peace and withdrawal. The second is the security arrangements. The third is the time frame, and the fourth is the -- what we call interface, the relationship in the implementation of the agreement between the elements of normalization and security on the one hand and withdrawal on the other.

And there is a fifth leg to the table or to the stool. That's public diplomacy. It's not a formal leg, but very much a part of reality.

Now this was not just an intellectual exercise at identifying the legs of the stool, but this has really focused the negotiations. And what has happened in the year since the spring of '94 was that progress has been reached regarding all legs of the table -- progress in the sense that the gaps being narrowed -- they are still there, but they have been narrowed.

We spoke about a time frame of five years. And the Syrians began by sixth month and the Syrians are up to a year and a half. And we -- I will come to our view of time when I'll speak about the phases.

On the phases, the Syrians have accepted the principle that implementation should be top-heavy in the sense that normalization should be accelerated as against withdrawal in the structure of the phases.

We have not committed to each other and we've not said to each other anything specific either on the nature of peace or on the extent of withdrawal. But much has been said and spoken about not in the negotiations, but around the negotiations -- to give each other a good sense of what the other can expect. The Syrians speak about full peace and normalization. They're not committed themselves in the negotiations.

But if you listen to senior Syrian spokesmen you can gather that. And several Israeli leaders spoke about withdrawal in terms that I think should have given the Syrians a good indication that we are looking at a significant withdrawal and not at any cosmetic withdrawal.

Now we come to security -- the security issues, which at this point seem to be the bedrock of the negotiations. For us, security is extremely important in general and of course in the context of our present and future relationship with Syria. And coming to an agreement on security arrangements is, for us, a must in these negotiations. We began to discuss security arrangements in a diplomatic channel, and we all -- all means the Syrians, the Americans, and us -- reached a conclusion that we will need to involve security experts, namely military persons, in the negotiations for these negotiations to succeed, not only because these would be the professionals, but in larger terms this is a very essential part in the reconciliation process between two former enemies. It was a very important dimension of reconciliation between Egypt and Israel at the time.

I also remember looking at Ambassador Tarawneh at a moving ceremony that we had with Jordan, signing on the Jordanian-Israeli border last year. For me the most moving and significant part was the senior officers on both sides saluting each other and sort of signaling a farewell to arms and transition to peace. We are quite distant from such a salute between an Israeli and a Syrian team, but when chiefs of staff meet, that is a very important step towards that, and chiefs of staff will also need to come to an agreement to share a view of security, and on the basis of that to come to an understanding on more concrete measures. Without this, there cannot be a deal.

Now, this discussion can only take place, you remember, after we agreed that it can take place, independently of the other issues. I can figuratively think of a juggler keeping four balls in the air. You are always mindful of the fact that there are four balls in the air and you must not let any of these balls hit the ground and explode. But at any given moment you focus more specifically on one ball, and right now we are focusing on security.

The Israeli view of this was at the time that there was no point to go through a very painful negotiation on withdrawal, to presumably be able to agree on a line of withdrawal, only to discover later on that we do not agree on security. And we had an inkling early on that negotiation on security was going to be very difficult.

I made reference earlier to the Syrian paper; there was 5(a), but there was also Paragraph 8. Paragraph 8 dealt with security, and the word "equal" appeared there. This was a paper that had been prepared with a great deal of attention, and whoever authored the paper -- we know who approved the paper; we don't know who authored the paper. But whoever authored the paper, certainly whoever approved the paper, knew exactly well -- or was thinking about the Third Act. And in the First Act, following the Ibsen view, he was putting the pistol on the wall in order to have that pistol, of course, not fire in the Third Act. The idea is not to fire but -- not to fire. And the word "equal" was put, planted in that document on the assumption, well borne out by events, that we will reach a discussion on security arrangements and that the notion of equality will come (full ?) as a very (bone ?) issue.

Now, we did spend three months arguing over terminology, including the word "equality." And we ended up with an agreement. Now, there are two ways of looking at these three months. You can say that they are indicative of what's to follow and that every issue, every important issue, will take three months to resolve. If that is the case, of course we will not be able to reach an agreement in time. But there is a more optimistic way of looking at this three months. A more optimistic way of looking at the three months would be that both sides realized that they were making a very important decision, and once that decision was made, progress would be swift and that it was important to insist on every word, particularly on important words, because we were in a way setting the scene within which we would be acting for several subsequent and very significant months. I hope very much that it is this optimistic view that will be vindicated when we look retrospectively on the period March to May that we spent working on that non-paper.

The non-paper found the golden path between the Syrian view and the Israeli view and offered a language that I think met the essential requirements of both sides in that respect. I think it's conducive to a sense of optimism that an agreement can in principle be reached.

What we'll need to do in the next few weeks and months is to focus on the actual security measures, try to come to an agreement on them. Now, how can a potential scenario for the next few months appear to be?

First, there's the meeting of the two groups with chiefs of staff, two other senior officers from both sides and their respective ambassadors, and the American team, for three days next week. This is an important meeting, but it should not be (built/billed ?) beyond the proper proportions.

There will not be an agreement reached, there cannot be an agreement reached on security arrangements within these three days. I think that anyone who looks towards that meeting with that kind of expectations, who expects a miracle to take place, would be ill advised. What can happen in this meeting and what I think ought to be regarded the criterion for its success is the following. I think patterns of work should be established, not just chemistry -- there's chemistry, physics and a lot of mathematics, speaking of (equality ?), that will need to unfold -- but it's important that the two security establishments represented by the top of the pyramid will establish a good pattern of work between them personally and between the two respective establishments. And secondly, we should begin to do some actual work towards closing the gaps. And I think it would be unrealistic to expect a closing, but I think it would be realistic to expect to see some beginning of movement.

It's very important that both sides emerge from this second meeting, different personalities in the Israeli case, with a full and clear understanding not of principles and abstract ideas but of concrete measures what the other side wants, what for the other side is absolutely necessary, and where areas of flexibility could be detected. And if we accomplish that, I think it would be -- could be defined as a successful meeting. It is to be followed in about two weeks later by a meeting of two delegations headed by us, the ambassadors, including a number of military persons other than the chiefs of staff, to continue the work along the lines established in the first meeting. This should convene somewhere around the middle of July and would probably last through the end of July, and I think that by early August we should have a good idea of the prospects.

Now, if we are successful, we should then go back to the other balls in the air, never lose sight of, and seek to use the momentum achieved in these negotiations in order to try and close the gaps with regard to the other issues, and then think about the mechanism and the time frame for trying to use such putative potential progress in order to close a comprehensive deal and have the breakthrough. I don't think that we need to elaborate at this point on what precisely a breakthrough ought to look like. I think that in this negotiation, that has been difficult, protracted, meticulous for nearly three years, we do not really look beyond the horizon.

We'll take it one step at a time, and hopefully we'll be successful and then look in greater detail at what may follow.

But of course, we are guided by a general vision of what things could look like, and we ought to -- we have to look for a breakthrough.

This negotiation is very different from the Egyptian case. It's -- there are, of course, some similarities between Egypt and Syria, between the Israeli- Egyptian negotiations and Israeli-Syrian negotiations. But we remember very well that Syria is not Egypt, the Golan is not the Sinai, Assad is not Sadat, and this could not be a replication of the Egyptian model. So therefore, I will use Camp David only figuratively. Say, before you move on to a full- fledged peace treaty, there has to be this set of understandings that implement, convey an agreement on the basic components, basic on the four legs of the table -- and very much amplified by the fifth leg of the table -- that we would need to -- will need to reach.

Now I think that this is doable. Two questions that I will deliberately not try to answer: put any percentage on the prospects and put any time frame. I think that learning -- at least from the lesson the past two years on this track, not to mention larger phenomena -- it would be foolhardy to try to do that. But within the time frame, it is doable, if the right things happen.

Now what is the time frame? Time frame takes us into '96. And there are -- there's more than one school of thought inside Israel on what is absolutely the last point at which a deal can be made. And there will be no point in trying to point to that point in time, but clearly there is a point in early 1996 at which point the window will close. We have several months within which to achieve the breakthrough that I've described. As I've said, I think it is doable within that period of time.

Now of course, our ability to either do it or not do it -- or our failure to do it -- will determine the answer to the original question that I put at the outset. Our ability to reach the original aim put by the conveners, the authors of the Madrid Conference. A Syrian-Israeli breakthrough will lead to that kind of a comprehensive settlement resolution that is available and which I've described earlier on. Failure to do that will leave us short of that, and if that happens, we'll have to spend some time and a lot of brain power in early 1996 asking ourselves collectively, how do we protect the peace process in the event of failing to do that?

But let us not spend too much brain power or ink on a theoretical question. We will devote the next few weeks and months to very hard work on the assumption that it is doable and with a certain hope and intent to achieve it. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. SATLOFF: I just want to thank you very much for what was a comprehensive tour d'horizon of the peace process. I know that there are a lot of questions about the Israel-Syria talks and the process more generally.

If I can just ask you the first question?

For those of us who have had a little healthy skepticism about the Israel- Syria talks for a number of years, one of the problems that I have seen -- I guess I've also gotten this in discussions in Damascus -- is a sense that both the Israelis and the Syrians are hamstrung by history, in that Assad has a legacy of Sadat on which he must improve, and that the Israeli government has a legacy of its peace with Egypt on which it must do at least as well.

Given those parameters, where to do you see the middle ground, a win-win situation in which both the Syrians have an agreement which improves on the legacy of Sadat's agreement with Israel, and the Israelis have an agreement which improves on the Camp David Accords?

AMB. RABINOVICH: I will not get into the details of that, but of course you describe one of the main challenges to our ability to reach an agreement and a question that very much haunted us in the past few months, when we were asking ourselves whether the negotiations were stalled forever for all intents and purposes. For now, naturally Israelis tended to ask questions about the intentions of the Syrians and the Syrians tended to ask questions about the seriousness of our intent.

I think though, that there is a positive answer to your question and I think that there is a way of coming up with a win-win formula. But let me emphasize here two points. Take an issue of language. We and the Syrians used, I think, to good advantage the past 2-1/2 years in order to get to know one another better, and to be more sensitive to the other party's sensibilities. And I spoke earlier about the phases. All those who in read the prime minister's interview with Ms. Weymouth this morning noticed that he spoke about the first phase and then a period of about at least there years for testing the relationship -- the new relationship. He said testing the relationship, not testing the Syrians.

In earlier periods, you may have picked up Israelis speaking about the need to test the other side. Well, we are not testing the other side, we respect the other side and we know the other side will make the deal only if it wants to make a deal and that it would then be serious and committed to the deal.

We would be testing the new relationship. And the Syrians are now addressing us in a different fashion. We picked up some interesting themes in the Egyptian media in -- sorry, Syrian media, in Syrian statements during the past few weeks that indicate a greater sensitivity to Israeli concerns, and I see that as symptomatic of what could be a larger phenomenon.

Then there is the question of President Assad, the way he views President -- the late President Sadat and the peace he made, and the fact that he criticized bitterly at the time, and the question of how can he make a peace now, and of course the pressure to do better than Sadat in order to vindicate, justify the previous 18 years. I think that, you look at President Assad, you look at a man who is now thinking in historic terms. He has been in the leadership of Syria for 33 years now, and has been active in the Ba'ath Party politics for over 40 years now. And I think he does think in these historic terms.

And I think he's reconciled himself, which may not have been the case in October '91 but I think is the case now, to the notion that he could make peace with what he defines, the Syrians define, as dignity, that would sit very well with the previous phases of his career; that it would be congruent, there would be no incongruity between having been the leader of resistance and opposition to Israel and a critic of earlier agreements, to making the agreement that is the key to a comprehensive settlement that doesn't meet every single Arab Syrian demand but on the whole conforms to both consensus in the Arab world and that then becomes a historic role that could seal a great career in politics with historical significance.

So that, I think, is a way of looking at the question that you posed and emerging with a positive answer.

MR. SATLOFF: Thank you. If I can call on Ambassador Tarawneh from Jordan. Welcome, Ambassador.

Q: Thank you. Itamar, allow me to ask just two quick questions. One, on the nature of the referendum, and is it in your opinion a way to influence the Israeli Knesset through the public opinion of most of the public at large in anticipation of a favorable answer to the question of withdrawal?

And the second, in your opinion how difficult or how easy the Lebanese track is in light of an agreement with Syria?

AMB. RABINOVICH: On the first question regarding the referendum, I think the idea of the referendum reflects a number of considerations. First and foremost, it reflects the parliamentary situation. The government won the elections but on a narrow majority, and it leads a coalition, a parliamentary coalition that enjoys a very small majority, and we were all reminded a couple of weeks ago how narrow and fragile it could be. And the decision to seek a referendum reflects the sense of the political leadership at the head of the government that you do not want to have issues of the order of magnitude involving the Syrian-Israeli negotiations decided by a majority of two votes in the Knesset. This of course calls for a comparison with Prime Minister Begin and the confirmation of the agreement that he initialed with President Sadat at the time.

President Begin had two advantages, one of them more concrete than the other. The less concrete advantage was that he was a nationalist, sort of center right -- a center right wing -- the head of a right-wing coalition. And even if not every member of his own party voted for him, he had the automatic support of the center left wing opposition. Therefore, he could count on a massive majority in the Knesset and therefore satisfy himself with a massive majority in parliament. This is not going to be the case if we come to the point of voting on an agreement initialed with Syria.

Thirdly, there's the question of -- call it "political ethics." The Labor Party, when it went into the '92 elections, did not include significant territorial concessions with Syria in its platform. And again, the leaders of the government would not want to be exposed, both to their own sense, but also to the charge that they have misled the voters, that they implemented a policy that is incongruence with the election platform. And they feel that they need a renewed popular mandate in the event of such a major decision as would be involved in these negotiations.

Here are the three reasons for going to a referendum. And I think our Syrian counterparts understood that. The initial Syrian response, about a year ago, to the idea of the referendum was not positive. But I said earlier we understand each other better, we know each other better, and I think they understand that this is not a ploy but a genuine move.

With regards to the Lebanese, the Lebanese are indexed -- the Lebanese negotiations are indexed to the Syria negotiations. Syria enjoys a great deal of influence in Lebanon. Wouldn't want the Lebanese to move ahead of Syria. But the other side of the same coin is that Syria is committed to the Lebanese to obtain for them their due. And therefore, I think as soon as we have a breakthrough with Syria -- maybe five minutes earlier -- they will do two things; they will give the green lights to the Lebanese partners and they will try to ascertain that the Lebanese are not shortchanged, which is not a real danger, because I think once the Lebanese are allowed to negotiate with us, there are no problems that should militate against an agreement.

So this is the case. If you listen to Syrian commentaries or read the Syrian commentaries, you'll -- probably you must have noticed the Syrian definition of comprehensiveness. This is an issue -- speaking of the difference between '92 and the present, we spent hours on end splitting hairs on the question of linkage between the Syrian track and other tracks and the issue of comprehensiveness. It's not an issue anymore.

The Syrians define comprehensive now as resolving the issues concerning Syria and Lebanon, and so that is a message both for the Lebanese but both on the issue of comprehensiveness.

MR. SATLOFF: Amahl Madlalli (ph).

Q: To follow up on this question, does this mean that a new aspect of the Lebanese situation in the south as part of the security -- (inaudible) -- and the Syrians, are these two issues separate, or -- (inaudible) -- south or any other issues? Are these separate issues? Is the presence of Syria one of -- (inaudible)?

AMB. RABINOVICH: The issue as yet -- we have not begun the security talks. We'll do it next week. But the Israelis, I'll say that much, we, the Israelis draw a distinction between the political dimension of Syrian military presence in Lebanon and the military dimension. It's the political question that we are now taking on. Unlike the Israeli view several years back, we do not demand a Syrian commitment to withdraw from Lebanon as a prerequisite to an Israeli- Syrian agreement in general, I think this is an issue that if the international community wants to take up, it can take up. This is not an issue that we need to do on behalf of the international community. And the military dimension of the presence, which, of course, is part of the overall military equation between Syria and Israel.

MR. SATLOFF: Haim Shibi.

Q Mr. Ambassador, do you see American or European foreign aid to the newcomer to the peace club (with Syria ?) as a component of the peace deal? And do you think that Israel should actively seek foreign aid to Syria, as is the case with the PLO and (Jordan ?)?

AMB. RABINOVICH: I trust that this is not related to any statements -- (laughter). I would say this. The issue has not been discussed from the -- between us and the Syrians and between us and our American partners. Based on the same approach that I mentioned earlier, in these negotiations we take the issues one by one, in sequence. We do not deal with hypotheticals and probabilities. If we come to the political agreement first between Israel and Syria, then the Syrians will want to pursue their bilateral relationship with the United States. Now therefore, the question of American economic aid to Syria is not a reason at all.

Of course --

Q: It's not a reason?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Yes, it's not a reason. American economic aid to Syria, as part of a peace package, is not being dealt with -- certainly not between -- among the three of us -- I think also not between the Americans and the Syrians, but this is not for me to say. But the negotiations are, in a way, trilateral negotiations. This has not been an issue in the trilateral negotiations that the Americans, the Syrians, and we participate in.

At the same time, if I were a Syrian, I would think of actors other than the United States as actors that could improve my economic luck in the event of peace. And I think if you were to monitor the movements of Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara in the first few months, you would notice that he spends a lot of time in Europe. He's been to, I think, 10 European capitals in the past few months, I think, already banking on the positive atmosphere that the peace process generates. And I think that in the event of peace actually happening, the Syrians would be looking to Europe, maybe to japan, maybe to some Arab sources as the potential benefactors of that economic (inaudible word). That has yet to happen.

MR. SATLOFF: Speaking of banking on future peace opportunities, Abdullah bu- Habib (sp). (Scattered laughter.)

Q: My question is: Narrowing the gap between the Israelis and the Syrians, how far is the gap? What are the issues in this gap that we want to narrow? How specifically can we (know ?)?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Not very, but the gaps exist. I gave you one example earlier: the time frame that -- we said that we would like the deal to be implemented in five years. The Syrians began by six months, not formally, but virtually, I think, are up to a year and a half. This is still a very wide gap. And you know, I've seen negotiations founder over smaller issues and smaller gaps, but it's been narrowed, and you know, hopefully could be narrowed further.

I mentioned another issue of interface. We envisage a first phase that would entail a small withdrawal or a very small withdrawal. And in return for which, we ask for full normalization, because, as I said earlier, we would like to examine, to evaluate, to scrutinize the new relationship for a period of at least two years, within which we enjoy full normalization and can evaluate in our relationship as it is or as it would be.

Now the Syrians have not accepted that. They have accepted the principle of interfacing. They have accepted that -- the acceleration of normalization, but they have not accepted full normalization. They have not accepted an Israeli embassy in Damascus and a Syrian Damascus -- I'm sorry, a Syrian embassy, I should say, in Israel, in order not to -- (laughter) -- to take an inter-city position.

They've not accepted that. And here is again a gap that has to be narrowed.

On security arrangements, you know, we know what most of the components are: demilitarization, limited deployment, early warning, verification, and so forth. But when you want to translate that into facts on the ground -- How much demilitarization? Where exactly? What's the ratio of demilitarization to a limited deployment? -- again, important issues. We've not tested it yet against the negotiations that will take place next week. When the chiefs of staff met last December, the two presentations were quite far apart -- not beyond hope, but significant gaps.

Q: Barry Schweid. That leads really into the question I'm trying to ask. As you describe the process next week and then, you know, in July and possibly then on, you're dealing -- you and the Syrians are dealing in specific terms with security issues. And as you describe it to us, you're able to do that without knowing where the line is. This leads to -- I can only think of two possibilities. One is that whatever conclusions you come to, or even your conversations, are applicable to a line being here or there or there. Or you've already told the Syrians that they can have all of the Golan back, but you're not prepared to make a public announcement. Is there a third possibility? I don't know how you can get into the details -- I'm not a military man, but I don't know how you can get into the details without knowing pretty much where the line will be. You're sort of, you know, testing our faith here.

AMB. RABINOVICH: Barry, I'm -- no. You know --

MR. : We'd hate to test your faith! (Laughter.)

Q: I mean because you have Assad once originally insisting on full withdrawal, and here he is changing the media, he's -- there are all these -- you know -- positive developments you see, and this is all being done without you saying you're willing to give up all of the Golan Heights?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Barry, I regard it as a CBM that you have made it possibility B and not possibility A -- the commitment. But actually, it's the first; namely, I think there is a way of discussing security arrangements, not to the last detail, but the essence of security arrangements, without a specific line, as long as you know that you're looking at a meaningful withdrawal.

Because if you are familiar with the Golan Heights, you know that the commanding terrain is actually on the present line, and even if you go through a small withdrawal you will have abandoned the commanding heights and already will have suffered a net loss in security and you would want to be compensated for that. So the basic principles of dealing with that and dealing with the underlying issues of how do you ascertain early warning, how do you -- to protect both parties from surprise attack, and so forth, you can do the bulk of the work without attaching it to a specific line of courses. As you come towards closure and you want to draw -- to take maps out and to draw lines, you'll have to be more specific. And that takes us back to my analogy to the four balls in the air, that at some point we'll have to equalize all four balls.

Q: And when you discuss security, there are Israelis living there, of course. Are they just -- are they one of the balls in the air, or have they been tossed out the window?

AMB. RABINOVICH: No, I think --

Q: Are you able to talk, when you talk about security "as if," even if it's highly hypothetical, that any Jews will be living on the Golan Heights when you're all done?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Yes, that's really not a security issue. That's the whole point of being able to --

Q: That's (what I was ?) saying --

AMB. RABINOVICH: -- you know, but I -- but we are not so callous as to treat the Israelis who live in the Golan Heights as objects to be tossed or thrown out of windows and so forth. There's a very -- very important human dimension to all of this, of which we are -- to which we are very sensitive. But the answer to the question is that that's the whole point, that's why I attach such significance to the ability to isolate the security issue and discuss it on its own for a considerable significant period of time until you need to integrate it into the full package.

MR. SATLOFF: (Name inaudible) -- here.

Q: You mentioned, I think, the interview which Mr. Rabin gave to the Washington Post today, and I would like to read only two or three lines from that piece -- (inaudible) --

AMB. RABINOVICH: You have to raise your voice, please.

Q: Mr. Rabin said, when it comes to Syria, Rabin said, it will require at least full years of normalization before a complete Israeli withdrawal can even be contemplated. Isn't it the first time that Israeli leader speaks about full withdrawal from the Golan Heights?

AMB. RABINOVICH: No, I think -- I think -- I know exactly the prime minister's thinking on this. He -- what is meant (or not ?) in that sentence is, before we complete the withdrawal to which we will have agreed, let's say -- I want to draw a very sharp distinction between the Syrian -- an agreement with Syria and agreement with the PLO.

I think that is useful in other ways will be very useful for clarifying this point.

When we signed the Oslo agreement we signed an agreement without the definitive bottom line. It's an agreement in phases, you need a transition from one phase to the next, it's not automatic, it depends on performance during the phase itself. We open permanent status negotiations in May 1996, we have a period of three years in order to complete them, but we may not come to an agreement. I very much hope that we will, but we may not come to an agreement. Certainly we do not know what the agreement is.

When it comes to the negotiations with Syria there may also -- there probably will be phases -- but there will be phases of implementing an agreement that has been made completely on the bottom line -- will have been agreed in advance. And therefore if you lock at the prime minister's statement, what he means is we will begin to implement our part of the commitment to the withdrawal in a small way in the first phase, and we will complete our commitment after a period of at least two years.

So, the completion doesn't refer to full withdrawal but refers to completing a commitment undertaking at the time of signing.

MR. SATLOFF; Howard Probatter (ph).

Q: As one academic to another -- very stimulating. The question on security -- you must have seen the article by Ze'ev Schiff on the question of water, and now is what you said that now it's the time to discuss the real security problems before anything else. You are reminded two or three years later. Is there any change of attitude on the part of the government to introduce great expertise, not part of (Guide-DF?) into this negotiation because of -- you know very well the water problem.

AMB. RABINOVICH: Two parts to my answer. Number one is, the water issue is on the agenda, has been put by us on the agenda, the Syrians know that we regard it as a security issue. Second, the -- I referred to the high ranking military officers at some point as experts. That was the generic term, that is to say, in the process of completing the negotiations other experts may be called in. They could be water expects, they could be international law experts, experts on the problems that need to be agreed upon. You're sitting next to a person who spent many, many months dealing with some very specific professional questions challenging the expertise of many experts.

Q: Thank you.

MR. SATLOFF: Abdulsalam Massarueh

Q: Mr. Ambassador, Palestinians suspect that Israel is out to achieve an agreement with Syria at the price of not pushing earnestly the Palestinian- Israeli negotiations for an agreement over the second phase in the Oslo Accords. How can you answer these suspicions or fears of the Palestinians?

AMB. RABINOVICH: I defined a Syrian-Israeli agreement as (a/the ?) key to comprehensive settlement. Now, the Palestinian issue -- let me backtrack for a moment. You know, for years, speaking of experts and academics, there was this discussion, is the Palestinian issue the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict or is it not? The first time in 1975 when Hal Saunders, who then appeared before a congressional committee headed by Lee Hamilton, testified on the Palestinian question and defined the Palestinian question as the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, that at the time was taken to be a very significant departure from the previous policies of the United States.

Now, in a way, we came to adopt it, and part of what we regard as the very significant achievement of Oslo is the mutual recognition. And it was this recognition of us by the authoritative representative of Palestinian nationalism as a sovereign, legitimate state in the Middle East that has enabled other Arabs to begin or to complete normalization with us because, the custodians of the core issue, if they recognized Israel, so could other Arabs.

Now, we are mindful of that, and while we may regard an agreement with Syria as key to comprehensive agreement, we remember the significance of the Palestinian issue for the overall peace, and we also are fully aware of another reality, namely, we live with the Palestinians, together, nearby, as you, yourself, know very well. But this is not a theoretical issue for us, this is not something that is seen in terms of state-to-state conflict or resolution; this is everybody's daily life, what you encounter when you get out of your own apartment. So none of us, I think, takes it lightly.

And I'm not surprised that in our part of the world people have suspicions or people develop a conspiracy approach to this act or that act, but we don't take our agreement with the Palestinians lightly and we do not take the relationship lightly, and we will not use an agreement with another Arab state as a mechanism in order to try to sidetrack our relationship with the Palestinians.

Q: Could you answer the split in the Likud Party and the formation of a new party by David Levy as a good omen for Mr. Rabin to achieve a majority in the Knesset for passing the -- (brief audio break) -- the Golan Heights? Or how do you interpret this?

AMB. RABINOVICH: I would have loved to, but I don't think it's the function of an ambassador to deal with either the domestic politics of the country to which he is assigned, or the domestic politics of the country that assigned him. (Laughter.)

Q: Itamar, I'm actually going to press you on the last phrase you just mentioned, because I know a couple of people have questions, but I wanted to ask you about the American role in the negotiations And if I can just focus for a moment on the Syria talks and just bring together three points. In your own presentation, you referred to the fact that it is now a form of trilateral negotiation. In the Lally Weymouth article this morning, I believe that Yitzhak Rabin had a sense of uneasiness with the fact that when Americans are in the room the talks have to be more formal than if they're just face-to- face. And then in the region a couple of weeks ago, Secretary Christopher raised the idea of President Clinton getting involved in the negotiations at some point.

So the two aspects of the same question are, can there be a breakthrough with the Syrians with the Americans' part -- an essential part of the negotiations? Or -- and can there be a breakthrough without President Clinton playing an essential part of the negotiations?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Okay, The first part of the question doesn't really pose any problem in the sense that I think what I will say is probably shared by my American colleagues in the peace team and by the seniors in the administration. The American role in the Israeli-Syria negotiations is essential. It's difficult to envisage a deal being completed without the United States. But I think we feel very strongly that there also needs to be an element in which the matchmaker leaves the room, leaves the would-be groom and bridegroom for themselves for a few minutes to decide whether they want to live together for the next X years.

And I think the -- our agreements with the -- the way our agreement happened with the Jordanians is a wonderful illustration of the need to have many layers of contact.

As I mentioned earlier, King Hussein's meeting with President Clinton in May of last year was a very important step on the road to coming to an agreement. But his meetings with Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres alone and a long tradition of Israeli-Jordanian meetings without an intermediary were also crucial. And it was the combination of the ability to mold together -- weld together a number of tracks that I think explains our success.

In the Syrian dimension, the -- what you are looking at is two countries, two enemies that were bitter enemies for so many years. After nearly 50 years of conflict and 40 years of no direct contact between them, they need to explore each other a little more, they need to know each other a little more. Now, I represent the channel that deals directly with the Syrians, although always with American participation. You know, at some point before we can bring the negotiations very -- closer to an agreement, but before we make the transition from closer to agreement to agreement, more senior Israelis and senior Syrians will have to meet and know each other, before they establish that they can -- that we can make that transition from war or conflict to peace. And my American colleagues would be the first to say that, so there is no sensitivity to this.

As to the specific personnel, personalities that the U.S. government will choose to employ in order to pursue American policies, that is an American issue.

MR. SATLOFF: Itamar, I want to thank you very much for having parried all these questions. I look forward to having you back to give a report on the next phase, when we are at another positive phase in the peace process.

AMB. RABINOVICH: Thank you very much. (Applause.)