Olmert doesn’t conduct peace negotiations with Syria to dispel the criminal allegations. The political masters of the leftist Attorney General are not interested in peace talks with Syria, an international pariah state. It’s one thing to kick the religious Jew by abandoning Jerusalem and Judea to Palestinians, an insignificant enemy beloved by the world media. It is another thing entirely to deal with Assad’s terrorist regime, which annoys just about every politician on earth.
Ceding the Golan Heights to Syria is overwhelmingly unpopular in Israel, and negotiations greatly worsen Olmert’s public standing rather than improve it. Unlike Judea and Samaria, which are off-limits to most Israelis, the Golan Heights are a popular destination, and have been for 2/3 of Israel’s history, forty years out of sixty. The sense that the Golan Heights belong to Israel is deeply ingrained in the public mind, and no politician would promote himself by giving them away.
Turkey announced that the Golan talks had reached a dead end just weeks ago. Neither Israel nor Syria has changed its mind since then. Israel’s conditions are unworkable for Syria: it doesn’t need the Golan Heights so much as to abandon Iran and Lebanon/Hezbollah. Syria’s condition of access to Lake Kinneret is suicidal for Israel as the water level is already below the critical line. Whatever meager trust Syria might have in Israel, it is not reciprocated: Israel cannot hope that upon signing a shred of paper Syria would honor its obligations and extinguish its support for Hezbollah, or at least forbid the guerrilla group to engage Israel. The similar problem of mutual distrust appeared in the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations, and was only solved by the US guarantees—but there is no one to guarantee for Syria.
The notion of a peace treaty is absurd. Peace is not a product of words on paper, but of boots on the ground. European states signed peace treaties which proved merely to be ceasefires lasting several decades. Critically, European peace partners were historically of comparable size; all of them had sufficient depth of defense to react to the other side’s breach of ceasefire.
Israel’s peace with Egypt proved disastrous. The level of Egypt’s support for Hamas far exceeds its support for the fellaheen guerrillas in the 1950s, which activity prompted Israel to launch the war of 1956. Behind the American guarantees and with American aid, Egypt amassed a very capable army whose only enemy is Israel. Should Egypt start a more or less covert nuclear program, Israel would find it hard politically to attack the Egyptian nuclear facilities and be condemned worldwide for breaching the celebrated but worthless peace.
To sign a peace treaty with Syria is simple: launch a preemptive strike, suffer some Syrian missile strikes, get Israeli tanks into Damascus, and bomb Syrian towns daily until the enemy surrenders. Then impose demilitarization on the Syrians and live happily, striking them again whenever they attempt to build an army. That’s the only true peace, through unconditional surrender.
The current peace talks with Syria are not dangerous: even if supported by everyone from the US to Iran, they will drag on for years, and in the current atmosphere of universal dislike for Assad, no progress in peace negotiations is likely.
Olmert re-launched negotiations immediately after receiving Bush’s commitment for harsh measures against nuclear Iran. The Israeli government is trying to discourage Syria from retaliating on Iran’s behalf after the US-Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Such an attack is so far forthcoming amid Rice’s opposition. Israel will likely use Tomahawk-type missiles, and the US will employ stealth bombers (which have seen virtually no action before) and possibly Minuteman ballistic missiles. Using Israeli tactical nuclear weapons remains a wonderful possibility. Iran won’t seriously retaliate due to its characteristic mix of caution and cowardice multiplied by the absence of capable weaponry. A few missiles might slam through Israeli air defenses, and a few terrorist acts will be carried out abroad, but that’s it.
Even Olmert’s touted new criminal investigation may be a fiction aimed at convincing Iran that Israel is not ready to strike now. The investigation, for all its pomp, is legally meager. The police must realize that it is impossible to connect Olmert’s appropriations from the campaign donations to the token assistance he extended to Talansky, and so bribery cannot be proved. Moreover, no one in the establishment is really interested in creating a precedent of indicting a top politician for crimes every politician is guilty of.
The absence of a ground operation in Gaza is of the same stock: Barak cannot afford to be bogged down in urban battles and the inevitable international outcries while at the same time preparing both an attack on Iran and the home front defenses. Due to the upcoming elections in the US and Israel, Iran is going to be attacked this year.