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The talks have just begun, but people in Beirut already are speaking about what will happen when, not if, a peace treaty is reached between Israel and its neighbors, Syria and Lebanon.
As negotiations began yesterday in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk alSharaa, expectations are running high in Lebanon. The once fiercely anti-Israeli newspapers of Syria and Lebanon now extol the virtues of peace, while the official Syrian press is characterizing the deal as 80 percent complete.
"Peace is a strategic choice for Syria and Lebanon," crowed Tuesday's editions of al Thawra, an official Syrian newspaper.
The talks have just begun, but people in Beirut already are speaking about what will happen when, not if, a peace treaty is reached between Israel and its neighbors, Syria and Lebanon.
As negotiations began yesterday in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk alSharaa, expectations are running high in Lebanon. The once fiercely anti-Israeli newspapers of Syria and Lebanon now extol the virtues of peace, while the official Syrian press is characterizing the deal as 80 percent complete.
"Peace is a strategic choice for Syria and Lebanon," crowed Tuesday's editions of al Thawra, an official Syrian newspaper.
Lebanon's leading newspaper, An-Nahar, described the state of the peace process with a cartoon of a frown gradually mutating into a broad grin.
"The feeling is that the peace is done. There are some details to discuss and not much more," said Samir Kassir, a political analyst and editor at An-Nahar in Beirut.
In the broadest outlines, the emerging deal would have Israel return the Golan Heights, the 7,000foot-high plateau that commands both the heights overlooking northern Israel and one road to Damascus, the Syrian capital. Israel captured the Golan in a 1967 war.
Syria, in return, would promise to keep peace at the IsraelLebanon border, where the Iranian-funded, Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement is waging a guerrilla war against northern Israel. This would allow Israel to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon, ending an unpopular conflict that Israelis wearily call their Vietnam.
From Tel Aviv, Israel, to Damascus, the newspapers are full of details of the expected peace agreement. It is no great surprise to see such information in the infamously freewheeling Israeli press, but for the state-controlled Syrian media to go so far strongly implies an endorsement from the government.
For example, Syrian newspapers wrote that a sophisticated Israeli early warning station on Mount Hermon, the Golan's highest peak, would be allowed to remain in place. The press in Lebanon and in Israel also is speculating that there will be a land swap - with Israel ceding to Syria a southern pocket of the Golan near the Jordanian border and keeping the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, a stunning religious and tourist attraction and a valuable source of water.
"The terms of the agreement are pretty much known," said Paul Salem, a prominent political analyst in Beirut. "It will be a fairly simple agreement, unlike the situation with the Palestinians, where they will have to negotiate over every little village."
Barak needs a deal with Syria to distract from the stalemate in negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as to fulfill a campaign pledge to bring home the troops in South Lebanon by July 2000.
Syrian President Hafez Assad's failing health at age 69 gives him limited time to win back the Golan. And President Clinton has barely one year left in his term to establish his legacy as a peacemaker.
While Washington is trying to lower expectations, a Lebanese government official said many of the details were worked out before Dec. 8, when Clinton announced that the talks would resume.
INFORMATIONAL GRAPHIC; Caption: INFORMATIONAL GRAPHIC: Associated Press; Compiled from AP wire reports; Israeli Government Press Office: (Decades of conflict)
Copyright Post Gazette Publishing Company Dec 16, 1999