Bashir Assad, the President of Syria, has repeatedly offered peace talks with Israel. Most recently he has added that he has no preconditions for negotiations — he is not even demanding that Israel promise in advance to return the Golan Heights. The response of Ehud Olmert has been astonishing. We can’t, Israel’s Prime Minister says, act against our friend, George W. Bush, who has no interest in an accommodation between Israel and Syria.

Therefore, Israel refuses to grasp the hand that Syria has offered.

There were times — when Israel still behaved like an independent country, rather than as a client of the United States — that the demand for direct, unconditional talks with the Arab countries was the heart of Israel’s policy. Ben-Gurion, Sharret, Eshkol, Rabin and Begin all offered to sit at the negotiating table with Arab leaders without any preconditions on either side. That’s no longer the case.

Today, Israel has presented a list of preconditions. Syria must expel Hamas’s leadership. Syria must cut its ties with Hezbollah. Syria must stop harassing our US allies in Iraq. Syria must end its alliance with Iran. Syria must desist from its military build-up on the Golan front. It must do all this before negotiations begin.

If Syria met all these preconditions, Israel would have no reason to negotiate with it on the Golan. In fact, if Syria accepted all Israel’s demands, peace would be superfluous. In 1967, in response to a Syrian attack, Israel occupied the Golan Heights. From that time on Syria has demanded the return of its territory, while Israel has demanded that the Damascus regime recognise Israel, cease hostilities and live in peace with the Jewish state.

Today Israel demands, as a precondition, that Syria give all it has to give, even before sitting down. This is unreasonable. All the more unreasonable is Israel’s justification for spurning Syria’s outstretched hand: we can’t negotiate with Syria because it would put President Bush in a bad position in the internal US debate about Middle East policy.

Why does Israel have to set aside its own supreme national interest — peace with all its neighbours — in favour of the niceties of its relations with a foreign government? This is the first time that an Israeli prime minister has acknowledged, and even taken pride in the fact, that an Israeli decision of huge importance has been placed in the hands of foreigners.

We’ve been here before. On the eve of the Yom Kippur War Anwar Sadat of Egypt offered Israel peace in exchange for the return of the Sinai. Golda Meir’s incompetent Government ignored the offer for reasons similar to the ones given by the Olmert administration. Then 2,700 Israeli soldiers were killed in the war that followed. After the war Israel received from President Sadat the same offer he’d made before the war: peace in exchange for territory.

Haven’t we learnt anything?

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