Last week Syrian and Israeli officials took part in the Madrid Conference, 15 years after the historical Israel-Palestine Peace Conference in 1991. It had been seven years since diplomats from the two conflicting nations had officially gathered around a table. The presence of Syria and Israel at the Madrid Conference appeared to many to be the first step towards the revival of peace talks, but according to a recent survey contacts between the two sides never stopped.

Golan. Yesterday Haaretz, the Israeli daily paper, revealed that over the last two years there had been secret discussions between Syrian and Israeli officials. Diplomats from the two countries have often found themselves in Europe, setting down the guidelines for a peace agreement that looks towards an Israeli retreat in the Golan Heights. According to Haaretz, the timings of the Israeli retreat were to be defined – Syria would want it to take place within five years and Israel within fifteen. However, the agreement would only be a declaration of intent: nothing is signed and it has no legal value. The Syrian Foreign Minister has questioned the accuracy of the news and some Israeli parliamentarians have denied Haaretz’s claims, maintaining that at most the contact is at an academic level, whilst the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denied any knowledge and has reinforced that he does not intend to re-open negotiations with Syria until they cut their ties with Iran, the Palestinian Movement and Hezbollah. Official contact between the two countries has ceased since 2000, when Barak, then Israeli Prime Minister, offered a partial retreat from Golan that Damascus then repudiated. The secret meetings would have continued up until last summer when, during the war with Lebanon, Israel refused the Syrian proposal of bringing the talks to an official level, where an American mediator would also be present. Despite contradictions, sources report that the Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, an EU mediator who remains anonymous and Alin Liel, a Syrian businessman with American citizenship, all took part in the meetings. The not-so-secret-now agreement anticipates the Israeli retreat from the Golan Heights, where a national park for tourists would then be established – which would be administered by Syria – where Israelis would have free access. Both sides of the border would have to remove military forces and Israel would keep control of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.

Shebaa. The Shebaa Farms are a disputed territory between Lebanon, Syria and Israel, under the military control of Tel Aviv since 1967. Strategically the land is important because Hezbollah has always refused to disarm, as seen in Resolution 1559 (2004), with the pretext of Israeli presence in Shebaa. At the end of an interview conducted recently with Lebanese President Seniora, the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan declared that a diplomatic treaty is underway between Israel, the US and the United Nations, to resolve the issue of the Shebaa Farms. Erdogan proposed the transfer of the sought-after territory to the UN, but he indicated that the decision is up to Israel. Riad Daoudi, Legal Adviser for the Syrian Presidency, declared that Syria was ready to re-open negotiations with Israel in order to resolve territorial disputes with Lebanon. “We are ready to give the Shebaa Farms back”, he stated just after the Madrid conference had finished. Again in Madrid, the UN special envoy in Libya for the application of Resolution 1559, Terje Roed Larsen, recalled that “There is no proof that the Shebaa Farms belong to Lebanon”, and he suggested that the issue should be resolved with a bilateral agreement between Damascus and Beirut. Meanwhile Israeli negotiator, Shlomo Ben-Ami, stated, “As soon as the Shebaa Farms are defined as Lebanese, Israel will re-enter”.