Israel Foreign Relations Syria

Israel's reprisal attacks on Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut and throughout Lebanon have been intended as impressive surgical strikes and may well have done serious damage to the Iranian-backed guerrillas. But Israel never expected the military operation to end the decade-long war against Hezbollah, a militia drawn from Lebanon's Shiite Muslims. That end, Israel believes, can come only through negotiations with Syria, the de facto ruler of Lebanon and overseer of Hezbollah.

After four days of shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Jerusalem, Secretary of State Warren Christopher's aides said Wednesday that Syria and Israel for the first time are trading increasingly detailed proposals and counterproposals on how to end their 46-year state of war.

Yehuda Gil used to teach young agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service about the craft of lying. Now, revelations that Gil, a former Mossad spymaster, fabricated information about Syria over a period of years have rocked the intelligence agency. And they have raised questions about the potential danger of the false information and its effect on the agency's future.

President Clinton talked by telephone with Syrian President Hafez Assad for almost an hour Tuesday in a determined effort to persuade Syria to resume interrupted Middle East peace talks. Clinton's call came as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright predicted that Israel and Syria eventually will overcome half a century of animosity and sign a formal peace treaty, despite Monday's indefinite postponement of high-level negotiations that had been scheduled to resume today.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh held face-to-face talks Friday for only the second time as the fifth day of the Middle East peace talks plodded toward an inconclusive end. President Clinton, who met alone with Barak and Shareh for about 40 minutes, handed them a U.S.-drafted document outlining issues on which the antagonists appear to agree and summarizing the more significant list of disagreements, U.S. officials said. The purpose of the U.S.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh on Wednesday turned their 3-day-old peace conference over to committees of experts, who started the nitty-gritty work of resolving the welter of disputes that has produced half a century of steady hatred punctuated by warfare. "They are chugging along in a professional manner," State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said on what he called the "first serious business day" of the talks.

Admonished by the Clinton administration that they face "a historic opportunity that may not come again," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh opened a conference Monday aimed at ending half a century of war and animosity. But the meeting almost immediately hit a snag when an anticipated face-to-face session between Barak and Shareh failed to occur.

Urging Israelis to seize the "historic moment," Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Monday overcame his first challenge on the path to peace with Syria and gained parliamentary approval for renewed negotiations in Washington this week. Addressing lawmakers in a bid to rally support for the talks after nearly four years of impasse, Barak asked all Israelis to back him in his quest to end half a century of conflict between the Jewish state and its hard-line Arab neighbor.

Shortly before the surprise announcement that Israel and Syria have agreed to resume high-stakes peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reminisced about his days as a soldier joining in the battle to seize the Golan Heights from Syria. All his life, he said, he has defended the safety of Israel. "I would never sign an agreement that would not, to the best of my judgment, strengthen the security of Israel," Barak declared.

It was too much to expect that 50 years of war would dissolve in a handshake. At the start of landmark talks Wednesday, journalists in the Rose Garden clamored for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to clasp hands with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh. Instead, President Clinton nudged them, not toward each other as he did in a famous Israeli-Arab handshake six years ago, but away from the cameras and into the shelter of the Oval Office. "We're going to work," Clinton said.